in.] A LIBERAL EDUCATION. 35 



primary schools, but that the higher schools, at any rate, must 

 be allowed to give a liberal education. In fact, they professedly 

 sacrifice everything else to this object. 



Let us inquire into this matter. What do the higher schools, 

 those to which the great middle class of the country sends its 

 children, teach, over and above the instruction given in the 

 primary schools ? There is a little more reading and writing 

 of English. But, for all that, every one knows that it is a rare 

 thing to find a boy of the middle or upper classes who can read 

 aloud decently, or who can put his thoughts on paper in clear 

 and grammatical (to say nothing of good or elegant) language. 

 The &quot; ciphering &quot; of the lower schools expands into elementary 

 mathematics in the higher ; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, 

 a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has- 

 ever heard the explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his 

 Euclid otherwise than by rote. 



Of theology, the middle class schoolboy gets rather less than 

 poorer children, less absolutely and less relatively, because there 

 are so many other claims upon his attention. I venture to say 

 that, in the great majority of cases, his ideas on this sub 

 ject when he leaves school are of the most shadowy and vague de 

 scription, and associated with painful impressions of the weary 

 hours spent in learning collects and catechism by heart. 



Modern geography, modern history, modern literature; the 

 English language as a language ; the whole circle of the sciences,, 

 physical, moral, and social, are even more completely ignored 

 in the higher than in the lower schools. Up till within a few 

 years back, a boy might have passed through any one of the 

 great public schools with the greatest distinction and credit, 

 and might never so much as have heard of one of the subjects I 

 have just mentioned. He might never have heard that the 

 earth goes round the sun ; that England underwent a great 

 revolution in 1688, and France another in 1789 ; that there 

 once lived certain notable men called Chaucer, Shakespeare,. 

 Milton, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller. The first might be a German 

 and the last an Englishman for anything he could tell you to 



