XV THE SCHOOL BOARDS 399 



strength, seeing that all the Jewish and Christian 

 sects have been at work upon that subject for 

 more than two thousand years, and have not yet 

 arrived, and are not in the least likely to arrive, 

 at an agreement ; and, in the second place, he will 

 certainly begin to teach something distinctively 

 denominational, and thereby come into violent 

 collision with the Act of Parliament. 



4. The intellectual training to be given in the 

 elementary schools must of course, in the first place, 

 consist in learning to use the means of acquiring 

 knowledge, or reading, writing, and arithmetic; 

 and it will be a great matter to teach reading so 

 completely that the act shall have become easy 

 and pleasant. If reading remains "hard," that 

 accomplishment will not be much resorted to for 

 instruction, and still less for amusement which 

 last is one of its most valuable uses to hard- 

 worked people. But along with a due pro- 

 ficiency in the use of the means of learning, a 

 certain amount of knowledge, of intellectual 

 discipline, and of artistic training should be 

 conveyed in the elementary schools ; and in 

 this direction for. reasons which I am afraid 

 to repeat, having urged them so often I can 

 conceive no subject-matter of education so ap- 

 propriate and so important as the rudiments of 

 physical science, with drawing, modelling, and 

 singing. Not only would such teaching afford the 

 best possible preparation for the technical schools 



