XVI TECHNICAL EDUCATION 417 



contrary, their establishment seems to me to be the 

 most important and the most beneficial result of 

 the corporate action of the people in our day. A 

 great deal is said of British interests just now, but, 

 depend upon it, that no Eastern difficulty needs 

 our intervention as a nation so seriously, as the 

 putting down both the Bashi-Bazouks of ignorance 

 and the Cossacks of sectarianism at home. What 

 has already been achieved in these directions is a 

 great thing ; you must have lived some time to 

 know how great. An education, better in its 

 processes, better in its substance, than that which 

 was accessible to the great majority of well-to-do 

 Britons a quarter of a century ago, is now obtain- 

 able by every child in the land. Let any man of 

 my age go into an ordinary elementary school, and 

 unless he was unusually fortunate in his youth, he 

 will tell you that the educational method, the in- 

 telligence, patience, and good temper on the 

 teacher's part, which are now at the disposal of 

 the veriest waifs and wastrels of society, are things 

 of which he had no experience in those costly, 

 middle-class schools, which were so ingeniously 

 contrived as to combine all the evils and short- 

 comings of the great public schools with none of 

 their advantages. Many a man, whose so-called 

 education cost a good deal of valuable money and 

 occupied many a year of invaluable time, leaves the 

 inspection of a well-ordered elementary school 

 devoutly wishing that, in his young days, he had 



