A LIBERAL EDUCATION 37 



sans. Why should we be worse off under one regime 

 than under the other? 



Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to 

 think whether it is really want of education which 

 keeps the masses away from their ministrations 

 whether the most completely educated men are not as 

 open to reproach on this score as the workmen ; and 

 whether, perchance, this may not indicate that it is 

 not education which lies at the bottom of the matter ? 



Once more, these people, whom there is no pleasing, 

 venture to doubt whether the glory which rests upon 

 being able to undersell all the rest of the world, is a 

 very safe kind of glory whether we may not pur- 

 chase it too dear; especially if we allow education, 

 which ought to be directed to the making of men, to be 

 diverted into a process of manufacturing human tools, 

 wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some technical 

 industry, but good for nothing else. 



And, finally, these people inquire whether it is 

 the masses alone who need a reformed and improved 

 education. They ask whether the richest of our pub- 

 lic schools might not well be made to supply knowledge, 

 as well as gentlemanly habits, a strong class feeling, 

 and eminent proficiency in cricket. They seem to 

 think that the noble foundations of our old universities 

 are hardly fulfilling their functions in their present 

 posture of half-clerical seminaries, half racecourses, 

 where men are trained to win a senior wranglership, or 

 a double-first, as horses are trained to win a cup, with 

 as little reference to the needs of after-life in the case 

 of a man as in that of the racer. And, while as zealous 

 for education as the rest, they affirm that, if the edu- 

 cation of the richer classes were such as to fit them to 

 be the leaders and the governors of the poorer; and, 



