A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 73 



foundations of life in the Arnington which is to be ? 

 What else than the moral wilderness we see could be 

 produced by this small, smooth mind wholly taken 

 up with the labour, week-end to week-end, of satis- 

 fying Governmental necessities in the way of Freehand 

 and Mental Arithmetic ? If we could have for our 

 Masters and Mistresses persons uniting the acquire- 

 ments of the average University Head with an 

 eternal patience, an irresistible sympathy, and the 

 insight into character of a popular Counsel at the 

 Old Bailey, the mass of dead detail might be made 

 to move, and some result of actual life might appear. 

 Under the present conditions, young Arnington is 

 being sketchily instructed in many branches of 

 learning secular; a little Sunday catechism and 

 hymn-book exercises vainly present the spiritualities 

 in face of the overpowering workaday week ; in the 

 practice of life the children are their own masters, 

 with a list to the worse, if list there need be, from 

 the all too patent elder faults at home. 



There are those (we have representatives of the 

 breed in Arnington) who think that there is a necessary 

 connection between compulsory schooling and a 

 virtuous populace ; that figures and reading primers 

 naturally make for godliness. These people, perhaps, 

 view the cottage interiors in Mill Lane as so many 



