A LIBERAL EDUCATION 49 



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. 

 1 venture to say that, in the great majority of cases, his ideas 

 on this subject when he leaves school are of the most shad- 

 owy and vague description, 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 com- 

 pletely 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 dis- 

 tinction 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 the contrary. 

 And as for Science, the only idea the word would suggest 

 to his mind would be dexterity in boxing. 



I have said that this was the state of things a few years 

 back, for the sake of the few righteous who are to be found 

 among the educational cities of the plain. But I would not 

 have you too sanguine about the result, if you sound the 

 minds of the existing generation of public schoolboys, on 

 such topics as those I have mentioned. 



Now let us pause to consider this wonderful state of 



