A LIBERAL EDUCATION 51 



of the raw products you employ; and, when you are asked 

 to buy a patent, you shall not have the slightest means qf 

 judging whether the inventor is an impostor who is contra- 

 vening the elementary principles of science, or a man who 

 will make you as rich as Croesus. 



"You will very likely get into the House of Commons. 

 You will have to take your share in making laws which may 

 prove a blessing or a curse to millions of men. But you shall 

 not hear one word respecting the political organisation of 

 your country; the meaning of the controversy between free- 

 traders and protectionists shall never have been mentioned 

 to you; you shall not so much as know that there are such 

 things as economical laws. 



"The mental power which will be of most importance 

 in your daily life will be the power of seeing things as they 

 are without regard to authority; and of drawing accurate 

 general conclusions from particular facts. But at school 

 and at college you shall know of no source of truth but 

 authority; nor exercise your reasoning faculty upon any- 

 thing but deduction from that which is laid down by 

 authority. 



"You will have to weary your soul with work, and many 

 a time eat your bread in sorrow and in bitterness, and you 

 shall not have learned to take refuge in the great source of 

 pleasure without alloy, the serene resting-place for worn 

 human nature, — the world of art." 



Said I not rightly that we are a wonderful people ? I am 

 quite prepared to allow, that education entirely devoted to 

 these omitted subjects might not be a completely liberal 

 education. But is an education which ignores them all a 

 liberal education? Nay, is it too much to say that the 

 education which should embrace these subjects and no 

 others would be a real education, though an incomplete 



