1895.] ESSAYS. Ill 



its maguificeut garden. Possibly we might agree further, that it would 

 be better for the good people of Worcester to spend a good share of 

 their time loafing and puttering about under their oavu vines and fig 

 trees than in passively admiring even the best garden in the world. 



Upon a still further point with reference to public gardens, I can 

 scarcely hope for agreement from anyone. But I have thought best 

 to present to you a plan of a garden as it has forced itself in my own 

 mind, together with some of the considerations and reasons upon 

 which it is based. 



Besides its private gardens and public parks, every city needs a 

 special garden for the popular and scientific education. It should 

 afford a method, as easy and as free as possible from the dryness and 

 technicality of the books and schools, by which any intelligent man, 

 woman or child may gain a living, actual acquaintance with the com- 

 mon forms of life about them. I know a cold shudder creeps over 

 almost every one at the mere mention of the words " education," 

 "science." Ghastly visions of the endkss weariness, the everlasting 

 humdrum, the unnecessary tyranny of our school and college days, 

 arise before us at their mere mention. The "knowledge" that was 

 stuffed into us, like scrap meat into a sausage skin, is gone and we are 

 glad for its departure. Of what value are gardens for this "educa- 

 tion," this " science "? To those who have never felt the difference 

 between learning and cramming it will be impossible to explain. To 

 those who have, no explanation is necessary. 



It is now nearly two and a quarter centuries since John Milton 

 wrote his " Tractate on Education," and still the differences between 

 living education and dead knowledge grinding, which he so clearly 

 outlined, have made little enough progress in soaking through the ossi- 

 fied strata of the human skull. Even now committees of ten and 

 committees of fifteen are cracking their brains to devise crammino- 

 machines, and with never a thought that just such methods and de- 

 vices have been for centuries bursting almost all the poor, little 

 sausage skins and spilling all the sausage. Along this line Milton 

 wrote, in 1673, as follows: — 



" And for the usual method of teaching the Arts, I deem it be an 

 old errour of Universities not yet well recovered from the Scholastick 

 grossness of barborous ages, that in stead of beginning with Arts most 

 easie,and those be such as are most obvious to the sence,they present 

 their young unmatriculated Novices at first comming with the most in- 

 tellective abstractions of Logick and Metaphysicks ; So that they hav- 

 ing but newly left those Grammatick flats and shallows where they 



