B5S SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES, 



gestion from me, that the great leading idea of education is 

 capable of a development to which it has not yet attained ; 

 and that no class of our population has this idea more in its 

 control than the yeomanry. Education, as now conducted, is 

 too much upon the principle of accumulation. We dig for 

 knowledge as we dig for gold — for the biggest possible pile of 

 facts ; and we throw the grains indiscriminately into our treas- 

 ure-house, instead of working up what we gather, into coins 

 that will serve us in any emergency. An apothegm of truth is 

 the saying, that " Knowledge is power." But of what avail is 

 power, unless it can be had at the precise moment, and in the 

 precise mode in which it is wanted ? The great purpose of 

 education is not to crowd the mind with accumulations of facts 

 in history, geography, the sciences, and the arts ; but to devel- 

 op, to bring out, to expand, to enlarge all the faculties. The 

 true end and aim of all learning was forcibly presented by the 

 poet Wordsworth, in one of the few public addresses which he 

 could ever be induced to make. It was at the founding of a 

 school in his neighborhood that he said : — 



" I must direct your attention to a fundamental mistake, by 

 which this age, so distinguished for its marvellous progress in 

 arts and sciences, is unhappily characterized ; a mistake mani- 

 fested in the use of the word education, which is habitually 

 confounded with tuition, or school instruction. This is, indeed, 

 a very important part of education ; but when it is taken for 

 the whole, we are deceived and betrayed. Education, accord- 

 ing to the derivation of the word, and in the only use of which 

 it is strictly justifiable, comprehends all those processes and in- 

 fluences, come from whence they may, that conduce to the 

 best development of the bodily powers, and of the moral, intel- 

 lectual, and spiritual faculties, which the position of the indi- 

 vidual admits of." 



I would not, here or elsewhere, speak even the faintest word 

 of disparagement of the tuition of the schools. It is useful, 

 eminently so, in its way. But schools are but the machinery 

 of education ; books are but tools ; and masters but overseers 

 to point out their character, and direct their use. When the 

 youth leaves the school or the college, he has but taken his 



