94 A LIBERAL EDUCATION; iv 



be a German and the last an Englishman for any- 

 thing he could tell you to the contrary. And as 

 for^JBcjence, the only idea the word would 

 suggest to his mind would be dexterity in box- 

 ing. 



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 affairs ; for the time will come when 

 Englishmen will quote it as the stock example of 

 the stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nine- 

 teenth century. The most thoroughly commercial 

 people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and 

 colonists the world has ever seen, are precisely the 

 middle classes of this country. If there be a 

 people which has been busy making history on the 

 great scale for the last three hundred years and 

 the most profoundly interesting history history 

 which, if it happened to be that of Greece or Rome, 

 we should study with avidity it is the English. 

 If there be a people which, during the same period, 

 has developed a remarkable literature, it is our 

 own. If there be a nation whose prosperity 

 depends absolutely and wholly upon their mastery 

 over the forces of Nature, upon their intelligent 



