XX. 



THE PLAIN 'ENGLISH 1 OF IT. 



WHAT a curious, complicate, half- interesting, half- 

 provoking problem is that presented by a shrewd, 

 practical, experienced, and well-poised mind, without 

 education. Of course I am not speaking of that educa- 

 tion which every active mind, learned or unlearned, is 

 daily picking up, from the first entrance into real life, 

 till 'the night cometh when no man can work'; but 

 that particular appropriation of certain early years to 

 the school-room process, (such as it still is !) by which 

 the mind is kneaded, and tempered, and subdued, 

 during its only plastic age, into that peculiar tilth 

 and texture, whose after-benefit is known, not by the 

 acquisition of the prescribed formulae and rudiments 

 of knowledge, but chiefly by the having learnt the art 

 of learning. If the knowledge that is carried away 



