TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 85 



First, I look to the elementary schools now happily 

 established all over the country. I am not going to 

 criticise or find fault with them ; on the contrary, their 

 establishment seems to me to be the most important 

 and the most beneficial result of the corporate action 

 of the people in our day. A great deal is said of 

 British interests just now, but, depend upon it, that 

 no Eastern difficulty needs our intervention as a nation 

 so seriously, as the putting down both the Bashi-Ba- 

 zouks of ignorance and the Cossacks of sectarianism 

 at home. What has already been achieved in these 

 directions is a great thing; you must have lived some 

 time to know how great. An education, better in its 

 processes, better in its substance, than that which was 

 accessible to the great majority of well-to-do Britons 

 a quarter of a century ago, is now obtainable by every 

 child in the land. Let any man of my age go into 

 an ordinary elementary school, and, unless he was un- 

 usually fortunate in his youth, he will tell you that 

 the educational method, the intelligence, patience, and 

 good temper on the teacher's part, which are now at 

 the disposal of the veriest waifs and wastrels of society, 

 are things of which he had no experience in those 

 costly middle-class schools, which were so ingeniously 

 contrived as to combine all the evils and shortcomings 

 of the great public schools with none of their advan- 

 tages. Many a man, whose so-called education cost a 

 good deal of valuable money and occupied many a year 

 of invaluable time, leaves the inspection of a well- 



