718 KEroEX— 1886. 



to be taught in its full, compreliensive sense as somethiug involving a knowledge, 

 more or less, of mathematics and astronomy, of ancient and modern history, of 

 ethnology, zoology, botauy, geology, of men and manners, laws of nations, modes 

 of government, statistics and politics, something requiring in the disciple a quick 

 ear, a searching eye, an appreciation of scenery and outer subjects as well as 

 physical aspects of country, a power of picturesque bat an adherence to accurate 

 description ? If so — and I believe I have only stated the qualifications of the 

 travelled and finished geographer — would it not be well to inquire whether the 

 -component parts of the science should not be reconsidered, and a subdivision 

 efi;"ected which would make it easier to deal with than geography as now under- 

 stood, under the terms physical, political, and perhaps commercial ? 



It must be borne in mind that our governments or geographical societies, our 

 boards or our Universities — whichever distinguished body takes the matter in hand, 

 separately, it may be, or in concert — will have to cater for a multitude of pupils, and 

 that, whatever change eventuallj^ takes place in programmes of study, the division 

 of school teaching into two great representative branches, classics and mathematics, 

 is a practice which has hitherto, at most public schools, resisted the shock of inno- 

 vation. The maintenance of this time-honoured custom is not so much, to my 

 mind, an illustration of conservative principle — that, we all know, is powerless 

 •against national progress — as the assertion of a profound truth, similar to that 

 which in the region of language separates the Semitic from the Aryan category of 

 tongues. It is a recognition of the distinction which exists in the human organi- 

 sation between mind and mind — a distinction apparent in the boy as in the man, 

 at school as at college — in the battle of life itself as in the period of preparation 

 for battle. I do not mean to imply that all school studies fall essentially under 

 one or other of these divisions ; but I do believe that the student's progress will be 

 in accordance with his idiosyncrasies; that the student's taste should be considered 

 in the master's system ; and that, in dealing with geography, we ought not to 

 throw it wholesale into the hands of the professor or reader, but, as a primary 

 measure, separate it to suit the capacity of the classical as of the mathematical 

 intelligence, so that the one part comes within the province of history and art, the 

 other within the limits of unadulterated science. Attention to both sections should 

 be imperative, so far as attention to classics and mathematics is imperative, but 

 the standard of competence attained in either must depend on the mind and bent 

 of the pupil, who might readily excel in one but fall short in the other, not being 

 even distinguished if the subject of study were undivided. 



Not six months ago I wrote as follows : — ' We are authoritatively told that, at 

 one df our greatest public schools, which may be fairly taken as representative of 

 its class, there is no systematic teaching of geography at all, but " that in the history 

 lessons, as well as in the classical lessons, a certain amount of geography is intro- 

 duced incidentally." Again, if we look at the Universities abroad, it has been 

 found the custom, until quite lately, both in France and Germany, to combine the 

 chairs of geography and history under one professor. Now the "incidental" cha- 

 racter of geographical instruction is a tacit declaration of its unimportance, which 

 every day's experience shows to be without warrant ; and its combination with 

 history may be <an expedient to render it less distasteful than it appears as a sepa- 

 rate study. But a useful hint may be taken from the Continental practice, and a 

 partial fusion of two departments effected, which would commend itself to common 

 sense, and, to judge from the recorded opinions of certain of our educational experts, 

 might not be objected to by head-masters in England collectively. Let us, then, 

 endeavour to extract from the lessons of conventional geography that part which is 

 inseparable from the study of nations and people, and place it under a new and 

 more appropriate head. In this view, so-called " political geography," stripped of 

 its purely scientific belongings, would be taught in connection with history, and 

 made an essential ingredient in the early training of British statesmen, whose after- 

 reputation should be more or less the outcome of a University career, the grounding 

 of a public or grammar school, or private tuition. It is difficult to reconcile the 

 amalgamation of what may be considered " scientific " geography with history. 

 ■One is as thoroughly apart from the other as geology is from astronomy.' 



