STATISTICS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 478 



The system of higher education as now existent is by no means the outcome of 

 a plan laid down in advance. It is due to the initiative taken by religious bodies, 

 educational societies, and private individuals, and Parliament is slow to interfere 

 with schools not founded or subventioned by the State. At the present time 

 about 20,000 primary schools in England and Scotland, affording accommo- 

 dation to one-seventh of the population, are in receipt of Government aid, and are 

 regularly inspected. The number of persons unable to write is annually 

 decreasing as the younger generation grows up. Illiterates are most numerous 

 in Western Ireland, in Wales, in the Scotch Highlands — that is, in those districts 

 where many of the inhabitants still speak Celtic — and in certain manufacturing 

 districts of England and Scotland. 



The number of children who attend superior schools in England is less 

 than in France. The English public schools and colleges, which give an edu- 

 cation analogous to that of the French " Lycées," are attended by onl}^ 20,000 

 pupils, whilst the corresponding French schools count 157,000 pupils. Schools of 

 this kind are considered higher than the grammar schools, and are looked upon as 

 being intended only for the rich or titled, whilst in France they are thrown open 

 to all the children of the middle classes, and help to recruit them.* 



The State seldom interferes directly with higher education. It does not con- 

 cern itself with the superintendence of the educational establishments intended for 

 the upper classes, but leaves the supreme control of each of them to its own special 

 governing body. The members of the governing body are variously appointed, 

 e.g. the University of Oxford may send two representatives, or the Lord Chan- 

 cellor one, and so on. To some of the great endowed schools the State has 

 granted charters of incorporation : in several of them the process of eliminating 

 ancient abuses has been singularly slow. The use of the term "■ puhUc school " is 

 nearly as inaccurate as it is frequent, but, to speak exactly, it means a school 

 possessing a charter of incorporation, and in which the advantages of the endow- 

 ment belong equally to all her Majesty's subjects. At Winchester, the oldest 

 of the public schools, there are " Foundation Scholars" and "Exhibitioners," who 

 are maintained wholly or in part at the expense of the institution, and, far 

 outnumbering them, " Commoners," whose parents pay for their board and instruc- 

 tion. The annual cost of keeping a boy at one of these schools averages £120. 

 At Eton and Harrow it is considerably more, but these two in particular are 

 frequented by the sons of wealthy Englishmen anxious to become acquainted and 

 associate with men of birth. In all the great schools, as indeed at both the great 

 universities, the spirit of athleticism rules supreme. While, on the one hand, the 

 statesmen of England, many of its bishops, judges, and leading scholars trace the 

 beginnings of their successes to the manly breadth of tone of a public school ; on the 

 other, specimens of bigoted ignorance and despotic stupidity are but too frequent. 

 At the two great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge the ecclesiastical element, 

 until the middle of this century, largely predominated. Cambridge had originally 

 a great name for the study of mathematics only ; Oxford for that of the Greek 

 * Matthew Arnold, Fortnightly Revieiv, November, 1878. 



141 



