APPENDIX 1 



THOUGHTS ON EDUCATION 

 AND SCHOOLS. 



BY J. BROWN. 



Here and there in the works of John Ruskin we find a 

 favourite teaching of the great master which tells us that the 

 foundation of good writing and speaking, as well as the highest 

 possibility of intelligent, profitable, and enjoyable reading is 

 found in a familiarity with the original meaning and derivation 

 of words. 



It is largely educative in itself to try to trace words from 

 their primitive purity through changes by which they have 

 descended to their present meanings. Changes which have 

 perhaps left them sullied and almost ostracised from polite lips, 

 though they started pure and innocent at first. 



We are familiar with such examples as villain, knave, etc. 



The word education is, I think, also in danger of falling from 

 its high estate, and it may not be a profitless task to endeavour 

 to think of its original meaning when, with the new-born en- 

 thusiasm of the first recognition of the thing itself, the coiner 

 of the word chose the materials out of which he forged it 

 E — out of, and duco — I lead. 



