G6 
Education as connected ivith Agriculture. 
cially the practical knowledge of himself and others which, 
though it may and often is an accompaniment of scholarship, is 
not so by necessity. It is therefore desirable that the degree 
which certifies the attainments should in some measure also 
testify to the training of the man. This can only be done when 
it is connected with residence. 
A University degree at Oxford and Cambridge now implies 
not only that a man has so much knowledge of classics, &c, but 
that he has spent some three years at college, and that either he 
himself, or at least a large number of his fellow-graduates, had, 
previously to their college course, passed several years at a 
public school. And I think I may say with confidence, that the 
value of this training for life, which is thus implied, is even 
greater than the value of the knowledge certified by the standard 
of the degree. Why should not the same " training for life," 
through a school and college course, be opened to the sons of 
farmers and others ? The period of such a course must neces- 
sarily be shorter than that which, on the average, prevails with 
the higher classes, and would end as much before as the other 
is protracted beyond the age of twenty. From seventeen to 
nineteen would probably be the period of taking the " county " 
or whatever be the general middle-class "degree." Farmers' 
sons at present often leave school as young as fifteen. With 
better schools and a definite object, their stay might and 
should be protracted to sixteen or seventeen, and still leave a 
year at least for a higher course of study, and a more manly 
training at college.* What will be the number of those who 
will or can afford this prolonged sacrifice to education can only 
be ascertained by gradual experiment ; but a very small propor- 
tion of the present boarders in middle-class schools would suffice 
to maintain a college in most of the large counties, or certainly 
in groups of contiguous counties. And if recent or future 
changes in the administration of the Government aid to educa- 
tion should lead to a change in the class of masters for the 
National schools, substituting for those who are educated at the 
Government expense men who have been able to provide their 
own education, the present Training College would, as has been 
long ago suggested by Lord Fortescue, frequently become an 
excellent nucleus for a County College. 
And this leads me to pass slightly from the education of the 
* I may be permitted here to deprecate the unmeaning and mischievous con- 
fusion of the terms " school " and " college " which is beginning to prevail. A 
larger or more pretentious school is at once called a college, and the distinction 
between the elementary instruction and discipline of the boy, and the more 
advanced and liberal education of the young man is lost. College should be the 
continuation of school, implying a protracted expenditure of time, money, and 
effort on the part both of parent and student. 
