PREFACE.

THE four chapters of which this work consists, originally appeared as four Review articles the first in the Westminster Review, the second in the North British Review, and the remaining two in the British Quarterly Review. Severally treating different divisions of the subject, but together forming a tolerably complete whole, I originally wrote them with a view to their republication in a united form; and they would some time since have thus appeared in England, had not the proprietor of the North British Review refused to let me include the one contributed to that periodical. This interdict is, however, of no effect in the United States; and some transatlantic friends having represented

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to me that an American re-issue was desir able, I have revised the articles, and placed them in the hands of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co.

H. S.

LONDON, July, 1860.

EDUCATION AT ETON, 1842-5.

"Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day, and famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace don. 'Stephen major,' he once said to my brother, if you do not take more pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and shorts? If you do not write good longs and shorts, how can you ever be a man of taste? If you are not a man of taste, how can you ever hope to be of use in the world?""

(The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., by his brother, Leslie Stephen, pp. 80-1.)

viii

EDUCATION.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT KNOWLEDGE IS OF MOST WORTH?

Ir has been truly remarked that, in order of time, decoration precedes dress. Among people who submit to great physical suffering that they may have themselves handsomely tattooed, extremes of temperature are borne with but little attempt at mitigation. Humboldt tells us that an Orinoco Indian, though quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labour for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired; and that the same woman who would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted. Voyagers uniformly find that coloured beads and trinkets are much more prized by wild tribes than are calicoes or broadcloths. And the anecdotes we have of the ways in which, when shirts and coats are given, they turn