'The thing is not, to let the schools and universities go on in a drowsy and impotent routine; the thing is, to raise the culture of the nation ever higher and higher by their means.' WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT. PREFACE ΤΟ THE SECOND EDITION. THE BOOK on 'Schools and Universities on the Continent,' which I published in 1868, has long been out of print; I now republish that part of it which relates to Germany. The historical interest of tracing the development of the French school-system, from the University of Paris and its colleges down to the lyceums and faculties of the present day, is extremely great; the practical value of this school-system, in affording lessons for English people's guidance at the present moment, is small. The German schools and universities, on the other hand, offer an abundance of such lessons. During the debates in Parliament this last spring on Irish university education, a foreign critic remarked that the ignorance which foreigners are accused of displaying when they talk of England could not possibly exceed the blundering into which the English |