for teaching the applied sciences, and for training teachers for all departments of technical instruction. This is a federal and not a cantonal institution. It was established by the Federal Council for the benefit of the whole of Switzerland, and a commission appointed by the Federal Council administers it. It was placed at Zurich, where it occupies a commanding position on a slope above the town, and is one of the first objects that attracts a stranger's notice.

This Polytechnicum was in vacation when I visited Zurich, but I saw at work another admirable institution of the same kind, the Polytechnicum at Stuttgardt, of which the object and the methods are very much the same. That of Zurich has six divisions; the school of construction, the school of civil engineering, the school of mechanics, the school of chemistry, the school of woodcraft, and the school of mathematical and natural sciences, of literature, and of moral and political sciences. The course in the different divisions varies in length from two to three years. The fees are low, and the staff of professors excellent; some of the most distinguished scientific men of Germany have been brought here by the Swiss Government. A professor may in his lessons use the German, French, or Italian language, as suits him best. The yearly cost of the institution is about (13,600l.), of which 16,000 fr. are given by the town of Zurich, 10,000 fr. come from the Schulfond, 64,000 fr. from the students' fees, and the remaining 250,000 fr. from the Swiss Confederation. There are about fifty professors and five hundred students.

340,000 francs

The Polytechnicum, though not specially belonging to Canton Zurich, worthily crowns by its presence the astonishing series of schools which this canton exhibits, and which I have endeavoured to describe to the English reader. A territory with the population of Leicestershire possesses a university, a veterinary school, a school of agriculture, two great classical schools, two great real schools, a normal school for training primary and secondary teachers, fiftyseven secondary schools, and three hundred and sixty-five primary schools; and many of these schools are among the best of their kind in Europe.

The primary, secondary, and real schools, are those of which this can be affirmed most decidedly. I can well understand that M. Baudouin, who was sent by the French Minister of Public Instruction to see the schools for the middle and trading classes in countries which have any such schools to show, and who has published an elaborate and invaluable report of what he saw, should have imagined himself in Paradise when he came to Zurich, and should have thought no words too strong to express his admiration. The Realstudien of the Swiss schools are prosecuted without any of the misgivings and hesitations which hang about them in Germany. Switzerland does not much trouble her head with ideas such as haunt a German Education Minister in genuine Germany, that 'die unwissenschaftliche Praxis des Nützlichkeitsprincips den Charakter einer allgemeinen höheren Bildungsanstalt aufhebe;' or share his concern because, do what he will, the programme of a Realschule possesses less innere Geschlossenheit than that of a gymnasium. The aim which Swiss education has before it, is not, I think, the highest educational aim. The idea of what the French call la grande culture has not much effect in Switzerland, and accordingly it is not in her purely literary and scientific high schools, and in the line of what is specially called a liberal education, that she is most successful. Her highest teachers are Germans from Germany; but large as are the salaries paid to draw these distinguished foreigners to Zurich, a genuine German, I am told, does not much like the atmosphere in which he finds himself there; he sighs for the more truly scientific spirit, the wissenschaftliche Geist, of the universities of his own country, and will not in general stay long at Zurich. The spirit which reigns at Zurich, and in the thriving parts of German Switzerland, is a spirit of intelligent industrialism, but not quite intelligent enough to have cleared itself from vulgarity. At Lausanne and Geneva the French language and the traditions of a high intellectual life introduce other elements; but even at Lausanne and Geneva, the effect of the great movement of the last thirty

* Rapport sur l'état actuel de l'enseignement spécial en Belgique, en Allemagne et en Suisse, par J. M. Baudouin. Paris, Imprimerie Impériale, 1865.

years, has been to develop, as the principal power there, the same sort of intelligent industrialism as is the principal power in German Switzerland. The representatives of the old high culture and intellectual traditions of French Switzerland are not now masters of the situation there, and the course of events pushes them more and more aside.

But the grand merit of Swiss industrialism, even though it may not rise to the conception of la grande culture, is that it has clearly seen that for genuine and secure industrial prosperity, more is required than capital, abundant labour, and manufactories; it is necessary to have a well-instructed population. So far as instruction and the intelligence developed by instruction are valuable commodities, the Swiss have thoroughly appreciated their market worth, and are thoroughly employing them.

They seem to me in this respect to resemble the Scotch. The Scotch, too, as the state of their universities shows, have at present little notion of la grande culture. Instead of

guarding, like the Germans, the wissenschaftliche Geist of their universities, they turn them into mere school-classes; and instead of making the student, as in Germany, pass to the university through the prima of a high school, Scotland lets the University and the High School of Edinburgh, with a happy spirit of independence worthy of their neighbours south of the Tweed, compete for schoolboys; and the University recruits its Greek classes from the third or fourth forms of the High School. Accordingly, while the aristocratic class of Scotland is by its bringing up, its faults, its merits, much the same as the aristocratic class in England, the Scotch middle class is in la grande culture not ahead of the English middle class. But so far as intellectual culture has an industrial value, makes a man's business-work better, and helps him to get on in the world, the Scotch middle class has thoroughly appreciated it and sedulously employed it, both for itself and for the class whose labour it uses; and here is their superiority to the English, and the reason of the success of Scotch skilled labourers and Scotch men of business everywhere. In this they are like the Swiss, though the example and habits of England have, as was inevitable,

prevented the Scotch from developing their school institutions, even for their limited purpose, with the method and admirable effectiveness shown by the Swiss.

What I admire in Germany is, that while there too industrialism, that great modern power, is making at Berlin, and Leipzig, and Elberfeld, the most successful and rapid progress, the idea of culture, culture of the only true sort, is in Germany a living power also. Petty towns have a university whose teaching is famous through Europe; and the King of Prussia and Count Bismark resist the loss of a great savant from Prussia, as they would resist a political check. If true culture ever becomes at last a civilising power in the world, and is not overlaid by fanaticism, by industrialism, or by frivolous pleasure-seeking, it will be to the faith and zeal of this homely and much ridiculed German people, that the great result will be mainly owing.

Meanwhile let us be grateful to any country, which, like Switzerland, prepares by a broad and sound system of popular education the indispensable foundations on which a civilising culture may in the future be built; and do not let us be too nice, while we ourselves have not even laid the indispensable foundations, in canvassing the spirit in which others have laid them.

CHAPTER XXII.

GENERAL CONCLUSION. SCHOOL STUDIES.

PROBABLE ISSUE OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND REAL STUDIES-NEW CONCEPTION OF THE AIM AND OFFICE OF INSTRUCTION-THE CIRCLE OF KNOWLEDGE TAKES IN BOTH THE HUMANITIES AND THE STUDY OF NATURE-THIS NOT ENOUGH RECOGNISED AT PRESENT TYRANNY OF THE HUMANISTS-TYRANNY OF THE REALISTS OUR PRESENT SCHOOL-COURSE-HOW TO TRANSFORM IT-EXCESSIVE PREPONDERANCE OF GRAMMATICAL STUDIES, AND OF LATIN AND GREEK COMPOSITION THE ANCIENT LANGUAGES TO BE MORE STUDIED AS LITERATURE-AND THE MODERN LANGUAGES LIKEWISE-SUMMING UP OF CONCLUSIONS.

THE

HE reader will probably expect that at the end of this long history I should offer some opinion as to the lessons to be drawn from all which I have been describing. This I shall attempt to do; although I can hardly hope, perhaps, to communicate to him the weight of conviction with which I myself am left by what I have seen. Two points, above all, suggest matter for reflection: the course of study of foreign schools, and the way in which these schools are established and administered. I begin with the first.

Several times in this volume I have touched upon the conflict between the gymnasium and the Realschule, between the partisans of the old classical studies and the partisans of what are called real, or modern, or useful studies. This conflict is not yet settled, either by one side crushing the other by mere violence, or by one side clearly getting the best of the other in the dispute between them. We in England, behindhand as our public instruction in many respects is, are nevertheless in time to profit, and to make our schools profit, by the solution which will certainly be found for this difference. I am inclined to, think that both sides will, as is natural, have to abate their extreme pretensions. The modern spirit tends to reach a new conception of the aim and office of instruction; when this conception is fully reached, it will put an end to conflict, and will probably show both