we possess, and are proud of possessing, we cannot obtain the means of accurately comparing our popular education with that of the Continent. But then Mr. Wilson and Mr. Spencer and others ought to beware of building too much. upon an inaccurate comparison of it.

In short, it is expedient for the satisfactory resolution of these educational questions, which are at length beginning seriously to occupy us, both that we should attend to the experience of the Continent, and that we should know precisely what it is which this experience says. Having long held that nothing was to be learned by us from the foreigners, we are at last beginning to see, that on a matter like the institution of schools, for instance, much light is thrown by a comparative study of their institution among other civilised states and nations. To treat this comparative study with proper respect, not to wrest it to the requirements of our inclinations or prejudices, but to try simply and seriously to find what it teaches us, is perhaps the lesson which we have most need to inculcate upon ourselves at present. No ability or experience in the judge who pronounces on these matters can make up for his not knowing the facts. Mr. Fraser and Canon Norris both of them assert, that our inspected schools at present are at least equal to the best primary schools of any other country, if not superior to them. Many others amongst us say the same thing. Mr. Lowe, the author of the Revised Code, thinks our system, though partial, may compare favourably with any system in the world;' and evidently, by what he says of America, he believes that our English schools must necessarily be superior to those of less favoured countries, where, as he says, 'examination as practised under the Revised Code in England is totally unknown.' Mr. Fraser, again, lays it down as certain, that our inspectors and inspection are better than those of any other country. I have every interest in accrediting all possible good report of our inspectors and our inspection; but, having seen those of the Cou

tinent, I am not of Mr. Fraser's opinion. Neither am I of his, and Canon Norris's, and Mr. Lowe's opinion as to the equality, if not more than equality, of our inspected schools with the best primary schools of the Continent. I have that high respect for the abilities and judgment of these three gentlemen, that if I understood them to have seen with their own eyes the best primary schools of Holland, Switzerland, and North Germany, as well as our own schools, and then to have arrived at this favourable judgment of the English schools, I should at once defer to their opinion, and conclude that my own judgment, which is not so favourable to the English schools, was mistaken. But now I do not understand them to have seen the Dutch, and German, and Swiss schools and inspectors with their own eyes; but they speak from report, or from the pleasant impressions they have received from English inspectors with whom they have come in contact, or from their warm admiration of the Revised Code. This admiration goes so far with some people, that Lord Hartington boldly says of Mr. Lowe, who produced the Revised Code, that English education owes more to him than to any other man living. And no doubt Lord Hartington knows; but he does not tell us the grounds on which he has built up his knowledge.

I have seen Dutch, German, and Swiss schools, I have seen their inspection; and I think both them and their inspection, in general, better than our schools and inspection at present. I think, as a matter of fact, they are better; and I think, as a matter of likelihood, it seems likely they should be better. The working-class in Zurich or Saxony is, in general, less raw and illiterate than ours; and every one knows that children brought up with raw and illiterate parents are more stubborn material as scholars, than children brought up in more civilised homes. Then these Swiss and German children are obliged to be under teaching from their sixth to their fifteenth year. Mr. Fraser thinks it vain even to talk of

keeping in school the mass of our children after their tenth year. Then again, in Prussia, the regular school-course for primary schools consists of the following matters: religious instruction, reading, writing, the mother-tongue, object lessons, geography, history, physics, natural history, arithmetic, drawing, needlework, gymnastics, singing. Prussian inspection extends to all these matters, and the German nature abhors making instruction mechanical. In England, since the Revised Code, the school-course is more and more confined to the three paying matters, reading, writing, and arithmetic; the inspection tends to concentrate itself on these matters; these matters are the very part of school-teaching which is most mechanical, and a natural danger of the English mind is to make instruction mechanical. Finally, the Swiss or German schoolmaster has in general had a three years' training in a normal school, is a public servant, enjoys much consideration as discharging an important function, and through bodies such as the School-Synod described in a later part of this volume, makes his voice heard in the school legislation and school regulation of his country. With us he has an inferior training, has no sort of representation by which to make his ideas and experience reach the Education Department; while, as to his status, there was no part of Mr. Lowe's reforms on which he valued himself more, and which more recommended itself to many people, than that by which he made the schoolmaster know his place, and got rid of the danger and impropriety of seeming to give him rank as a public official. For my own part, I have always looked with some apprehension upon this check administered to the schoolmaster; because it seems to me of the first importance, in dealing with any organism, not to do anything to depress its powers of life; and the powers of life in our public education were undoubtedly the schoolmasters, animated by the hopes, advantages, and belief in their mission, which Sir James Shuttleworth had given to them. To have administered

a check to a body of which some members were pragmatical, and to have escaped the danger, so grave in the eyes of the country gentlemen, of having in our schoolmasters a band of public servants, appear to me a doubtful compensation for having discouraged the whole body of schoolmasters, and thereby lowered for the present, and till some action other than ours comes in to repair what we have done, the powers of life of our whole public education. This way of thinking, however, seems contrary to that of many able people in this country, and, being so, is probably erroneous; only, as their way of thinking assumes that our schools under the Revised Code may compare favourably with any schools in the world, I should be glad if my countrymen would try to acquaint themselves with the best continental schools, and satisfy themselves by actual observation whether this is so. It is not so very rare for English people to find themselves at Basle, or Berlin, or Leipzig, and the primary schools on the Continent are in general thrown open readily enough to visitors. If Mr. Fraser, after bringing to bear on the best foreign schools the same keen eyes and shrewd judgment which he has brought to bear on English and American schools,* were then to assure us that he thought our schools and inspection better, I should be much staggered in the contrary opinion, and even inclined to surrender it to the authority of so much more capable a judge. But at present he and other good judges seem to lie under a sort of disadvantage in giving their judgment for the one of two things, without having seen the other.

Even where we have made up our minds as to the course which in this or that school matter we wish to adopt, it can do us no harm to see what is the course followed by the continental schools in this particular, and why they follow it. Take the matter of schoolmasters' certificates, for

* As to the significance of the American schools, which Mr. Fraser, from personal observation, can compare with those of England, see the note at p. 244 of this work.

instance. Certain influential people amongst us have schools with uncertificated teachers; they object to being forced to employ certificated teachers; and yet they demand to be allowed to try and earn the examination grants offered by the Revised Code. They say that it is hard to oblige a small rural place to maintain a teacher of the same class as a town. This sounds plausible; yet it is interesting to know that, in Prussia, it is just in the small rural places that the elementary school is made of the most complete and effective kind, because in these places the burgher or middle school of towns,a second stage of school, higher than any elementary school we have,—cannot be provided. But then people say, that the Revised Code pays for results, and that when they offer results, they ought to be paid for them without any more questions being asked. Certainly they seem to have a case as against the eminent author of the Revised Code, who declared the other day at Edinburgh in plain words: 'It is the business of the State to ascertain results, and to pay in proportion to them.' Many persons, accordingly, think their demand ought to be granted, and granted, perhaps, it will be. But at least it is curious and interesting to know that on the Continent, these influential employers of uncertificated schoolmasters, instead of being allowed to earn public grants, would have their schools closed by public authority. No doubt this is one of the many things,' as Mr. Spencer says, 'surrounding foreign education which are objected to in England;' but there is always some profit in having these things in black and white. The foreigners defend their arbitrary proceeding by saying, that the public has an interest and a right to take securities of the schools which educate its children; and that, to ascertain results,'-that is, to examine all school-children once a year for a few minutes in reading, writing, and arithmetic,—is an unsound security, while the employment of a teacher who has passed three years under the best training for him the country can give,