ROBERT HEBERT QUICK M.A. TRIN. COLL. CAM., LATE SECOND MASTER IN THE SURREY COUNTY SCHOOL CINCINNATI PREFACE. "It is clear that in whatever it is our duty to act, those matters also it is our duty to study." These words of Dr. Arnold's seem to me incontrovertible. So a sense of duty, as well as fondness for the subject, has led me to devote a period of leisure to the study of Education, in the practice of which I have been for some years engaged. There are countries where it would be considered a truism that a teacher in order to exercise his profession intelligently should know something about the chief authorities in it. Here, however, I suppose such an assertion will seem paradoxical; but there is a good deal to be said in defense of it. De Quincey has pointed out that a man who takes up any pursuit without knowing what advances others have made in it, works at a great disadvantage. He does not apply his strength in the right direction, he troubles himself about small matters and neglects great, he falls into errors that have long since been exploded. An educator is, I think, liable to these dangers if he brings to his task no knowledge but that which he learnt for the tripos, and no skill but that which he acquired in the cricket-ground or on the river. If his pupils are placed entirely in his hands, his work is one of great difficulty, with heavy penalties attached to all |