people; but how about the 'instans tyrannus'? Did his own generation, the men who suffered and died for and through him, 'enjoy' the contemplation of his genius?" Assuredly; thousands did. Other thousands, of course, did not. They had no eyes for his greatness, and either blindly hated him, or accepted his existence and its effects, like any other disease or disaster, with dull incomprehension. Just so is the mass of mankind incapable of enjoying the works of the Supreme Imperator whose conscripts we all are; and it is precisely this incapacity which a liberal education ought to remove. The clearest vision, indeed, is far enough from fathoming his strategy, his whole plan of campaign; but his marvellous tactics we can partially discern and admire. And surely it is better that we should do so than that we should go forth to the battle blindly, like the beasts that perish. We may or may not wish that the campaign had never been undertaken; we may or may not regret having been pressed into the service. But whether we approve it or no, the great Expedition will go on; and we may as well play our ineluctable part in it with an intelligent zest. Does not its romance, its fascination, lie in the very

obscurity of its Whence? Why? and

Whither?

In another essay, Stevenson wishes "that there had been some one to put him in good heart about life when he was younger." That is mere common sense. It is a crime to depress the spirits of youth; and, in these days of mild and unsulphureous theology, it is (one is glad to believe) an infrequent crime. Moreover, the instinctive shrinking from life, the shallow cynicism, the half-affected Byronism, that sometimes beset adolescence, ought to be judiciously combated. But I would no more inculcate a dogmatic optimism than a systematic pessimism. Teach youth to see, to understand, to wonder; then let it judge for itself.

There are two main lines on which a liberal education, thus conceived, ought to proceed. We should either study the architecture of Aladdin's Palace or critically investigate the Adventures of Sindbad. Up to a certain point both lines should be pursued; but most of us would presently find ourselves impelled by an innate preference to specialise on one or the other.

III

ALADDIN'S PALACE

WHAT, in plain English, do I mean by saying that a liberal education ought to deal either with Aladdin's Palace or with the Adventures of Sindbad, and, up to a certain point, with both? I hope the reader already holds the key to this very simple enigma; so he will perhaps bear with me if I try to lead up to the definite statement of my meaning by a little further illustration.

Looking from my study window this bright May morning, what do I perceive? A stretch of undulating country, arable, pasture, and woodland; a slow river winding down a broad, softly-moulded valley; a vast expanse of sky, with white clouds combed out, as it were, into the pale blue. It is a pretty picture; but, because I have been badly educated, I can see in it little more than its pictorial charm.

Tardy self-education, however, has taught me to lament my unseeing eye and uncomprehending mind. Looking at the trees, flowers, grasses, I can name, with hesitation, a few of their commonest species; but even of their nomenclature I am mainly ignorant, and much more of their structure, their classification, their life-history. Yet each of these myriad objects is a living thing of exquisite adjustments and complexities. The chemistry of its generation, nutrition, pigmentation-the instinct by which it draws from earth and air just those elements required for the dreeing of its weird in growth, reproduction, and decay-is ultimately, indeed, an unfathomable mystery, but may be watched in its processes, studied in its results. Take yonder oak-tree, for example-what an august being it is! How it beggars the imagination to conceive the silent tenacity of purpose which, working through century after century, has drawn together "the stuff of life to knit it," to robe it in its yearly marvel of leafage, and swell its girth by ring on ring! Had I, as a boy, been taken to that tree, and judiciously helped to study it and realise it in its majestic individuality, and in its relations to plant life at large, I should to-day have been a wiser and, I

doubt not, a happier man. As it was, I passed the whole vegetable world by, unseeing, unwondering. It was a matter of course; it was dead to me, or (much more truly) I was dead to it. Too late, I have come to life a little. A tree awakens in me a vague reverence, a flower a shamefaced worship; and by these feelings the intensity of life is indefinitely enhanced for me. Was I, forty years ago, such a young dolt as to be quite inaccessible to them? I doubt whether my educators, on the Day of Wrath, will be able to plead that justification. And when, as sometimes happens, I hear a schoolboy express his contempt for flowers, I could weep as I say to myself "If youth but knew!"

So much for the carpet of Aladdin's Palace, laid down each year afresh, and shifting in its hues and pattern with every week and day. But what of the floor on which the carpet is spread? How is it laid? and on what foundations?

On one of the slopes over which my eye ranges is a strip of naked soil, ploughed and harrowed. Whence comes its texture? Whence its russet tinge? I know, though I cannot actually see, that this slope is covered with