still in connection with the Church, but taught by a separate official, a schoolmaster competent to give instruction in Grammar and Latin; (c) in the larger towns Colleges, i.e., High Schools, with a staff of "sufficient," in other words, efficient, masters, giving instruction in the arts, at least Logic and Rhetoric, as well as in languages; (d) the crown of the system was to be the Universities. Curiously enough no proposal was made for any system of national Universities or extension of their number beyond the existing ones. They were accepted as accomplished facts, sufficient apparently for all practical requirements, and that at a time when Edinburgh University had not been founded! We find it hard to believe.

To us accustomed to schemes of comprehensive organisation there may not seem anything very startling in Knox's proposals. They were business-like and to the purpose, likely to promote efficiency, an advance upon the past. This we readily concede. But how came it that they so appealed to the imagination of contemporary and succeeding generations that they seemed almost inspired, and that they are still

regarded in some quarters as the ideal after which we should strive?

They were, in the first place, a great step in advance of anything within man's horizon in the Scotland of that day (1561). They are to be measured by the contrast they presented between current inefficiency and a comprehensive system worthy of the nation, and containing the earnest of complete efficiency. Perhaps the cause may have been in part because they satisfied, or gave promise of satisfying, that ardent aspiration for knowledge which is so deeply rooted in the nation and so widely spread through all classes of the com· munity. They recognised, too, the local patriotism which Scotland possesses to such a remarkable degree. Further, by its widespread ramifications the system gave opportunities of instruction without breach of the family life, and without exposing the youthful members of it to risks to health and to temptation at a tender age, if they should be compelled to resort to "strange and unknawin placis" in order to obtain their education. All or each of these reasons may have operated. The Book of Dis

cipline itself refers to the last as well as to subsidiary advantages from the arrangement proposed. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that Scotland has continued to hold Knox's scheme in high repute, and still wishes to have its Education brought within convenient reach of its children. If climate and poverty have been the ultimate causes of this sentiment, these have been our greatest blessings-in disguise.

The story of the rejection of the First Book of Discipline, and of the selfish cupidity of the Scotch nobles who brought about its rejection, is too well known to require repetition. Money was needed to carry out the scheme. Knox expected to get it from the confiscated revenues of the abbeys and monasteries, but these splendid endowments were attached by the hungry barons for private purposes. Though the Book of Discipline was supported by a certain number of the Reforming nobles, it never passed into law, but remained a "devout imagination," perhaps all the more precious in the eyes of the nation because unattainable.

The importance of the Reformers' proposals

in the immediate sequel lay in the fact that they were accepted by the thoughtful and responsible portion of the nation as wholly suited to the requirements of the country, and as the ideal whose realisation was a worthy object of effort. The men of the seventeenth century held this as a model before their eyes, and worked steadily to have it embodied in living form. Knox's scheme remained the one and only object of educational reform worth striving for.

In considering the direction that effort took we must bear in mind that the Scotland of the seventeenth century was a very different place from the Scotland of the twentieth century. The population was comparatively small, and it was widely scattered; added to which the means of communication were bad. The difficulty always was to bring Education within reach of those who desired it. If the difficulties of travelling were one of the chief reasons for founding a separate University at Aberdeen in 1494, it need not surprise us that, a century later, a date two and a half centuries before. the age of steam, our ancestors' chief concern

still was so to spread the means of Education as to render it accessible to those who could neither travel day by day to the centre where it was to be had, nor afford, even if they desired, to reside there during school terms. Everywhere during this age we find the prominent question in Education to be that connected with the parish. It was more difficult of solution than that of urban areas, the reason being in part the inaccessibility of remote country districts, to which reference has been made; in part the fact that burghs were already in some measure supplied with schools. In the latter, in addition to, and in part in succession to, the good work of the abbeys, the municipal authorities had, from an early period, interested themselves in Education, and had succeeded in establishing schools, many of them excellent of their kind. As yet there was in them little or no differentiation of primary and secondary, but the Burgh School from its inception imparted all the instruction necessary up to the stage of entrance to the University. The Reformation gave the rural area its chance. The centralisation of the abbey system, which had