left Education starved in the outlying districts, was to give place to an equitable distribution of the means of instruction, in which all parts of the country were to share equally.

M. Compayré says (History of Pedagogy, p. 112): "In its origin the Primary School is the child of Protestantism, and its cradle is the Reformation," a remark which has a considerable measure of aptness in its application to rural Scotland as to Germany. But perhaps it hardly covers the whole ground with us. The Reformation, to be sure, gave the Primary School in Scotland its chance; but there never seems to have been in practice, though there was, to a certain extent, in Knox's original plan, any idea of restricting the rural Parish School to subjects of primary instruction. Every school that is charged with the whole of Education up to the University must, from the nature of things, be predominantly elementary, simply because there are ten pupils taking elementary subjects for every one who devotes himself to secondary subjects. But this does not at once establish a standard of value. In Education, of all subjects, quality

comes first, quantity second by a very long way. So it was with these old Parish Schools established after the Knox type. The instruction contemplated was chiefly elementary, but careful provision was made for the select pupils, often few in number, who aspired to higher things. It may have been that something was even sacrificed to them; it is difficult to say. Sacrifice within limits was quite justifiable. It does not argue neglect of elementary subjects that the teacher has his higher ambition of turning out scholars. The ambition is a stimulus which reacts on the lower work, and is a sanctifying influence throughout the school, maintaining that intellectual interest and alertness without which any teaching, however formally efficient, is uninspiring and comparatively profitless. Besides, the presence of the better scholars was an inspiration to others; they were the pride and the reward of their teacher; an object-lesson and incentive to their fellows. Certain it is that they were in the old days regarded as heroes, like the Homeric warriors, one of them equal to a host of the mere elementary pupils; and, indeed, the spirit is not yet obsolete.

This was, as generally understood, the type of the old Parish School, whose foundation, or re-foundation, dates from close upon the Reformation, a school to serve all the wants of the area in which it was situated, giving instruction to all children of parishioners, and necessarily for the most part in elementary subjects; but reaching the height of its possibilities only in the production of those scholars who went out to win fame for themselves, their teacher and their parish in the wider arenas of University and public service.

In the centres of population, to which we now turn, an analogous type was also found, but it is by no means so prominent in connection with purely Elementary Schools. The chief reason, probably, is that in towns the school of secondary stamp was the rule rather than the exception. The Burgh School was a Grammar School, i.e., one in which attention was paid to the study of language, chiefly Latin. Instruction in elementary subjects was no doubt often given, but it did not bulk so largely as the other, to which a considerable number of pupils devoted themselves. In the Rural School

elementary instruction bulked most largely, but it was the ambition of the school to pass beyond that stage in selected instances. In the Burghal School language or grammar was the objective, for the sake of which some preliminary preparation in elementary subjects was required, and consequently admitted. When, in course of time, more people in towns desired elementary instruction, this was often provided in "Lecture" or Reading Schools, which were Elementary, or Preparatory, and nothing more. The numbers to be taught rendered a division of function in the schools of the Burghs possible, and, indeed, economical of effort, while no such subdivision was practicable in the rural

areas.

Added to this, the development and differentiation of Primary Education in the Burghs is a matter of recent date, that is, since people began to crowd into towns, and since the . requirements of an increasingly complex civilisation have rendered universal instruction up to a certain standard essential. Hence it is that the true historical parent of the modern Elementary School is the rural type-the Parish

School established after the Knox pattern-not the Burgh School, which at the period referred to was more of a Secondary than a Primary School these facts can never safely be forgotten in dealing with the matter.

The stages in the history of the development of the Elementary School throw additional light on the subject. The century after Knox is of great interest and importance in this development. The work accomplished during the seventeenth century lasted on through the eighteenth, and it is not till the nineteenth that the Education question again becomes acute.

After the Reformation the work of agitating for educational reform was taken up by the Church, and the efforts put forth in this direction constitute one of the most honourable chapters in its history. The question turned, as most questions do, on finance. The attempt to secure the revenues of the old Church for national purposes, including education, had failed. The State had not yet entered the field of educational administration. Whence were funds to be obtained? The ultimate answer was that it was the duty of the landowners to