should not indeed have referred to this (for I have good confidence that the Norfolk school will hold its own), but that a most important general principle is involved, and I therefore entreat the public and especially parents, and even the schoolmasters generally, to consider seriously how much is at stake.

Small schools can only be high-class schools at a high cost. Whether the masters are allowed to make profits out of "Board," or to charge for the extra tuition they themselves impart, or are subsidized out of the endowment, they must, if they are to be efficient men worthy of the front rank, expect, and receive, adequate salaries. Large schools can give these adequate salaries without depending either on profits from board, or on extra tuition, or on the income of endowments; that is, they can command equally good teachers with the smaller schools, and offer superior advantages owing to their size and organization at a price which the ordinary parent can pay. The result is that the general standard of education can be greatly raised by these large schools, and that the income of endowments if combined with them need not go to the

masters as a subsidy, but may be directly applied to the deserving boys either of the locality, or the class, or the acquirements and ability which the founders or their trustees intend to serve. Again large public schools can give, what small schools cannot, that real preparation for life, that knowledge of a boy's world, anticipating the after-knowledge of a man's world, which the middle-classes so especially are in want of. In short, the best teaching and the best training, can be secured by families of moderate means only through large schools. But if the public school ground is to be preoccupied by small but pretentious grammar schools, then the inevitable larger combinations will be relegated either to purely commercial schools, principally in towns, or to schools with some sectional or denominational bias. And though in after-life no boy need be ashamed of having belonged to a good school whatever its type, yet the peculiar honour and confidence which is derived from a consciousness of having been a member of one of the public schools of the country would be denied to the majority of English lads. Therefore I am anxious to rouse the middle-class parents, and especially the

superior farmers, to resolve that their sons shall have the opportunity of obtaining, according to their means and efforts, a share of the best public education which English resources, public and private, can command. The result will not be either a strained assertion, or a forced obliteration of social distinctions. A broad and free system of public schools, ranging from foot to head of the body corporate, would help every one to know and respect his own and his neighbour's place. Easier intercourse, pleasanter relationships, a healthier tone and spirit would spring up in every direction to refresh and invigorate a nation of which, beyond all upon the globe, it may be said that its recollections and traditions are only less high and glorious than its hopes and purposes.

CHAPTER X.

SUMMARY.

IT is with much misgiving that I review in order to summarise the suggestions I tender to

the public. I should not now let them go forth, but for a conviction that the present state of public schools and colleges, especially as affects a moderate Englishman's family, is utterly unsatisfactory and chaotic. There are large but unregulated resources, ample but unavailable powers, and therefore delays, jostlings, discontent, and an uncertain drifting into nobody knows what, and apparently what nobody wishes. I have tried to think what might most simply and hopefully emerge out of this chaos, if once public opinion could be roused to demand an effective system that should (1) cover the ground; (2) be self-supporting; (3) maintain the claim of public education in England to be religious and Christian; and (4) avoid the respective dangers of an over-reaching centralization, or a stagnant local independence. I need not, perhaps, regret my publication even if all my suggestions can be shown to be inapplicable or unsound. It takes some thought to discard even a bad plan which has not been quite thoughtlessly propounded, and it is to provoke thought rather, than to carry my plans that I have been writing. I have withdrawn for the present a chapter in which I had at

tempted to show how the same principles may be carried down to the elementary schools. If once the planting of training colleges for masters within the Universities, and the distribution of schools through local areas, were sanctioned by public opinion, I am persuaded it would appear that the present cost of elementary teachers is about double the true market value of their services, and the cost of elementary teaching might be so much reduced, and its efficiency increased, that it would be brought within the actual reach, without any subsidy from rates or taxes, of the average labouring family. I need not point out to those who most desire the education of the labourer, that the only true gauge of his being lifted out of degradation is that he has the power and the disposition to bear the cost of his children's education. The longer we teach him to look to Government grants, or to charitable aid, except for general encouragement or special assistance, the longer we deny to him the best privilege of a Christian citizen, to bring up his children at his own cost and sacrifice as future servants of God, queen, and country. It has been represented to me, however, that with