A CONTRIBUTION OF

EXPERIMENTS, ESTIMATES, AND SUGGESTIONS

BY THE

REV. J. L. BRERETON,

PREBENDARY OF EXETER,

CHAIRMAN OF TRUSTEES AND DIRECTORS OF THE DEVON AND NORFOLK COUNTY
SCHOOLS, AND OF THE CAMBRIDGE COUNTY COLLEGE;

PRESIDENT OF THE WEST NORFOLK CHAMBER OF AGRICULTURE, AND OF
THE BARNSTAPLE FARMERS' CLUB.

LONDON:

BICKERS & SON, 1, LEICESTER SQUARE, W.C.

1874.

260. e. 32.

LONDON:

W. WILFRED HEAD, PRINTER, 2 AND 8, PLOUGH COURT, FETTER LANE, E.C

PREFACE.

I HAVE recently had many applications, both from representatives of public institutions and from private correspondents, for information or advice respecting Middle-Class Education. There are many persons much more able than I am to answer such inquiries, knowing a great deal more about Education generally, and about the Middle-Class in particular, than I do. Yet as circumstances and apparent duty have led me for many years to devote the best of my thoughts and time and resources to this subject, I yield to a suggestion that I should put before the public whatever I may have to state or recommend towards the extension and improvement of Secondary Education, and particularly towards bringing, if possible,

various institutions and experiments into some effective and comprehensive system. I should be sorry if any references I may make, for the purpose of illustration, to the particular institutions I have taken part in establishing should be mis-read as advertisements of those

institutions, or as chronicles of my own labours. As time goes on their success and value will be tested by the criterion of stability, and any credit that is generously given to the early work of planning and launching will give way to the solid reward of those whose labour and anxiety and skill are carrying untried vessels across unknown seas towards the distant harbour of Public Confidence.

TO EARL FORTESCUE.

It is just ten years since, in the volume you published on "Public Schools for the Middle Classes," you inserted a most kind dedication to myself. In asking you to permit a similar acknowledgment from me it is not a mere compliment I am returning. Compliments will not generally outlive the strain of facts and figures, to which our joint experience has been now for ten more years subjected. Of all the facts on which I rely for recommending the extension of County Education, there is none more solid than the interest which you, a great landlord, adopting it from your wise and noble father, have taken to this day, both in the Devon County School, and in the principles which it has been intended to illustrate.

Of