of schools and scholars, the question of fees, the relation of voluntary
and board schools, etc. "No doubt," says Mr. Symonds, in his _Sketches in
Italy and Greece_, "there are many who think that when we not only
advocate education but discuss the best system we are simply beating the
air; that our population is as happy and cultivated as can be, and that no
substantial advance is really possible. Mr. Galton, however, has expressed
the opinion, and most of those who have written on the social condition of
Athens seem to agree with him, that the population of Athens, taken as a
whole, was as superior to us as we are to Australian savages."

That there is, indeed, some truth in this, probably no student of Greek
history will deny. Why, then, should this be so? I cannot but think that
our system of education is partly responsible.

Manual and science teaching need not in any way interfere with instruction
in other subjects. Though so much has been said about the importance of
science and the value of technical instruction, or of hand-training, as I
should prefer to call it, it is unfortunately true that in our system of
education, from the highest schools downward, both of them are sadly
neglected, and the study of language reigns supreme.

This is no new complaint. Ascham, in _The Schoolmaster_, long ago lamented
it; Milton, in his letter to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, complained "that our
children are forced to stick unreasonably in these grammatick flats and
shallows;" and observes that, "though a linguist should pride himself to
have all the tongues Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not
studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he
were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or
tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only;" and Locke said
that "schools fit us for the university rather than for the world."