namely, in its unequalled power of developing the able minority; while, on the other hand, which makes such onesided judgment the more unfortunate, the most striking defect of American education is its inability to develop beyond a certain point. Mr. Everett, in a single sentence, gives a really impartial and substantially correct judgment on the English system. "It is admirably calculated," he says, "to make a select body of distinguished scholars, but is not nearly as well adapted for the cultivation of average intellects." (p. 312.) In a word, English education sacrifices the many to the few. We are apt to sacrifice the few to the many. One of our greatest dangers is the being perfectly contented with a decent average of intelligence. "After all, is it not the tendency of Democracy to produce a general level?" In other words, "After all, is it not inevitable that Democracy should be insufferably tame, dull, flat, and uninteresting?" Says De Tocqueville, "Words cannot convey the commonplaceness of the ordinary American life." Says Renan, "The worst part of Channing's world is, that one would die of dulness there." Such criticism as this will continue to have a certain truth, until we find out the way to educate our best minds in the best manner. The truth is, that at least half of our judgment of a school or a college should be founded on the career and opportunities it affords to young men of high intelligence. One legitimate glory, then, of a scholarly university is the roll of the names of the great scholars she has trained; because she has furnished them with the knowledge needed in their own line. It is as true in scholarship as in the mili tary art, that a first-class scholar wholly self-trained is a rara avis indeed. In a century, you may count on your fingers the names of such. True, minds of "active strength and originality" do make their mark in the world; but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they do so by taking a line which does not require a great amount of previous attainment. Mr. Atkinson quotes Lord Brougham as giving Milton as one of those of whom the English system of education unjustly boasts. He could not have quoted a name that casts more weight into the opposite scale. Milton was, from a boy, dis

tinguished as a classical scholar. He was captain (head) of St. Paul's School; a position entirely gained by pre-eminence over all others in the studies of the place, namely, Greek and Latin. He was a master of Latin as well as English verse; and, in every page of the "Paradise Lost," shows the most intimate acquaintance with the classical authors and heroes. Any one who could write Latin verse like Milton must not only have had genuine poetic talent, but a strict, learned, and conscientious classical teacher.

We may, then, with strictest justice, arraign the English system for its unpardonable neglect of the natural sciences; for its absurd contempt for general knowledge and the modern languages and literature; for its utter inability to develop, decently, minds of merely ordinary intelligence. But it is gross injustice to attempt to rob that system of the glory it has fairly won by the great scholars, and, in the case of Cambridge at least, the great mathematicians, it has reared. No one personally acquainted with the subject can doubt for a moment that nine-tenths, at least, of the classical scholars of England owe their scholarly culture to the English public schools and universities; while the most cursory survey of the facts will prove that the great majority of English mathematicians are Cambridge men. But to proceed.

Mr. Atkinson feels all along that he is describing a failure; a great, portentous sham; an immense system of no-education, where "How not to do it" has been illustrated on a gigantic scale. His "chief object," he says in his preface, has been to give

"The very surprising picture of the great English schools contained in the Report of the Commissioners on English Public Schools; schools, some of which would seem, at the present time, to answer hardly any other purpose than that of serving as the demonstration, by a reductio ad absurdum, of the inefficiency of a one-sided and obsolete system of education."

Again (p. 85):

"They have been tried so long, so much pains and cost have been lavished upon them, that their failure cannot be accounted for, except on the theory of some fundamental error in their organization.”

This is the tone throughout. Certainly, it would be difficult to believe, from the tone of Mr. Atkinson's pamphlet, that there is scarcely one of these schools which does not yearly send to college half-a-dozen young men superior in classical attainments (the main staple, at present, of college requirements in both hemispheres) to any half-dozen which could be picked out from all the schools in America put together; that from these public schools, taken as a whole, there go up yearly, to Oxford and Cambridge, from twenty to thirty young men, whose average age will be under nineteen, who are superior in classical attainments to any twenty or thirty that might be selected from all the colleges in America put together. If this be indeed true, and we leave it to any American graduate who has tried the experiment of competition with them to decide whether it be true or no,- surely a somewhat more respectful way of discussing the English public-school education would be more appropriate.

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That we may not seem to misrepresent Mr. Atkinson, let him speak for himself here. He himself shall put an ingenuous but ill-fated British youth through his course of noeducation, from public school to university, from university to the great world.

First, then, our youth is at a public school. Of these we will choose the "worst," and call it Eton. He is there, with all manner of budding capabilities in him, which are laboriously not brought out.

After a graphic sketch of the studies not taught him, Mr. Atkinson, very naturally, proceeds as follows:

"But I shall expect you to begin to say, the thing is incredible: you are proving too much. It cannot be that this great number of boys should be herded together without receiving any education at all. Observe, gentlemen, that I have nowhere said that these boys received no education at all; and now, having gone over the parts of that education which they do not receive, let me proceed very briefly to describe the education which they do."

"Now, in any great collection of boys or men, if the organized and accredited system of education should prove unsuitable and a failure, you may be sure that an unorganized and unaccredited sys

tem will be established by the boys themselves." In these schools they have organized "a system of vigorous and manly sports, and this is the real education of these great schools. The studies of this curriculum are, first and foremost, cricket; second, and hardly less important, rowing; and, as subordinate elementary studies, rackets, hare and hounds, &c., of which we read such glowing accounts in 'Tom Brown.' You may smile at this as a jest; but listen to the evidence. Mr. Johnson, an Eton master, testifies that cricket has become such a grave and serious science as to require special trainers, professors as it were; and that the needful practice consumes twenty-seven hours a week."

He quotes an amusing piece of evidence as illustration. Mr. Walford, one of the masters of Eton, is cross-examined by Mr. Thompson.

(Mr. Thompson): Do you know if it is the case that five hours are considered barely sufficient for cricket? - I should think it was.

"That a boy cannot attain the proficiency in cricket, which an Eton boy aspires to, without five hours' study of it?-I should think so.

"Would it not require a boy of strong constitution to read six hours a day in the classics, after having studied five hours in cricket?—Yes."

Mr. Atkinson seems to consider this the most enormous joke of the whole affair. We think, however, that something may be said even here. In the first place, let us criticise the evidence itself a little. First, cricket is played in an English public school little more than three months out of the year, i.e., from the end of April to the beginning of October, with two months of vacation intervening. That is, it is played during the hottest season of the public-school year, when a wise education would apportion the smallest amount of time for study, and the largest for open-air exercise. Secondly, the worst-conducted school in England never thinks of putting five hours of cricket in the morning, and then six hours of study in the afternoon. The "study" of cricket, in the main, follows, not precedes, the study of Latin. During the intermissions, it is true, wickets may be hastily

set up, and half-an-hour's practice obtained. Very good physiology, by the bye. But the main "study" of cricket is. carried on after the larger part of the school-work is over, so that a good night's rest intervenes between cricket and Cicero, also good physiology; while the matches, which may be called the final examinations of this study, take place on the half-holidays, of which there are from two to three a week. Any Saturday afternoon, at Rugby, Harrow, Eton, and a dozen other schools, you may see the game go on from two to nine, through the long afternoon and lingering evening of those wonderful English summer-days. Counting in these, you do, indeed, get a formidable aggregate of hours; but not so much too many as one might be apt to think. In the second place, we may well afford to ask, Can an enlightened American teacher, like Mr. Atkinson, find nothing but a jest in the great system of manly sports which "are the inheritance of every British boy"? Has it not been the crying sin and sorrow of American education, that, until but yesterday, it has sullenly refused to learn the priceless lesson the sports of the English public schools had to teach? If Young England plays too much, has Young America played enough? "Here is where Waterloo was won," said the Duke of Wellington when walking in the "playing-fields" of Eton. That is, "Here was manufactured that terrible endurance before which even Napoleon's legions recoiled, baffled at last." Out of the four first Elevens in the four Philadelphia Cricket Clubs, all but seven men went to the war; and of these, two were the English professionals. What does this mean but that manly young bodies, developed by manly games, are a nation's cheap defence? Surely our war has taught us this lesson at least, that true souls encased in stout bodies are the real ultima ratio of liberty. But how many brave young men we had among us, who longed to give themselves up for the good cause, but whose poor, weak, untrained bodies meanly said them nay? How many dropped down, killed by the first day's march, before they had seen the foe? Surely, surely we shall learn this lesson of the war at least. It is, indeed, true, as Matthew Arnold complains, that to-day