best possible condition for being built up in
harmony with the organic laws. If these
laws are obeyed—the corner-stone of which
the Intellectual and Emotive are built—the
basis, in short, of which the others are the
Column and the Capital—the great ends of
Education can be properly accomplished. A
rapid evolution of mental power will be
manifested; every kind of Intellectual exertion
will become easy—mens sana in corpore sano
—and improvement, with a giant stride, be
the unfailing result. Under training of the
kind recommended, the Men of the next
Generation would be organically stronger, and
intellectually mightier, and more impressionable
for all that is great and lofty in the
advancing movements of society, than can
possibly be the case when the importance of the
skin—the great Lung of the Body—is little
appreciated." It is the desire of this gentleman,
by water inside and out, to extricate
from the bodies of his pupils "vast
quantities of slimed up morbid matters," and to
develop them by "setting free from static
equilibrium dynamic currents of the electric
fluid."

There is something in this prospectus so
fascinating, something so Homeric in its
grasp of subject and its loftiness of style, it
contains within itself so perfectly every
character by which a fine prospectus ought to
be distinguished, that I shall do well to
regard it as a model. I do this the more
readily, because it was given to me some
time ago, with an assurance that the school
itself was large, and very much better than
the prospectus might induce one to suppose.
To me that seemed enormous praise; but it
would seem fair praise to scoffers. The
school may or may not still exist: but, if it be
existing still, and these quotations should be
recognised by any one as part of a prospectus
that continues to be issued, let them not be
regarded as bombast and humbug. Humbug
is the strained expression of good thoughts,
and differs often from enthusiastic language
only in the motive which produces it. As
for bombast, even the great Doctor Johnson
was not free from it. I should be very sorry
if anybody were to be so perverse as to
convert my praise of advertisements and
prospectuses into condemnation of men and
women about whom I know nothing whatever.
As a class, the teachers of our children
are ill paid. In their advertisements and
their prospectuses they often seek to trick us
of our favour by the use of baits which we
demand to swallow, and which they very
often—if they would not starve—are forced
to throw to us.

Others may think differently; but it suits
me, and it suits thousands, admirably, to be
told that our sons at a given school shall
view English "through an Ideologic or Root
medium," to have what all must own to be
a sensible method of teaching expounded in
this fashion:—"As Language is the
transmitter of thought, if words are not
understood there is an end to the reception of
Ideas. Every word has a meaning, for there
was always a reason or necessity for its being
formed. The meaning—the THING, the SOMETHING,
ANYTHING TALKED ABOUT, is stamped
upon every word, if we can only read the
Inscription: and to learn to read this Inscription,
as far as our own tongue is concerned, is
the great End of Education." We like big
sentences; surely it is a good thing to know
that a school does not omit Physical
Geography from its prospectus; but how good
it is in our eyes when the lean word is
larded with tornados, craters, and simooms.
"Mountain chains," says my prospectus,
"fire-spitting craters, and river systems;
Savannahs, Llanos, and red expanses of sand;
the Ocean with its bulging tidal wave; the
Atmosphere with its simoom and angry
tornados; the isothermal lines with their
relations to vegetables, animals, and to man,
are a few of the topics which a modern
course of Geography embraces."

At the bottom of this prospectus is a note
from a barrister-at-law, who coincides with
me, for he says, "The educational programme,
I need not say, is, to my mind, PERFECT." If
all the world were to differ from me, and
what is more, were to persuade me and
convince me that everything I have here quoted
as good, has in it some element of the absurd, I
could still face the world and ask, How came
this element of the absurd into the sanctuary
of the school-room?

For, the school-room is a sanctuary, and the
true teacher is a high priest. There is no nobler,
no sublimer office in the world than to be
earnestly and worthily the teacher of a child.
If we thought so, if we acted commonly upon
a sense of what true education means, should
we have teachers advertising and addressing
us, puffing like tailors all about us, whenever
we went out shopping in the school-market?
Schools have improved, facilities of education
have increased a thousandfold within the
last hundred years. Absurd as may be the
passages I have been praising, true as it may
be that some of them can only have been
prompted by the spirit of cant or meanness to
which it may be said that they appeal, still I
do not doubt that behind the bad taste of
some of them, there lies hidden right feeling and
knowledge. They are not all bad schools
which heap their nonsense at this season on our
tables. The four or five advertising columns
of the Times through which the teachers
speak, are not indeed informed with wisdom;
perhaps one might not easily infer from them
that, as Fichte says, "the teachers shall
shine like stars in the firmament." Though
many have emancipated themselves from old
fetters in their schools, and stand at home in
just relation to their pupils, yet it often
happens that in their outer intercourse with
parents they are unable to move freely, or to
walk erect and fearless; they must do as they