classes it has the greatest need of ideals, and yet these ideals must be found outside its own ranks.

Yet he forbids Barbarian and Philistine alike to look down upon their humbler relation. The Populace may have little of the Barbarian's polish, and less of the Philistine's lucre, but they have both much of its spirit, insofar as they seek to affirm the self and either foster violence in themselves or encourage it in others. Quite as pertinent to these days as to thirty years ago is his indictment of muscular politics:

"Every time that we snatch up a vehement opinion in ignorance and passion, every time that we long to crush an adversary by sheer violence, every time that we are envious, every time that we are brutal, every time that we adore mere power or success, every time that we add our voice to swell a blind clamour against some unpopular personage, every time that we trample savagely on the fallen," we betray in our own bosoms "the eternal spirit of the Populace." It is in this propensity to indulge the ordinary self, with its crudeness and imperfections, that all three classes, in spite of the widest external differences, betray a common nature, though from each class emerge at all times exceptional spirits who are conscious of aspiration after perfection and give effect to that aspiration by casting off the characteristics of their fellows.

ANY of the principles of public instruction which

Arnold laid down in innumerable discussions on the subject, valuable as they are in themselves, have ceased to possess practical urgency, for the satisfactory reason that they have become embodied in the educational legislation and institutions of the country, and are fairly secure against any possible spirit of reaction. Here he spoke with unique authority, for education was the special study of his life, and the debt which our school system owes to his enlightened and far-seeing study of the nation's needs is no inconsiderable one. That this debt is not greater still must be attributed to the slowness of the public mind to adopt other of his theories and suggestions, which yet, so sound and inevitable have they been found to be, are to-day, after the lapse of nearly half a century, coming visibly to fruition.

The reader who, after so long an interval, goes to Arnold's published School Reports - an invaluable

Where

treasure-house of sagacious observation upon a hundred points of detail in the theory and practice of pedagogics, illumined here and there by those everwelcome flashes of satire and humour which often convinced where argument would have been used in vain - will find his search amply rewarded. For he anticipated most of the lines upon which progress in primary education was to be made long before education became the sport of politics, and the exigencies of party warfare were needed to stimulate Parliamentary interest in this greatest of a nation's secular concerns. the questions which he discusses are still undetermined, his reflections are nevertheless instructive for the light they throw on the historical difficulty of reconciling two antagonistic conceptions of education-the national and the ecclesiastical. As early as 1853 we find him reporting his "firm conviction that education will never become universal in this country until it is made compulsory," yet seventeen years were to pass before a move was made in that direction, and even then the compulsory powers created were of optional application. When, too, an obligatory law had become imminent he foresaw clearly the difficulties which have in practice been experienced-chief of them the absence of general enthusiasm for education in any one class of the community.

Throughout my district I find the idea of compulsory education becoming a familiar idea with those who are interested in schools," he reports in 1867. “I

imagine that with the newly awakened sense of our shortcomings in popular education . . the diffi

cult thing would not be to pass a law making education compulsory; the difficult thing would be to work such a law after we had got it. In Prussia, which is so often quoted, education is not flourishing because it is compulsory, it is compulsory because it is flourishing. Because people there really prize instruction and culture, and prefer them to other things, therefore they have no difficulty in imposing on themselves the rule to get instruction and culture. In this country people prefer to them politics, station, business, money-making, pleasure, and many other things."

He foresaw also that compulsory education would inevitably mean the freeing of the schools, and as early as 1869 he spoke of "gratuitous schooling" as one of the questions "rapidly passing out of the sphere of abstract discussion, and entering into the sphere of practical politics. In that sphere, however they may be settled, it will not and cannot be on their merits." Everybody knows how free education came suddenly in 1891, when few people expected it. Yet he had his misgivings on the subject. On principle he held that "people value more highly and use more respectfully that which they pay a price for," and further: "To have an expensive public education for one class of the community only, and to make it gratuitous, is practically to fall in with the ideas of Jack Cade." Clearly one conclusion which he did not draw from his careful

study of the educational policies of Germany and France was that the free school is, on political principles, the corollary of the compulsory school-that the State, by imposing upon its citizens the obligation to have their children educated in public schools up to a certain minimum standard of proficiency, whether they like it or not, whether they can afford it or not, on the principle that education is a national interest, commits itself to the obligation of providing this education at the common cost.

The system of payment by results, as introduced in 1861, and continued for thirty-six years, he abhorred, and he satirised it as openly as he dared in his official reports. Thus at its introduction: "The idea of payment by results was just the idea to be caught up by the ordinary public opinion of this country and to find favour with it. These changes gratify one or other of several great forces of public opinion which are potent in this country, and a legislation which gratifies these ought perhaps to be pronounced successful." It was 1897 before the last trace of this demoralising mercantile system was swept away.

Of secular education pure and simple he was no less pronounced an opponent in spite of his own theological reservations, and he regarded the modified use of the Bible as "the only chance of saving the one elevating and inspiring element in the scanty instruction of our primary schools from being sacrificed to a politico-religious difficulty. There was no Greek school in which