quirements, and be the organ of communication between him and the schools in its jurisdiction. The exact amount of interference, inspection, and control which the Minister, the Council, and the Boards should exercise should vary in accordance with the grade of the schools: it should be greater in the elementary schools, less in the higher. But, in their degree, all, from Eton downwards, were to be subject to it. Then came the most revolutionary part of the whole scheme. Mr. Creakle and his congeners were to be abolished. They were not to be put to a violent death, but they were to be starved out. The whole face of the country is studded with small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, like knots in a network; and these schools, enlarged and reformed, were to be the ordinary training-places of the Middle Class. Where they did not exist, similar schools were to be created by the State-" Royal or Public Schools " -and these, like all the rest, were to be subject to the Minister and to the Provincial Boards. Arnold contended that ancient schools so revived, and modern schools so constituted, would have a dignity and a status such as no private school could attain, and would be free from the pretentiousness and charlatanism which he regarded as the bane of private education. The inspection and control of these Public Schools would be in the hands of competent officers of the State, whereas the private school is appraised only by the vulgar and uneducated class that feeds it. And so, descending from the Universities through Public Schools of two grades, we touch the foundation of the whole edifice-the Elementary Schools. On this all-important topic, he wrote in 1868: "About popular education I have here but a very few words to say. People are at last beginning to see in what condition this really is amongst us. Obligatory instruction is talked of. But what is the capital difficulty in the way of obligatory instruction, or indeed any national system of instruction, in this country? It is this: that the moment the working class of this country have this question of instruction brought home to them, their self-respect will make them demand, like the working classes of the Continent, Public Schools, and not schools which the clergyman, or the squire, or the mill-owner calls " my school." And again: "The object should be to draw the existing Elementary Schools from their present private management, and to reconstitute them on a municipal basis." That word which he italicized-public-is the key to his whole system. The whole education of the country was to be Public. The Universities, already "public" in the sense that they are not private ventures, were to be made public in the sense that they were to be supervised and to some extent regulated by the State. The Public Schools, traditionally so-called, were to be made more really public by being brought under the Minister and the School-Boards. The lesser foundation-schools were to be made public by a redistribution of their revenues and a reconstruction of their system; and new schools, public by virtue of their creation, were to be put alongside of the older So schools of private venture would be eliminated. And thus the whole elementary education of the country was to be taken out of the hands of societies or individuals, and was to be organized and conducted by the officials of the State. Finally, all four (or three, as you choose to reckon them) grades of public education were to be co-ordinated with one another and subordinated to a chief Minister of State presiding over a great department. ones. Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general outlines, and sufficiently farreaching in its scope. But its author, promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one "capital difficulty" in the way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus: "The Public School for the people must rest upon the municipal organization of the country. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, |