Her Majesty Queen Victoria, H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, and of several other members of the Royal Family, including H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge.

A further flattering evidence of this recognition is to be found in the fact that their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Albany, have graciously accepted the dedication of these volumes; a distinction which is not without marked significance when we consider how great is the support uniformly bestowed by our Student Prince upon every educational movement in this country. Testimonies to the value of " Our Schools and Colleges," as a work on education, have also been received from Cabinet Ministers, from Members of Parliament of both political parties, from Archbishops and Bishops, from the Head Masters of our great Public Schools, and from other personages distinguished in politics, literature, art, and science, many of whom considered that such an educational work was a desideratum, and that the void in this particular field of literature had been at length adequately filled.

As a record of the usefulness of this work, and especially as an illustration of its far-reaching influence, it may be opportune to relate the following incident, which at least has the peculiar interest of novelty, and which may possibly be quoted as a literary fact by writers on educational subjects in the future. At the opening of the exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1883, the author incidentally met a highly-intelligent Negro, who informed him that having carefully studied an early edition of this work, whilst still at home in Africa, he was induced to leave that Continent in order to pursue his studies in

England; and that, long prior to his arrival in Liverpool, he had, by means of this book, made himself thoroughly acquainted with all our Institutions and systems of education.

This African gentleman is now a graduate of University College, Oxford, and a Barrister-at-law of the Inner Temple, being at present in practice in this country.

With some pardonable degree of pride, therefore, “Our Schools and Colleges" may justly claim the merit of having introduced the first Negro graduate of the University of Oxford, and certainly the first Negro who has ever pleaded at the Bar of England.

Numerous subscribers of rank and influence in other distant regions of the globe, have also made direct application to the author for copies of this work, in the concluding pages of which will be found several Appendices containing authenticated particulars of a few selected private schools for boys and young ladies in England, France, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. Such inforformation cannot fail to be of considerable service to parents and guardians who contemplate sending their children or wards to efficient schools at home or on the Continent.

With the satisfactory results which have attended the publication of this work in the past, it may reasonably be anticipated that the present edition will meet with the same favour and encouragement from a discerning public.

F. S. DUMARESQ DE CARTERET-BISSON.

52, SUTHERLAND GARDENS,

ST. PETER'S PARK, W., November 1st, 1883.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

O one can compare, or rather contrast, the character and extent of English education at the present time, with its character and extent twenty-five years ago, without being struck with the silent and significant revolution which has passed over it, and completely transformed it. This change has affected every department of our education. New studies, new methods of instruction, new facilities, and new rewards for training, have come to the front, and led on the educational progress of the age to grander and greater issues than have ever before been realized in the history of the English people. A quarter of a century ago, the higher as well as the lower education of the country was equally in a deplorable and defective condition. The most venerable seats of higher education-the ancient Universities—were at this period closed, on denominational grounds, against the great bulk of the English people; the curriculum then pursued excluded studies imperatively demanded by a scientific and progressive age, and the growing requirements of a great commercial people. At that time, the most profitable and becoming rewards of learning were monopolised at our Universities, in the majority of cases to the exclusion of the more meritorious, by men who happened to be brought up at a particular school, to be born in a particular county, or to be akin, or perhaps named after the name of a benefactor or founder of a College. All these "barriers" to progress have been broken down, and a free career has been opened for industry, character, and talent, to the highest honours, and to the most honourable and lucrative positions in Oxford. and Cambridge, irrespective of social rank or denominational profession.

Nor is this all. To the narrow and meagre range of the old

curriculum of these Universities has succeeded a course of studies, broader and deeper, and incomparably more worthy of the name and the professed scope of a University, which, as the term itself implies, should be a seat of Universal learning. The student at Oxford and Cambridge in these days can study with advantage any language, any science, any literature, and almost any art known to civilised humanity; and it is well that it is so, for it should never be forgotten anywhere, and least of all at the highest seats of English education, that when the range of education is narrow, some of the minds submitted to its discipline will necessarily acquire no education at all, and this purely from the innate want of aptitude and capacity for such studies; for it is an axiom in education, which admits of no dispute, that there are some studies which exercise and educate with advantage all the faculties of some minds, and others which educate some of the faculties of all minds, while the old almost exclusive study of classics, as at Oxford, and of mathematics at Cambridge, was found utterly incapable of edu. cating the faculties of some minds. We must also chronicle amongst the changes for the better the increased facilities which Oxford and Cambridge have now furnished to students, by throwing open to public competition its once closed Scholarships and Exhibitions, by the admission to the privileges of a University career of non-attached students, and by the magnificent foundation of Keble College, which is every way worthy of the saintly scholar and the scholarly saint whose honoured name it bears, and is well doing a great educational work for those whose circumstances impose on them the very strictest economy in their University career.

Each of the two great Universities has extended its functions as an "Alma Mater" to all the sons and daughters of England by the establishment of local examinations, and, by thus test