of a university; but let it be understood that even when we accept this, we must yet demand a much higher qualification in the matriculant than we do now. After a year spent among the instruments, the student at the age of about 19 should be in a position to throw himself into real studies-philology, philosophy, history, literature, art, physical science. To take the encyclopædic round would be impossible now-a-days, but by the thorough investigation of a department he gains admission to "the idea" and thereby becomes a scientific thinker. Discipline in one department, if his teacher is alive to the correlation of all departments, is, if properly understood and properly pursued, discipline in all. He thereby attains to that reverence for all knowledge, and that philosophical comprehension which is the consummation of all true education of the intelligence. This indeed is what intellectual culture means, and that the outcome of the whole is ethical in the true sense it would not be difficult, in fitting place and at fitting time, to show.

It is by the exercise of this its distinctive function as above indicated that the university liberalizes the professions and raises them above the level of skilled trades. The graduate it sends out to the various professions, if worthy, can never forget, even in the pressure of practical life, that he has once for all enrolled himself a civis of the city of Reason, of which he is a freeman.

II.

FREE SCHOOLING1.

THE question of free primary education has suddenly come to the front, and demands consideration. I have nothing to do here, I need scarcely say, with the political or ecclesiastical aspects of this question. My business is to treat it academically, and from the purely educational point of view, though it may be conceded to me, that I am entitled to use the word "education" in its largest social sense.

And first, I object to the phrase itself-free education! The world is governed by phrases, and we must look into them if we wish to see through them. Free education has an imposing sound; the reality underlying the phrase is gratuitous instruction of four-fifths of the community at the expense of the remaining fifth.

I believe that a distinguished statesman has urged as an argument for free education that schools were free in the middle ages. Many things happened in the middle ages which would not be very palatable to statesmen or their audiences in these days. But apart from this, the orator in question was instituting a comparison of similarity between things which ought rather

1 Delivered 2 Nov. 1885.

to have been contrasted. It is true that such education as existed in connexion with the monasteries of the middle ages was free to all who could not afford to pay. The rich were expected to make free-will offerings to the monastic funds, and the poor got their schooling and their whole training for the priesthood or conventual life, generally, but not always, for nothing. Montalembert (not to speak of other writers), even after making due allowance for his rose-coloured account of conventual establishments, must be held to have placed this beyond doubt. But while education was generally gratuitous in the middle ages, it was not uniformly so. Even at the time that Charlemagne, by the help of his Minister of Education, Alcuin, endeavoured to promote higher teaching in the monastery schools, and to increase the number of these, fees were frequently charged. I see lately quoted by a reverend Dean the inscription on the monastery school of Salzburg—

"Discere si cupias, gratis quod quaeris habebis,"

in support of the opinion that education was always free in the middle ages. It may be read rather as indicating that it was gratis only at Salzburg. If gratis everywhere, why carve the fact on stone of Salzburg? The word "gratis" in the above line was probably intended to proclaim that while fees were charged elsewhere, none were charged by the Salzburg monks. The monastery of Tours was among those schools which charged fees, and because of this, in 843 the Archbishop Amalaric left a foundation for the purpose of providing gratuitous instruction there. Another bishop at the same time issued instructions

to the clergy of his diocese not to charge fees, but only to accept voluntary offerings. Gratuitous instruction, then, was not so universal as some suppose, even in those days when education was a matter of Christian charity an affair of the Church-a mission. Nay, further, free instruction was a necessity imposed on the Church, that it might secure a supply of clergy. In these days, on the contrary, education has become an affair of the civil power, is enacted by law, is universal, compulsory, supported by taxes. Any basis of comparison, therefore, with the middle ages, escapes

us.

Schools for the young have now passed, I say, out of the category of Church charities, and have become the object of civil and compulsory enactment. Whether they should consequently be wholly maintained by taxes depends on whether education is a recognised duty or a mission. If the parents of the country recognise it to be a necessary duty it is only right that they should contribute to the cost. This they now do as tax-payers, rate-payers, and fee-payers. Are they now and henceforth to cease to pay fees and to place an additional tax on the wealthier classes in order to provide a substitute for these? Is it on social or moral grounds desirable that the operatives of the country should so far sacrifice their independence and self-respect? The State has a deep interest in the education of all its citizens, and gives practical effect to its share of interest by means of rates and taxes. So far good. Does it follow that the close and personal interest of the parent, which expresses itself in the payment of fees, should be wholly abolished? I say this

is the question we have to consider, apart altogether from the practice of the past. But as the past has been called in as a witness, I shall say a few more words on the evidence which it brings into court.

It has been said that education in Scotland-the only country which carried out the Reformation programme in the 17th century-was once upon a time free; indeed, up to 1803, at which date the Act of 1696 was superseded by a more liberal provision for schools. We have consequently seen it stated that it is our duty to "restore" free education. Now it seems to be quite true that prior to the Reformation such education as existed was in Scotland, as in the rest of Europe, generally, if not always, free. It was a Church charity. In no other way could men be obtained for the service of the church. We have a parallel in modern times the trained schoolmaster, for example, cannot be secured by the State for the work of education without free training and other subsidies with which the State charges itself. But when, at the Reformation, the instruction of the people was taken up as a matter of State as well as of Church, there is no evidence that schools were free. The evidence is all the other way. Let us look into this briefly.

No one will question, I presume, that fees were charged in the burgh schools from 1560 onwards. The appendix to Grant's "History of Burgh Schools" places this beyond doubt. But it may have been otherwise in landward parishes. Was it so?

In Knox's "First Book of Discipline" (1560) the voice of the Reformed Church on the subject of education is distinctly heard. In this book it is said to be