but with respect to these studies, your schools will require to be divided into three groups: one for children who will probably have to live in cities, one for those who will live in the country, and one for those who will live at sea; the schools for these last, of course, being always placed on the coast. And for children whose life is to be in cities, the subjects of study should be, as far as their disposition will allow of it, mathematics and the arts; for children who are to live in the country, natural history of birds, insects, and plants, together with agriculture taught practically; and for children who are to be seamen, physical geography, astronomy, and the natural. history of sea fish and sea birds.-T. and T., XVI., § 88-100.

71. EDUCATIONAL STIMULUS.-Farther, of schools in all places, and for all ages, the healthy working will depend on the total exclusion of the stimulus of competition in any form or disguise. Every child should be measured by its own standard, trained to its own duty, and rewarded by its just praise. It is the effort that deserves praise, not the success; nor is it a question for any student whether he is cleverer than others or duller, but whether he has done the best he could with the gifts he has. The madness of the modern cram and examination system arises principally out of the struggle to get lucrative

places; but partly also out of the radical blockheadism of supposing that all men are naturally equal, and can only make their way by elbowing; -the facts being that every child is born with an accurately defined and absolutely limited capacity; that he is naturally (if able at all) able for some things and unable for others; that no effort and no teaching can add one particle to the granted ounces of his available brains; that by competition he may paralyse or pervert his faculties, but cannot stretch them a line; and that the entire grace, happiness, and virtue of his life depend on his contentment in doing what he can, dutifully, and in staying where he is, peaceably. So far as he regards the less or more capacity of others, his superiorities are to be used for their help, not for his own pre-eminence; and his inferiorities to be no ground of mortification, but of pleasure in the admiration of nobler powers. It is impossible to express the quantity of delight I used to feel in the power of Turner and Tintoret, when my own skill was nascent only; and all good artists will admit that there is far less personal pleasure in doing a thing beautifully than in seeing it beautifully done. Therefore, over the door of every school, and the gate of every college, I would fain see engraved in their marble the absolute Forbidding

"Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory: "

and I would have fixed for each age of children

and students a certain standard of pass in examination, so adapted to average capacity and power of exertion, that none need fail who had attended to their lessons and obeyed their masters; while its variety of trial should yet admit of the natural distinctions attaching to progress in especial subjects and skill in peculiar arts. Beyond such indication or acknowledgment of merit, there should be neither prizes nor honours; these are meant by Heaven to be the proper rewards of a man's consistent and kindly life, not of a youth's temporary and selfish exertion.

Nor, on the other hand, should the natural torpor of wholesome dulness be disturbed by provocations, or plagued by punishments. The wise proverb ought in every schoolmaster's mind to be deeply set-"You cannot make a silk purse of a sow's car;" expanded with the farther scholium that the flap of it will not be the least disguised by giving it a diamond earring. If, in a woman, beauty without discretion be as a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, much more, in man, woman, or child, knowledge without discretion-the knowledge which a fool receives only to puff up his stomach, and sparkle in his cockscomb. In matters moral, most men are not intended to be any better than sheep and robins; so, in matters intellectual, most men are not intended to be any wiser than their cocks and bulls,-duly scientific of their yard and pasture, peacefully nescient of all beyond.

To be proud and strong, each in his place and work, is permitted and ordained to the simplest; but ultra, ne sutor, ne fossor.

And it is in the wholesome indisposition of the average mind for intellectual labour that due provision is made for the quantity of dull work which must be done in stubbing the Thornaby wastes of the world. Modern Utopianism imagines that the world is to be stubbed by steam, and human arms and legs to be eternally idle; not perceiving that thus it would reduce man to the level of his cattle indeed, who can only graze and gore, but not dig! It is indeed certain that advancing knowledge will guide us to less painful methods of human toil; but in the true Utopia, man will rather harness himself, with his oxen, to his plough, than leave the devil to drive it.

The entire body of teaching throughout the series of "Fors Clavigera" is one steady assertion of the necessity that educated persons should share their thoughts with the uneducated, and take also a certain part in their labours. But there is not a sentence implying that the education of all should be alike, or that there is to be no distinction of master from servant, or of scholar from clown. That education should be open to all, is as certain as that the sky should be; but, as certainly, it should be enforced on none, and benevolent Nature left to lead her children, whether men or beasts, to take or leave at their pleasure.

Bring horse and man to the water, let them drink if, and when, they will;-the child who desires education will be bettered by it, the child who dislikes it, only disgraced.-F. C., Letter 95.

72. EDUCATION AND CRIME.-Crime cannot be hindered by punishment; it will always find some shape and outlet, unpunishable or unclosed. Crime can only be truly hindered by letting no man grow up a criminal-by taking away the will to commit sin; not by mere punishment of its commission. Crime, small and great, can only be truly stayed by education-not the education of the intellect only, which is, on some men, wasted, and for others mischievous; but education of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all.— T. and T., XV., § 86.

73. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.—I continually see subscriptions of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand pounds, for new churches. Now a good clergyman never wants a church. He can say all that his congregation essentially need to hear in any of his parishioners' best parlours, or upper chambers, or in the ball-room at the Nag's Head; or if these are not large enough, in the marketplace, or the harvest field. And until every soul in the parish is cared for, and saved from such sorrow of body or mind as alms can give comfort in, no clergyman, but in sin or heresy, can ask