xvi

PREFACE

move neglected, the habit of using that language with precision,
 with force, and with art. I fancy we ave almost the
only nation in the world who seem to think that composition
 comes by nature. The French attend to their own
language, the Germans study theirs ; but Englishmen do
not seem to think it is worth their while. Nor would I
Jail to include, in the course of study I am sketching, translations
 of all the best works of antiquity, or of the modern
world. It is a very desirable thing to read Homer in the
Greek; but if you don't happen to know Greek, the next
best thing we can do is to read as good a translation of it
as we have recently been furnished with in prose. You
won't get all you would from the original, but you may get
a great deal ; and to refuse to know this great deal because
you cannot get all, seems to be as sensible as for a lungry
man to vefuse bread because he cannot get partridge.
Finally, I would add instruction in either music or patniing,
 or, if the child should be so unhappy, as sometimes
happens, as to have no faculty for either of those, and no
possibility of doing anything in any artistic sense with them,
then I would see what could be done with literature alone
but I would provide, in the fullest sense, for the development
of the @sthetic side of the mind.
In my judgment, those ave all the essentials of education
Jor an English child. With that outfit, suck as it might
be made in the time given to education which is within the
reach of nine-tenths of the population—with that outfit, an
Englishman within the limits of English life, is fitted to
go anywhere, to occupy the highest positions, to Jil the
highest offices of the State, and to become distinguished in
practical pursuits, in Science or in Art. For, if he have the
opportunity to learn all those things, and have his mind
disciplined in the various directions the teaching of those
topics would have necessitated, then, assuredly, he will be
able to pick up, on his voad through life, all the vest of the
intellectual baggage he wants.