The blame must, I fear, fall first upon the Universities.  I am not speaking of the education there provided for the honour men, which is often excellent of its kind; though it must be confessed that the keenest and best enthusiasm seems to me there to be drifting away from the literary side of education.  But while an old and outworn humanist tradition is allowed to prevail, while the studies of the average passman are allowed to be diffuse, desultory, and aimless, and of a kind from which it is useless to expect either animation or precision, so long will a blight rest upon the education of the country.  While boys of average abilities continue to be sent to the Universities, and while the Universities maintain the classical fence, so long will the so-called modern sides at schools continue to be collections of more or less incapable boys.  And in decrying modern sides, as even headmasters of great schools have been often known to do, it is very seldom stated that the average of ability in these departments tends to be so low that even the masters who teach in them teach without faith or interest.

It may be thought of these considerations that they resemble the attitude of Carlyle, of whom FitzGerald said that he had sat for many years pretty comfortably in his study at Chelsea, scolding all the world for not being heroic, but without being very precise in telling them how.  But this is a case where individual action is out of the question; and if I am asked to name a simple reform which would have an effect, I would suggest that a careful revision of the education of passmen at our Universities is the best and most practical step to take.

And, for the schools, the only solution possible is that the directors of secondary education should devise a real and simple form of curriculum.  If they whole-heartedly believe in the classics as the best possible form of education, then let them realize that the classics form a large and complicated subject, which demands the whole of the energies of boys.  Let them resist utilitarian demands altogether, and bundle all other subjects, except classics, out of the curriculum, so that classics may, at all events, be learnt thoroughly and completely.  At present they make large and reluctant concessions to utilitarian demands, and spoil the effect of the classics to which they cling, and in which they sincerely believe, by admitting modern subjects to the curriculum in deference to the clamour of utilitarians.  A rigid system, faithfully administered, would be better than a slatternly compromise.  Of course, one would like to teach all boys everything if it were possible!  But the holding capacity of tender minds is small, and a few subjects thoroughly taught are infinitely better than a large number of subjects flabbily taught.

I say, quite honestly, that I had rather have the old system of classics pure and simple, taught with relentless accuracy, than the present hotchpotch.  But I earnestly hope myself that the pressure of the demand for modern subjects is too strong to be resisted.