public authority, no common standard of examination, and, in many cases, little previous experience in such work. Their reports, therefore, cannot have much value for purposes of comparison. Moreover, being appointed and paid by the particular School Board, and perhaps desiring to be reappointed, they have not the independence necessary for giving a perfectly candid and discriminating report. Finally, as their reports are not usually made public, the individual parent has no means of judging of the school; and if, in the case of an unfavourable report, the School Board acquiesce in the inefficiency of the school, there is no remedy at hand. A judicious system of public inspection would remove these drawbacks. It would require, of course, to be much more elastic and much less minute than that applied to elementary schools, but it could easily be devised so as to help and stimulate secondary education.

The proper organisation and support of our higher schools would also make education cheaper. The fees at present charged in High Schools in the provinces in Scotland are not very heavy, rarely exceeding £10 per annum; but in many of these cases this apparent cheapness is purchased by an undue curtailment of the staff, and an insufficient subdivision of the work. In larger towns the fees are greater: in the schools recently established by the 'Girls' Public School Company' in England, they rise as high as £25 per annum. These fees may be moderate compared with the exorbitant charges of many boarding schools; but they are much higher than the corresponding fees in France and Germany. The maximum fees in the Lycées and Colleges Communaux of France vary in different parts of the country from £5 to £10 per annum. In the German Gymnasien they are from £3 to £6, while the highest fee in the Girls' High School' in Dresden is £6 per annum. It must also be remembered that in France and Germany these fees procure an education not of doubtful, but of guaranteed efficiency.

Much might be said of the great loss which the middle classes sustain by the very inadequate provision of education

are alike threatened by the present state of things. In commerce, the growing keenness of international competition is aggravated by the want of technical and scientific knowledge, which too often marks the small capitalist in this country. In politics, the power tends more and more to originate with the toiling masses, and to be entrusted to the hands of a few preeminent men, without the controlling check which should be supplied by the influence of an educated middle class. The middle classes of this country are not getting the same advantages that are enjoyed by the corresponding classes in other countries. As Mr. Matthew Arnold says, in France 160,000children of the middle classes are getting the best education which our century can afford in schools, whose efficiency is guaranteed by the State. In England, with a population of about equal numbers, there are not more than 30,000 receiving an education with any equivalent guarantee for its efficiency. In other words, the French and the German middle classes are being educated on the first educational plane, the English on the second. At the same time the working classes in this country are now, as a whole, receiving an education which is of guaranteed efficiency: they are taking advantage of it, and will tread fast on the heels of the middle class.

The middle class for the satisfaction of their wants have only themselves to look to. The working classes are provided for, and naturally do not concern themselves about those above them: nay, through the present School Boards they wield an influence which is positively unfavourable to middle class education and to the measures necessary for its support. As little may they look for help from the aristocracy and the wealthy classes, who can afford to pay an exorbitant price for education as a luxury. The upper classes prefer to have schools of their own, to subordinate educational to social distinctions, and thus to isolate themselves from the middle classes, in whose education they take no interest. They therefore do not countenance a movement for a national system of higher education. As the acute critic whom we have repeatedly quoted, points out, the aristocracy is naturally indifferent or even hostile to the

hands more political and social influence would be placed by a higher culture. The aristocracy do not want to create competitors for their own children.' They welcome, no doubt, to their own ranks the few individuals who get what the present ill-organised system of education can give them, and who struggle through from obscurity to eminence by commercial But where one remarkable man succeeds, twenty average men are defrauded of educational development and the career which it opens. The individual is filled, and the

success.

public is sent empty away.'

As

The middle class, however, do not need the patronage of any other section of the community, in order to secure a culture suitable to their social position: they have the power to get what they want, if they determine to use it. Hitherto they have not combined for this purpose, they have not expressed their wishes, they have not urged them upon their political representatives and leaders. And so successive governments pay very little attention to their wants. our critic exclaimed some years ago: Twenty-three articles in the Liberal programme, and middle class education is not one of them!' But this class will evidently not be content to remain much longer the milch-cow of the educational system. They will insist on having the rights as well as the burdens of citizenship. Their interest in the reputed problems of the day, such as county franchise or disestablishment, is after all a very small or even a sentimental one. But it is a vital question for them whether their children shall receive a full and suitable culture, and the training necessary to maintain their social position. Let them give their political representatives a respite from disputed and unprofitable topics: and let them in season and out of season urge this all-important subject on their notice: and before long their just claims will be admitted, and their wants supplied.

ART. II.-EMERSON'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.

UR expense is almost all for conformity

OUR

is for cake that we run into debt.' These remarks of Emerson-quaint in their simplicity — strike hard at the root of certain evils in the present which threaten to develope into terrible dangers for the future. They lay bare the principle underlying certain false modes of life which can only exist by the oppression of many individuals, and which tend to the disintegration of society. Yet they were uttered by one who appreciated as fully as any man could, the true value of custom; for Emerson was ever ready to acknowledge that the majority of social traditions, foolish and dead though they may now be, have lived and had their origin in some real need. He himself says that

'Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed.'

and elsewhere

'Fashion is funded talent.'

'There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each one a stroke of genius or of love,-now repeated and hardened into usage

'Genius invents fine manners, which the baron and baroness copy very fast, and by the advantage of a palace, better the instruction.'

And he tells us, speaking of the difficulties which every man would find in ordering his own life if he had to decide each particular of it himself.

'Help comes in the custom of the country build or to plant.

I know not how to Never fear; it is all settled how it should be, long beforehand, in the custom of the country.'

Of genius itself he observes

'Every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his people, and in his love of the materials he wrought in. What an economy of power! and what a compensation for the shortness of life! all is done to his hand. The world has brought him thus far

the hollows, and bridged the rivers. Men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into their labours. Choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for himself; his powers would be expended in the first preparations.'

It is evident that Emerson was no mere enemy of 'custom,' or the existing order of things. He desired to disturb nothing that did not stand in the way of something better. He even teaches us that where fashion is no hindrance to us we may use it as a help.. His denunciations of the social weakness which he designated as 'conformity,' have therefore the more weight as coming from one who did not love change and eccentricity for their own sake, but who perceived, in his serene wisdom, that virtue can hardly be attained by the majority without a manly independence of life; that a sacrifice must be made, whenever facts require it, of the form to the spirit; and that, if a man wishes to reach excellence in anything, he must be prepared to abandon the nonessentials of existence for the sake of the essentials.

If we look into almost any modern book, whether of history, of travel, of biography, or of romance, we see how wide-spread is the evil against which he spoke so strongly. From the savage who sallies out of his rude shelter to slaughter beasts little more savage than himself, to the European who lives refinedly and studies the wisdom of all ages, the folly extends.

The ryot of the Deccan, who is contented to spend sixpence a week on his own requirements, is nevertheless weighted by money embarrassments as heavily as any younger son who is a slave to the requirements of a hereditary luxury. For the frugal Hindoo, whose food and clothing are of the simplest, spends his life struggling to pay off, with extortionate interest, his father's marriage debts; and he hands down to his descendants a similar burden, incurred probably for the sake of paying the cost of his daughter's wedding. He will ask, Mr. Wedderburn tells us, for a year's wages in advance for this purpose; and rather than forego the useless expenditure which is customary on such an occasion, he would kill his daughter in infancy, and so save his household from the disgrace of an unceremonial marriage.