WHILE Complaints of the defective state of English education, especially amongst the middle classes, who are the staple of our national strength and prosperity, have been growing louder and more general year by year, the existence of large public funds specially assigned for the educational benefit of these very classes has been scarcely recognised. There are (including the nine great schools which were the subject of the late Royal Commission) nearly 800 schools in England and Wales possessing buildings and a permanent income, more or less sufficient-varying in amount from the £42,000 of Christ's Hospital to the £5 or £6 of some country village - which were intended to educate children of the middle class (although not these exclusively), and which generally come under the term "Grammarschool." Excluding the nine schools, the gross income of these less important foundations amounts to above £336,000; but from this deductions must be made for the management of the estates (in most cases with too little regard to economy), for the repair of buildings, and for alms- houses and other institutions, the maintenance of which has been charged by the founder on the same estates. The net income applicable to the payment of masters is £195,184; and there is besides an annual sum of at least £14,264 allotted to exhibitions to the Universities.

It is to the practical results of these large educational subsidies that the present "Schools Inquiry Commission" is directed. It will supply in course of time a library in itself for such readers as may be curious as to the details: for we are promised twenty thick octavo volumes, of which the first only

(the Report) is at present in the hands of the public.

About the time of the Reformation, the religious zeal and public spirit which up to that time had usually found its exercise in the endowment and augmentation of religious houses, was in great measure diverted to public education. The movement owed much also to the revival of classical learning which had taken place shortly before. The colleges of Winchester and Eton, the grammar-schools of Reading and Macclesfield, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a few others of less note, had already been founded-but in every case in connection with some conventual body, college of priests, or chantry. Under Henry VIII., funds were taken in many instances from the monastic bodies and applied to the foundation of grammar schools; and the process went on rapidly during the short reign of Edward VI., as is testified by the many provincial schools which bear his name as founder. Under Elizabeth the number of these foundations was greatly increased, both by royal grants (in which, however, the Queen was more liberal of her name and patronage than of money) and from private liberality. No less than one hundred and thirtyeight schools were founded in her reign. Harrison, writing in 1586, could say with truth that "there are not many corporate towns now under the Queen's dominion that have not one grammar-school at the least, with a sufficient living for a master and usher appointed for the same."

The general object of their founders is clear. They were not intended to provide an elementary education; that was commonly presupposed. In very many cases

there were special provisions that children should not be admitted until they could read and write legibly, or even "read English and Latin perfectly." In some schools, as at Merchant Taylors', the free scholars are only to be received "if they be meet and apt to learn;" at others, as at Harrow, a parent was to be required to remove his child if, after trial, he showed no aptness for a classical education. Sometimes, indeed, the founder went so far as to make provision for an elementary training; but this is to fit the child afterwards for the study of grammar; and in these cases there was either a separate and distinct school on the same

foundation, as the Accidence School" at Shrewsbury, and one of the "two fair and large schoolhouses" built by Archbishop Harsnett at Chigwell; or there was mention made of a special lower department for the "petties" and the "infants," like the old "bible seat" at Eton. The grammarschools were meant to supply a want which was beginning to be felt then, as it is felt now, amongst our middle classes, of a higher culture and more intellectual training than the mere English reading and writing and casting accounts which might fit a boy for the busy commercial life already dawning upon England. The founders, rightly or wrongly, wished to do something more than enable the youth of England to buy and sell to the best advantage, and to make money they sought to give, in their schools, a liberal, not a servile" education. Gladly do we quote the words of the Commissioners, both as a generous testimony to the national benefactors whom our enlightened age too often affects to regard as narrow-minded and short-sighted, and as a pledge -we trust-of the spirit in which their foundations are now to be dealt with.

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"Their purpose was to produce culLatin and Greek were no tivated men. more a direct preparation for the shop or the farm at that time than they are now. Then, just as now, the purpose of a liberal education was to enlarge the range of ideas, to elevate the thoughts, to make men more truly human, better subjects, and better Christians."

They were not founded for the advantage of any one class in particular. They were to be "public" schools in the best sense of the word. Sometimes the wording of the founder's intent is that the school is to be "especially for poor men's children;" sometimes "for the poor as well as the rich;" sometimes "for gentilmen's sonnes and other good mennes children.' They were to be open to the poor, and to such the gratuitous instruction was to form an attraction. If the poor man's son came there and was found "apt and toward," he could receive there an education such as the nobleman's son in those days could hardly obtain elsewhere. To a really able boy of this class there was commonly the additional opportunity of completing his education at the university by the help of an exhibition, the amount of which was sufficient, at that date, to maintain him entirely throughout his college course by the help of a careful economy; or he had the chance-no uncommon eventof being taken up to Oxford as the "servitor" of some youth of higher birth and ampler means, whose acquaintance he had made at the country grammar-school, enjoying with him all the substantial benefits of college tuition, and often thereby rising to a position of honour and emolument in the Church or the university. But while the grammar-school door was thus open to the poor scholar, it was not closed against the rich man's son, nor was he at all ashamed to enter it. To take the case of Shrewsbury, the great school of England in the early days of Elizabeth, the

scale of fees is carefully regulated from the "lord's son," who is to pay 10s., down through the degrees of the knight and the gentleman to the humble scholar who is to be charged but 8d. So at Llanrwst, an ancient table of rules demands from the "knight's son" an entrance fee of 2s. 6d., the son of the "doctor or esquire" 2s., and so on— "but poor indeed gratis." And while for the sake of this latter class the instruction is always to be gratuitous, and to prevent the creeping in of abuses under the head of presents to the master, he is in some statutes strictly forbidden to take of any scholar the customary compliments of "cockpenny, victor-penny, or potationpenny," so again in other cases, inasmuch as it was held unfair to the diligent teacher to leave no opening for the gratitude of his richer pupils, he was specially allowed to accept from them the fees above mentioned, and even a small sum for quarterage," in which a fee for "birch" was not seldom included. And these payments eventually, from being strictly optional, passed into a rule, and became, as they are now at many of our public schools, the main source of the masters' income, which the endowment, from the change in the value of money, is often no longer sufficient to supply.

But whatever the rank in life or the future destination of the scholars, they were all to be taught alike. All were to learn grammar, which meant the grammatical know

ledge of the Latin tongue; for of Greek, in those days, even the world of scholars knew but little. Whatever reform has been attempted in modern times, on utilitarian principles, with a view to lower the education in these schools to the commercial level, has been as contrary to the whole spirit and intention of their founders, as it is to the true interests of education in general, or of the classes for whose benefit these endowments were left. We are glad to recognise in the Report now before us the principles of a reform in quite another direction-"“ a levelling upwards and not downwards”—which, however the phrase may be jested at, is the true condition of progress.

For that some readjustment of the application of these large educational funds has become absolutely necessary, few will deny who glance even cursorily at the pages of the Report, or who have any tolerable acquaintance with the existing state of our provincial schools. It is true that some few of them are still doing the State good service; but in most cases they are miserably failing to fulfil any one intention of their founders. It has become almost impossible that they should do so, under the altered circumstances of modern life. The higher classes, whose presence in the grammar - school gave it a standing in the eyes of the county, are sent to Eton or Harrow, for the sake of association with their own equals or superiors. The classes below them, on whom

the very same considerations act, either follow their example at a painful sacrifice, or cease to value the school teaching which has no longer the old prestige.

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as

Many in the middle classes are not content with Latin and Greek, when Latin and Greek no longer means sociation with the sons of the gentry. The grammar-schools either sink from one rank to another until they descend below even the national schools, or else they maintain their classical teaching and lose their scholars. The result is, that a boy of superior ability, who may live in the neighbourhood of an old grammar-school, cannot now find there what he wants to give him an opening. He may possibly, though not so often as before, find a good master, but he cannot find, what is of no less importance, good schoolfellows. For it must be remembered that even a good master is utterly unable to make a really good school unless he has a tolerable number of scholars."-P. 94.

The result is, that out of something like 700 schools which were plainly intended to give a university training to such boys as sought it, only 166 are now sending up any boys at all to Oxford and Cambridge, and some of these an average of not more than one in the year. Of the whole 700, nearly

half have ceased to teach Latin at all. Many persons would see little to regret in this, if a "thorough English education"-that mystery of mysteries, which so many educational reformers talk of, but which has never yet been seen except in an advertisement-had been substituted in its place. But the reports, furnished in the different districts by the Assistant - Commissioners, show conclusively that in very few schools where classical teaching has been given up are modern subjects cultivated successfully; rather, for the most part, as one of them expresses it, "a descent has been made from the highest to the lowest kind of teaching.' The classical muses, with their train of scholarly asso

ciations, have departed, but they have left a wilderness of ignorance behind. The Commissioners' inquiries point, indeed, to a very unsatisfactory state of education altogether; but there is one conclusion which they pronounce somewhat emphatically, and which is well worth attention: "Where Latin is best taught, French and mathematics are best taught also. Where Latin is not taught, other subjects are rarely well taught." And again,-"When the classics are neglected, the education seems lowered in character." * In the whole of the counties of Norfolk and Northumberland, Norwich is the only grammar-school "at which any boy could possibly have been set to write five consecutive lines of Latin not taken from an exercise book." And now mark the bearing of this classical superiority upon tics, modern languages, and genemodern subjects: "In mathema

ral literature the school has few

equals, and certainly no superior, in the county." To take one instance out of many of the converse effect: at Haworth, in Yorkshire, one of the most distinctly classical foundations, where it is specially enjoined that the master shall be

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one able to teach Greek and Latin, so as to fit his scholars for Oxford any demand for classical teaching. or Cambridge," there is no longer The school has been lowered to meet the wants of the Yorkshirethese may be we gain some notion men at the present day. What from the Assistant-Commissioner's report. He found Haworth "the type of the worst schools in the district," and he received the following official letter, containing certain "resolutions" of the trus

tees :

"That the trustees consider the present state of the school adapted for all classes of society in the township of Haworth.

"That the trustees are satisfied with the present state of the school, and do not contemplate any plans for its improvement.'

These local trustees, indeed, have in many cases been a great hindrance to the wellbeing of the foundation of which they were supposed to be the guardians. In past years there were instances of gross misapplication of school funds. The faults now are rather in the way of negligence. If they are chosen from the ranks of the gentry, they are commonly resident at a distance; if from the townsmen, they are probably ill-educated, and therefore narrow-minded and illiberal. Such control as they have attempted to exercise has rarely been for the school's advantage, and their meddling has been a burden to the masters. The case mentioned in a little pamphlet before us of a large town grammar-school in which a fight during school-hours was allowed to proceed by the master, because "both boys were the sons of trustees, and it was not safe to meddle with them," is not singular in its character. Where the trust lies with the heirs of the founder, it is not always better administered. At Kirkleatham the school has disappeared; the lady of the manor, some fifty years since, "having occupied the building with her servants, and paid the income to her steward and the in cumbent." When it is considered into whose hands the appointment of the master must sometimes fall, it is not wonderful to find that it has been regarded simply as a piece of patronage, sometimes valuable, sometimes merely troublesome. It is hard to say which appointment may have been most damaging to the unfortunate schools which have

had at different times the following head-masters: the "waiter at a public-house," who held that situation at Market Bosworth-where Samuel Johnson once was usher ;t the master at Netherbury, who "carried on continuously with the school the business of a flour and spinning mill;" the gentleman at Earls Colne, "occupied in preparing a system of prime numbers contained in two perfectly unintelligible cards;" or the other gentleman, name and place unknownsave that "the endowment was considerable, and the town of some importance"-whose qualifications for teaching others consisted in having been "plucked four or five times himself." If any scrupulous reader imagines that these are isolated cases, he may satisfy himself by reference to the volumes of evidence that they are only specimens of a very large number of such appointments.

It is therefore plain that the most practical conservatism prompts a reform of some kind. As the Commissioners tersely word it, "no man, in founding a school, whatever regulations he may have given, can have intended his school to be inefficient." Even Anthony Pinchbeck, yeoman, when he inserted in the statutes of his school at Butterwick that the master should, "if possible, be named Pinchbeck," at least hoped, as is plain from the rest of the document, that among the future Pinchbecks would be found one "well able to teach Latin and Greek." The question is, then, what direction is this much-needed reform of the grammar-schools to take? Classical education is leaving them, that fact is undeniable. Are we to seek to lure it back,-are we to

See p. 224, 226, 274.