y
the universities of England. This proposition is very happily
enforced by a British writer, whose strictures on the system appeared
in the London _Times_ some twelve or thirteen years ago.

"Common things are quite as much neglected and despised in the
education of the rich as in that of the poor. It is wonderful _how
little_ a young gentleman may know when he has taken his university
degrees, _especially if he has been industrious, and has stuck to his
studies_. He may really _spend a long time in looking for somebody
more ignorant than himself_. If he talks with the driver of the
stage-coach that lands him at his father's door, he finds he knows
nothing of horses. If he falls into conversation with a gardener, he
knows nothing of plants or flowers. If he walks into the fields, he
does not know the difference between barley, rye, and wheat; between
rape and turnips; between natural and artificial grass. If he goes
into a carpenter's yard, he does not know one wood from another. If
he comes across an attorney, he has no idea of the difference between
common and statute law, and is wholly in the dark as to those
securities of personal and political liberty on which we pride
ourselves. If he talks with a country magistrate, he finds his only
idea of the office is that the gentleman is a sort of English Sheik,
as the Mayor of the neighboring borough is a sort of Cadi. If he
strolls into any workshop or place of manufacture, it is always to
find his level, and that a level far below the present company. If he
dines out, and as a youth of proved talents and perhaps university
honors is expected to be literary, his literature is confined to a
few popular novels--the novels of the last century, or even of the
last generation--history and poetry having been almost studiously
omitted in his education. _The girl who has never stirred from home,
and whose education has been economized, not to say neglected, in
order to send her own brother to college_, knows vastly more of those
things than he does. The same exposure awaits him wherever he goes,
and whenever he has the audacity to open his mouth. _At sea he is a
landlubber; in the country a cockney; in town a greenhorn; in science
an ignoramus; in business a simpleton; in pleasure a
milksop_--everywhere out