ly and familiarly, the
entire work is so crowded with illustrations of the simplest and most
obvious kind, that "the unwary reader can easily be entrapped into the
belief that he is perusing nothing more serious than a lively and
agreeable essay upon the tempers and capacities of children, written by
two good-natured persons who are fond of amusing themselves with young
people." Mr. Edgeworth believed according to the proverb, "that youth
and white paper can take all impressions," that everything could be
achieved by education; that, given the individual, it was possible to
make of him whatever the instructor pleased. Of course our present more
scientific mode of thought, our superior scientific knowledge, shows us
the untenability of so dogmatic a persuasion; but it was characteristic
of the eighteenth century, forms the key-note to many of their
educational experiments, and furnishes the reason of their failures. The
times when Mr. Edgeworth wrote and devised his doctrines were "the good
old days when George the Third was King," when education was at a
discount, when to have a taste for literature was to be held a pedant or
a prig. If Mr. Edgeworth went too far in his earnest advocacy of careful
training for the young of both sexes, in his belief in the result, our
modern school has perhaps, in the latter respect, erred on the other
side. We know now that it is out of the power of education to change
nature. Yet our scientific knowledge has inclined us, perhaps unduly, to
under-rate the value of training, and to allow too much play to the
doctrine of _laissez-faire_. As ever, the truth lies in the middle; and
in any case, because we are at present going through a period of
reaction, we should refrain from sneering at those perhaps over-earnest
men, of whom Mr. Edgeworth was a type, who, in a frivolous age, rebelled
against their unthinking contemporaries. It is too much the fashion to
stigmatize these men as prigs; pragmatic no doubt they were, conceited
and self-confident, and, like all minorities, over-ardent. Still it
cannot be enough borne in mind that the people of that period who
thought, thought more and read more thoroughly than those of to-day.
They came to original conclusions; they did not imbibe so much at
second-hand by means of criticism and ready-made opinions. Of this, Miss
Edgeworth and her father were notable examples; to this, her letters
bear abundant testimony.

In the preface to _Practical Educat