, in the way of lecturing, they could do
quite as well for themselves.

'A book of criticism,' says Hume, 'ought to consist chiefly of
quotations.' The same should be said of a literary lecture, with the
important addition to the word 'quotations,' 'effectively read.'

To return from this digression, what seemed so strange to Sir Henry
Taylor, is not so strange when it is considered that the dealing out of
knowledge, in the schools, on the part of the teacher, and the
acquiring of it on the part of students, leave no time for education of
any kind except the little which is _incident_ upon the imparting and
the acquisition of various kinds of knowledge 'from the cedar of Lebanon
to the hyssop on the wall.'

Perhaps the greatest danger to which education proper will be more and
more exposed, in the future, will be the great increase of knowledge, in
every department of thought. This may sound paradoxical; but with the
increase of knowledge, the temptation will correspondingly increase to
make the acquisition of the greatest possible amount of it, in schools,
colleges, and universities, the leading aim. To give the student the
fullest command of his faculties, should certainly be the prime object,
to which the acquisition of knowledge should be subservient; but this
object seems to be more and more lost sight of, while to cram his mind
to the utmost, with vague, indefinite, and heterogeneous knowledge, is
getting more and more to be, if not the sole, at any rate the chief,
consideration. This state of things prevails from our lowest to our
highest schools. We hear and read _ad nauseam_ that the word 'education'
means 'a drawing out.' This one etymology everybody knows, if he doesn't
know any other. Lecturers and writers on education, and school
circulars, keep reiterating it. There are certain truths so ding-donged
in our ears that they lose all their vitality. One of these certainly
is, that the word 'education' means 'a drawing out.' Sometimes a teacher
at a school institute, after presenting this etymology, proceeds to
present what he considers the best methods of ramming in!

There are schools, and their patrons think them excellent, which
out-herod Herod in their slaughter of the Innocents. Sad, indeed, is it
that the young are so debarred, as they are, by the tasks imposed upon
them, from all sweet and quickening 'impressions before the letter.' 'As
in Hood's exquisite parody of George Robins's advertisement,' sa