not
welcome the opportunity of reading a work which produced such an effect on
such a man.

But the discipline of education is not for ornament merely, but for
practical use. Without it men and nations miss their path in life, and see
not at all, or only with purblind eyes, open roads to national prosperity.
In Australia I have known a generation of shepherds and sheep-farmers, who
long trod a soil seamed with gold, knowing nothing of the treasures
beneath their feet. Is not the Irish farmer often as ignorant of the
wealth which other nations draw from the earth, or from the enterprise
born of the leisure and security which the possession of the soil creates?
The domestic industries which help to make French farms prosperous are
just as suitable to our own country, and just as feasible in it. London is
supplied from Normandy with farm produce which would come more naturally
from Munster, and the French make their households pleasant with dainty
preparations of vegetables which the Irish fling away with contempt;
Switzerland is more destitute of coal than Ireland, but Switzerland
competes successfully with England in her own markets with manufactures
for which she does not possess even the raw material. When I met in
France, Italy, and Egypt the marmalade manufactured at Dundee, I felt it
like a silent reproach. Oranges do not grow in Dundee, and sugar is not
manufactured there, but enterprise and industrial education are native to
the soil. Is not this a department in which there is something to be
taught to the people by useful books? Ideas are the root of action, and
books are the cabinets of ideas. If work of a practical and patriotic
spirit is to be done in any country, books must be the beginning of that
work; and why should we not have such books?

What do we hope to make of Ireland?--this is the fundamental question on
which the character of education ought to depend. In Switzerland the bulk
of the people live on their own farms, not needing or desiring great
wealth, but enjoying free, simple lives, ennobled by the perfect liberty
which the poet declares is a child of the mountains. In Belgium there are
many husbandmen thriving on the benign industries cultivated at home,
which rear a nobler class of men than the stricken legions who serve the
steam-engine and the water-wheel. It is not for me to dogmatise on the
proper development of Ireland, but assuredly to be wise and successful it
must harmonise with the n