w schools, public by virtue of their creation,
were to be put alongside of the older ones. So schools of private
venture would be eliminated. And thus the whole elementary education of
the country was to be taken out of the hands of societies or
individuals, and was to be organized and conducted by the officials of
the State. Finally, all four (or three, as you choose to reckon them)
grades of public education were to be co-ordinated with one another and
subordinated to a chief Minister of State presiding over a great
department.

[Illustration: The House of the Rev. John Buckland, at Laleham

Where Matthew Arnold went to school from 1830-1836.

The Rev. John Buckland was his maternal Uncle

_Photo Ralph Lane_]

Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general
outlines, and sufficiently far-reaching in its scope. But its author,
promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one "capital difficulty" in the
way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus: "The Public
School for the people must rest upon the municipal organization of the
country. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the public
elementary school has, and exists by having, the Commune, and the
Municipal Government of the Commune, as its foundations, and it could
not exist without them. But we in England have our municipal
organization state to get; the country districts, with us, have at
present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle
Ages, or of France before the Revolution.... The real preliminary to an
effective system of popular education is, in fact, to provide the
country with an effective municipal organization."

It would be impossible, unless one could trace the mental processes of
the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and other
eminent persons who had a hand in constructing the Education Acts of
1892 and 1893, to say how far the system now in existence owes any of
its features to the influence of Matthew Arnold. It is the lot of great
thoughts to fall upon very different kinds of soil; to be trodden under
foot by one set of enemies, and carried away by another; and yet
sometimes to find a congenial lodgment, and after long years to spring
into life and manifest themselves in very unexpected quarters. So it may
well have been with Arnold's educational theories. Certainly during the
last five-and-thirty years people have come to regard Education in all
its branches as far mo