ngland as the French have
throughout France, as the Germans have throughout Germany, as the Swiss
have throughout Switzerland, and as the Dutch have throughout Holland,
schools where the middle and professional classes may obtain at the rate
of from L20 to L50 a year if they are boarders, and from L5 to L15 a
year if they are day scholars, an education of as good quality, with as
good guarantees of social character and advantages for a future career
in the world, as the education which French children of the
corresponding class can obtain from institutions like that of Toulouse
or Soreze?"

_Schools and Universities of the Continent_ gave the result of the
Mission in 1865 to investigate the Education of the Upper and Middle
Classes in France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Its bearing on
English Education may be inferred from these words of its author,
written in October, 1868: "There is a vicious article in the new
_Quarterly_ on my school-book, by one of the Eton undermasters, who,
like Demetrius the Silversmith, seems alarmed for the gains of his
occupation."

The "Special Report on Elementary Education Abroad" grew out of his
third Mission in 1885; and, over and above these books, dealing
specifically with educational problems, we meet constant allusions to
the same topics in nearly all his prose-writings. A life-long contact
with Education produced in him a profound dissatisfaction with our
English system, or want of system, and an almost passionate desire to
turn chaos into order by the persistent use of the critical method.

When one talks about English Education, the subject naturally divides
itself into the Universities, the Public Schools, the Private Schools,
and the Elementary Schools. The classification is not scientifically
accurate, but it will serve. With all these strata of Education, he in
turn concerned himself; but with the two higher strata much less
effectively than with the two lower. It was necessary to the theoretical
completeness of his scheme for organizing National Education, that the
Universities and the Public Schools, as well as the Private and the
Elementary Schools, should be criticised; but, in dealing with the
former, his criticism is far less drastic and insistent than with the
latter. The reason of the difference probably is that, though an
Inspector, a Professor, and a critic, he was frankly human, and shrank
from laying his hand too roughly on institutions to which he himself