reproduced in _Mixed Essays_ under the title of "Democracy." _A French
Eton_ (not very happily named) was an unofficial product of the same
tour; for, extending his purview from Elementary Education, he there
dealt with the relation between "Middle Class Education and the State."

"Why," he asked, "cannot we have throughout England 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 £20 to £50 a year if they are boarders, and from £5 to £15 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 Sorèze?"

_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