generations trained upon the system of starvation. The system,
indeed, too often reminds me of an old picture in Punch, of genteel
poverty dining in state; in a room hung with portraits, attended by
footmen, two attenuated persons sit, while a silver cover is
removed from a dish containing a roasted mouse. The resources that
ought to be spent on a wholesome meal are wasted in keeping up an
ideal of state. Of course there is something noble in all sacrifice
of personal comfort and health to a dignified ideal; but it is our
business at present to fill the dish rather than to insist on the
cover being of silver.

One very practical proof of the disbelief which the public has in
education is that, while the charges of public schools have risen
greatly in the last fifty years, the margin is all expended in the
comfort of boys, and in opportunities for athletic exercises; while
masters, at all but a very few public schools, are still so poorly
paid that it is impossible for the best men to adopt the
profession, unless they have an enthusiasm which causes them to put
considerations of personal comfort aside. It is only too melancholy
to observe at the University that the men of vigour and force tend
to choose the Civil Service or the Bar in preference to educational
work. I cannot wonder at it. The drudgery of falling in with the
established system, of teaching things in which there is no
interest to be communicated, of insisting on details in the value
of which one does not believe, is such that few people, except
unambitious men, who have no special mental bent, adopt the
profession; and these only because the imparting of the slender
accomplishments that they have gained is an obvious and simple
method of earning a livelihood.