the younger generation, which ought to be sent out alive to
intellectual interests of every kind, in a period which is
palpitating with problems and thrilled by wonderful surprises, is
being starved and cramped by an obstinate clinging to an old
tradition, to a system which reveals its inadequacy to all who pass
by; or, rather, our boys are being sacrificed to a weak compromise
between two systems, the old and the new, which are struggling
together. The new system cannot at present eject the old, and the
old can only render the new futile without exercising its own
complete influence.

The best statesmanship in the world is not to break rudely with old
traditions, but to cause the old to run smoothly into the new. My
own sincere belief is that it is not too late to attempt this; but
that if the subject continues to be shelved, if our educational
authorities refuse to consider the question of reform, the growing
dissatisfaction will reach such a height that the old system will
be swept away root and branch, and that many venerable and
beautiful associations will thereby be sacrificed. And with all my
heart do I deprecate this, believing, as I do, that a wise
continuity, a tendency to temperate reform, is one of the best
notes of the English character. We have a great and instinctive
tact in England for avoiding revolutions, and for making freedom
broaden slowly down; that is what, one ventures to hope, may be the
issue of the present discontent. But I would rather have a
revolution, with all its destructive agencies, than an
unintelligent and oppressive tyranny.