always marvelous course of the world's mental
history.

Take, for brief general type, the following 92d paragraph of the
'Forms of Water':--

"But while we thus acknowledge our limits, there is also reason for
wonder at the extent to which Science has mastered the system of
nature. From age to age and from generation to generation, fact has
been added to fact and law to law, the true method and order of the
Universe being thereby more and more revealed. In doing this,
Science has encountered and overthrown various forms of
superstition and deceit, of credulity and imposture. But the world
continually produces weak persons and wicked persons, and as long
as they continue to exist side by side, as they do in this our day,
very debasing beliefs will also continue to infest the world."

The debasing beliefs meant being simply those of Homer, David, and
St. John[A]--as against a modern French gamin's. And what the
results of the intended education of English gamins of every degree
in that new higher theology will be, England is I suppose by this
time beginning to discern.

In the last 'Fors'[B] which I have written, on education of a safer
kind, still possible, one practical point is insisted on
chiefly,--that learning by heart, and repetition with perfect
accent and cultivated voice, should be made quite principal
branches of school discipline up to the time of going to the
university.

And of writings to be learned by heart, among other passages of
indisputable philosophy and perfect poetry, I include certain
chapters of the--now for the most part forgotten--wisdom of
Solomon; and of these, there is one selected portion which I
should recommend not only school-boys and girls, but persons of
every age, if they don't know it, to learn forthwith, as the
shortest summary of Solomon's wisdom;--namely, the seventeenth
chapter of Proverbs, which being only twenty-eight verses long, may
be fastened in the dullest memory at the rate of a verse a day in
the shortest month of the year. Out of the twenty-eight verses, I
will read you seven, for example of their tenor,--the last of the
seven I will with your good leave dwell somewhat upon. You have
heard the verses often before, but probably without remembering
that they are all in this concentrated chapter.

1. Verse 1.--Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than
a house full of good eating, with strife.

(Remember, in reading this verse, that though England has