The word "education" is used in senses so different that confusion is
not always avoided. Some people mean by it the acquisition of knowledge,
others the development of faculty. If you mean the first, then the
half-educated man would be a man who knew half what he ought to know, or
who only half knew the different sciences, which the wholly educated
know thoroughly. Who is to fix the subjects? Is it the opinion of the
learned?--if so, who are the learned? "A learned man!--a scholar!--a man
of erudition! Upon whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are
they given to men acquainted with the science of government? thoroughly
masters of the geographical and commercial relations of Europe? to men
who know the properties of bodies, and their action upon each other? No:
this is not learning; it is chemistry, or political economy, not
learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of Scholar, is
reserved for him who writes on the AEolic reduplication, and is familiar
with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in [Greek: o] and
[Greek: mi]. The picture which a young Englishman, addicted to the
pursuit of knowledge, draws--his _beau ideal_ of human nature--his top
and consummation of man's powers--is a knowledge of the Greek language.
His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate,
decline, and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws
for himself, are the detection of an anapaest in the wrong place, or the
restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, and the
never-dying Ernesti failed to observe."

By the help of the above passage from an article written sixty-three
years ago by Sydney Smith, and by the help of another passage in the
same paper where he tells us that the English clergy bring up the first
young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar schools in
little country towns, I begin to understand what you mean by a
half-educated person. You mean a person who is only half qualified for
keeping a grammar school. In this sense it is very possible that our
friend the painter possesses nothing beyond a miserable fraction of
education. And yet he has picked up a good deal of valuable knowledge
outside the technical acquirement of a most difficult profession. He
studied two years in Paris, and four years in Florence and Rome. He
speaks French and Italian quite fluently, and with a fair degree of
correctness. His knowledge of those