h up every man, whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke,
begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is
twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and
so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can
scan the verses of the Greek tragedians." So said Sydney Smith, and
with perfect truth. "The grand, old, fortifying, classical curriculum"
was enforced on the boy whose whole heart was in the engineer's shed,
while his friend, to whom literature was a passion, was constrained
to simulate an interest in the blue lights and bad smells of a
chemical lecture. "Let it be granted" (as the odious Euclid, now
happily dethroned, used to say) that there is a certain amount that
all alike must learn but this amount will prove, when scrutinized,
to be very small. I suppose we must all learn to read and write,
and it is useful to be able to do a sum in simple addition; though
very eminent people have often written very illegible hands, and
Dean Stanley--one of the most accomplished men of his day--could
never be persuaded that eighteen pence was not the equivalent of
1s. 8d. Zealots for various "knowledges" (to use the curious plural
sanctioned by Matthew Arnold) will urge the indispensability of
their respective hobbies. One will say let everybody learn that
the earth is round; another, that James I. was not the son of Queen
Elizabeth. But let us leave, these pribbles and prabbles. Let every
boy be coerced into learning what is absolutely necessary for the
daily work of life; but let him, at a very early age, have his
powers concentrated on the subject which really interests him.

One of the highest gifts which a teacher can possess is the power
of "discerning the spirits"--of discovering what a boy's mind really
is; what it is made of; what can be made of it. This power is a natural
gift, and can by no means be acquired. Many teachers entirely lack
it; but those who possess it are among the most valuable servants
of the State. This power may be brought to bear on every boy when
he is, say, from fourteen to sixteen years old--perhaps in some
cases even earlier; and, when once the teacher has made the
all-important discovery, then let everything be done to stimulate,
and at the same time to discipline, the boy's natural inclination,
his inborn aptitude. Fifty years ago, every boy at every Public
School, though he might be as unpoetical as Blackstone who wrote
the Commentaries, or