have had quite enough of these lazy, stupid schoolboys of
thirty."

"I must frankly own that I do not like the list of books. Grammars of
rhetoric and grammars of logic are among the most useless furniture of
a shelf. Give a boy Robinson Crusoe. That is worth all the grammars of
rhetoric and logic in the world. We ought to procure such books as are
likely to give the children a taste for the literature of the West; not
books filled with idle distinctions and definitions, which every man
who has learned them makes haste to forget. Who ever reasoned better for
having been taught the difference between a syllogism and an enthymeme?
Who ever composed with greater spirit and elegance because he could
define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis? I am not joking, but writing quite
seriously, when I say that I would much rather order a hundred copies
of Jack the Giant-killer for our schools than a hundred copies of any
grammar of rhetoric or logic that ever was written."

"Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome are miserable performances,
and I do not at all like to lay out 50 pounds on them, even after they
have received all Mr. Pinnock's improvements. I must own too, that I
think the order for globes and other instruments unnecessarily large.
To lay out 324 pounds at once on globes alone, useful as I acknowledge
those articles to be, seems exceedingly profuse, when we have only about
3,000 pounds a year for all purposes of English education. One 12-inch
or 18-inch globe for each school is quite enough; and we ought not, I
think, to order sixteen such globes when we are about to establish only
seven schools. Useful as the telescopes, the theodolites, and the other
scientific instruments mentioned in the indent undoubtedly are, we
must consider that four or five such instruments run away with a year's
salary of a schoolmaster, and that, if we purchase them, it will be
necessary to defer the establishment of schools."

At one of the colleges at Calcutta the distribution of prizes was
accompanied by some histrionic performances on the part of the pupils.

"I have no partiality," writes Macaulay, "for such ceremonies. I think
it a very questionable thing whether, even at home, public spouting and
acting ought to form part of the system of a place of education. But
in this country such exhibitions are peculiarly out of place. I can
conceive nothing more grotesque than the scene from the Merchant of
Venice, with Portia represented by