Perhaps in one way the elementary schools with their large classes have a certain advantage in this, because the pressure is more self-adjusting than in higher class education, where the smaller numbers give to each child a greater share in the general work, for better or for worse.  In home education this share becomes even greater when sometimes one child alone enjoys or endures the undivided attention of the governess.  In that case the pressure does not relax.  But out of large classes of infants in elementary schools it is easy to see on many vacant restful faces that after a short exertion in “qualifying to their teacher” they are taking their well-earned rest.  They do not allow themselves to be strung up to the highest pitch of attention all through the lesson, but take and leave as they will or as they can, and so they are carried through a fairly long period of lessons without distress.  As they grow older and more independent in their work the same cause operates in a different way.  They can go on by themselves and to a certain extent they must do so, as o n account of the numbers teachers can give less time and less individual help to each, and the habit of self-reliance is gradually acquired, with a certain amount of drudgery, leading to results proportionate to the teacher’s personal power of stimulating work.  The old race of Scottish schoolmaster in the rural schools produced—­perhaps still produces—­good types of such self-reliant scholars, urged on by his personal enthusiasm for knowledge.  Having no assistant, his own personality was the soul of the school, both boys and girls responding in a spirit which was worthy of it.  But the boys had the best of it; “lassies” were not deemed worthy to touch the classics, and the classics were everything to him.  In America it is reported that the best specimens of university students often come from remote schools in which no external advantages have been available; but the tough unyielding habit of study has been developed in grappling with difficulties without much support from a teacher.

With those who are more gently brought up the problem is how to obtain this habit of independent work, that is practically—­how to get the will to act.  There is drudgery to be gone through, however it may be disguised, and as a permanent acquisition the power of going through it is one of the most lasting educational results that can be looked for.  Drudgery is labour with toil and fatigue.  It is the long penitential exercise of the whole human race, not limited to one class or occupation, but accompanying every work of man from the lowest mechanical factory hand or domestic “drudge” up to the Sovereign Pontiff, who has to spend so many hours in merely receiving, encouraging, blessing, and dismissing the unending processions of his people as they pass before him, imparting to them graces of which he can never see the fruit, and then returning to longer hours of listening to complaints and hearing of troubles which often