At that point—­and it ought to be reached at a much earlier age than is now usual—­the State’s, concern in the matter ends.  The child has become, a man, and henceforth must work out his own intellectual salvation; but in the earlier stages the State can and must exercise a potent influence.  The earliest stage must be compulsory—­that was secured by the Act of 1870.  In the succeeding stages, the State, while it does not compel, must stimulate and encourage; and above all must ensure that no supposed exigencies of money-making, no selfish tyranny of the employing classes, shall be allowed to interfere with mental or physical development, or to divert the boy or the girl from any course of instruction by which he or she is capable of profiting.  This ideal Mr. Fisher’s Bill, with its plain enactment that education shall be free; with its precaution against “half-time”; with its ample provision for Continuation Schools, goes far to realize.  Even if it is a “small” reform—­and I should dispute the epithet—­it is certainly “on the lines and in the direction” of that larger reform which the enthusiasts of education have symbolized by the title of “The Golden Ladder."[*]

[Footnote *:  Happily for Education, Mr. Fisher’s Bill is now an Act.]

III

OASES

My title is figurative, but figures are sometimes useful.  Murray’s Dictionary defines an oasis as “a fertile spot in the midst of a desert”; and no combination of words could better describe the ideal which I wish to set before my readers.

The suggestion of this article came to me from a correspondent in Northumberland—­“an old miner, who went to work down a mine before he was eight years old, and is working yet at seventy-two.”  My friend tells me that he has “spent about forty years of his spare time in trying to promote popular education among his fellow working-men.”  His notice was attracted by a paper which I recently wrote on “The Golden Ladder” of Education, and that paper led him to offer some suggestions which I think too valuable to be lost.

My friend does not despise the Golden Ladder.  Quite the contrary.  He sees its usefulness for such as are able to climb it, but he holds that they are, and must be, the few, while he is concerned for the many.  I agree.  When (following Matthew Arnold at a respectful distance) I have urged the formation of a national system by which a poor man’s son may be enabled to climb from the Elementary School to a Fellowship or a Professorship at Oxford or Cambridge, I have always realized that I was planning a course for the exceptionally gifted boy.  That boy has often emerged in real life, and the Universities have profited by his emergence; but he is, and always must be, exceptional.  What can be done for the mass of intelligent, but not exceptional, boys, who, to quote my Northumbrian friend, “must be drilled into a calling of some kind, so as to be able to provide for themselves when they grow up to manhood”?  When once their schooling, in the narrow sense, is over, must their minds be left to lie fallow or run wild?  Can nothing be done to supplement their elementary knowledge, to stimulate and discipline their mental powers?