That word which he italicized—­public—­is the key to his whole system.  The whole education of the country was to be Public.  The Universities, already “public” in the sense that they are not private ventures, were to be made public in the sense that they were to be supervised and to some extent regulated by the State.  The Public Schools, traditionally so-called, were to be made more really public by being brought under the Minister and the School-Boards.  The lesser foundation-schools were to be made public by a redistribution of their revenues and a reconstruction of their system; and new schools, public by virtue of their creation, were to be put alongside of the older ones.  So schools of private venture would be eliminated.  And thus the whole elementary education of the country was to be taken out of the hands of societies or individuals, and was to be organized and conducted by the officials of the State.  Finally, all four (or three, as you choose to reckon them) grades of public education were to be co-ordinated with one another and subordinated to a chief Minister of State presiding over a great department.

[Illustration:  The House of the Rev. John Buckland, at Laleham

Where Matthew Arnold went to school from 1830-1836.

The Rev. John Buckland was his maternal Uncle

Photo Ralph Lane]

Here was a scheme of National Education, clear enough in its general outlines, and sufficiently far-reaching in its scope.  But its author, promulging it thirty-five years ago, saw one “capital difficulty” in the way of realizing it, and he stated the difficulty thus:  “The Public School for the people must rest upon the municipal organization of the country.  In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the public elementary school has, and exists by having, the Commune, and the Municipal Government of the Commune, as its foundations, and it could not exist without them.  But we in England have our municipal organization state to get; the country districts, with us, have at present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages, or of France before the Revolution....  The real preliminary to an effective system of popular education is, in fact, to provide the country with an effective municipal organization.”

It would be impossible, unless one could trace the mental processes of the Bishop of Rochester, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and other eminent persons who had a hand in constructing the Education Acts of 1892 and 1893, to say how far the system now in existence owes any of its features to the influence of Matthew Arnold.  It is the lot of great thoughts to fall upon very different kinds of soil; to be trodden under foot by one set of enemies, and carried away by another; and yet sometimes to find a congenial lodgment, and after long years to spring into life and manifest themselves in very unexpected quarters.  So it may well have been with Arnold’s educational