theories.  Certainly during the last five-and-thirty years people have come to regard Education in all its branches as far more a matter of public concern, far less a matter of private venture, than formerly.  More and more we have come to see that the State and the Municipality, in their respective areas, have something to say on the matter.  The idea of the Golden Ladder, having its base in the Elementary Schools and its top rung in the highest honours of the University, has taken hold of the public mind, and has passed out of the region of abstractions into practical life.  Institutions of Local Government have developed themselves on the lines desiderated by Arnold in 1868.  The subordination of education to municipal authority is a new and a risky experiment, but it is exactly the experiment which he wished to see.  The resuscitation of the Edwardian and Elizabethan Grammar Schools all over the country has brought the notion of the Public School to the very door of the Middle Class, and has shaken, if it has not yet destroyed, Mr. Creakle’s stronghold.  Even in the matter of Denominational Education in the Elementary Schools, where many deem that a retrograde step has been taken, the State has acted on a hint which Arnold gave to the extreme reformers of his time.

“Most English Liberals,” he said, “seem persuaded that our Elementary Schools should be undenominational, and their teaching secular; and that with a public elementary school it cannot well be otherwise.  Let them clearly understand, however, that on the Continent generally—­everywhere except in Holland—­the public elementary school is denominational (of course with what we should call a ‘conscience clause’) and its teaching religious as well as secular.”

In one important respect the State, which has so often adopted his views, at once outstripped and fell short of his ideal.  He was not a strong or undiscriminating advocate for Compulsory Education.  He believed that, in the foreign countries where compulsion obtained, it was not the cause, but the effect, of a national feeling for education.  When a people set a high value on knowledge, they would insist that every child should have a chance of acquiring it.  But you could not create that high value by compelling people to send their children to school.  As late as the end of the year 1869, he seems to have feared that any legislation which hindered a child from working for its own or its parents’ support would be highly unpopular and would be evaded.  “A law of direct compulsion on the parent and child would probably be violated every day in practice; and, so long as this is the case, a law levelled at the employer is preferable.”