to occupy themselves with; and there still remains in this old literature a vast residuum of moral beauty and grandeur.  And then consider the great historical fact that, for three centuries, this book has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is as familiar to noble and simple, from Land’s End to John-o’-Groat’s House, as Dante and Tasso once were to the Italians; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form; and, finally, that it forbids the veriest hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilisations, and of a great past, stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest nations in the world.  By the study of what other book could children be so much humanised and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between two eternities; and earns the blessings and the curses of all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil, even as they also are earning their payment for their work.”

Lastly, he laid down the lines of the general education to be given.  He pointed out that already in the existing schools a very considerable burden of work was imposed on the children in the form of catechism, lists of the kings of Israel, geography of Palestine, and that when these fantastic modes of education had been eliminated there was plenty of time and energy to be employed.  The instruction in physical training was more than half play; that in the domestic subjects had an engrossing interest of its own.  He proposed, first, the necessary discipline in the means for acquiring knowledge, the tools for employing it, that is to say, reading, writing, and arithmetic.  After that, he believed that a certain amount of knowledge, of intellectual discipline, and of artistic training should be conveyed in the elementary schools, and for these purposes he proposed to teach some rudiments of physical science, drawing, and singing.

In most respects the progress of primary education in England has been a continuous progress along these lines suggested by Huxley, and he may be regarded as in this fashion one of the great shapers of the destinies of his race, for nothing can have a bearing more important on the character and fate of a race than the manner of training provided for the masses of individuals composing it.  It is only in the matter of the religious instruction that the course of events has been widely different from the neutral exposition of the Bible as suggested by him.  In 1870 a great majority of the people of England who reflected upon the matter at all, and all those who accepted current ideas without reflection, accepted the Bible as an inspired, direct, and simple authority on all great matters of faith and morality.  Therefore,