If invasion of England actually threatened there would be no want, I think, of volunteers. It is easy to say that this would be late, but General Graut in the American War was asked how long at a pinch it took to make an infantryman, and he answered, "About a week." And at present the average Englishman does not contemplate invasion as a serious possibility. Mr. Kipling would urge that an invasion of Natal was the same thing, morally speaking, as a landing in Kent; but it is obvious that his countrymen did not feel it to be so. And further, there was a very marked difference in men's willingness to come forward between the days when the war had a defensive character and the later time, when it became undisguisedly a war of conquest and annexation. This is a distinction which Mr. Kipling does not seem to understand, but nevertheless it lies deep. Englishmen may reasonably hope that they would fight to defend their liberty, as the Boers did, to a man. They do not all learn the use of arms as Frenchmen or Germans do, because they do not, like Frenchmen and Germans, feel it necessary for the defence of their country. But Mr. Kipling wants Englishmen to show selfsacrifice, not for the maintenance of liberty but for the aggrandizement of empire. Now I confess that my zeal for the soldierly qualities depends a good deal on the cause in which they are displayed.

But there is one thing quite obvious. Mr. Kipling may be entitled to blame his countrymen for not turning out in full strength as did that "little people, few but apt in the field." He has, however, no right to find fault, if under South African conditions one Boer was worth several Englishmen. You cannot breed cowboys in Kent or mounted infantry in Manchester. And frankly, if I were a modern Englishman-that is to say congenitally and

by preference a town dweller-I should rather resent Mr. Kipling's contempt for the "street bred people." Is, after all, the man of the veldt-whether Boer or Colonist-superior, say, to the Sunderland artisan? The assumption that he is underlies the writings not only of Mr. Kipling, but of a host of lesser prophets. Yet it does not follow that a man who lives in a big space is bound to have a big soul-or even a big body.

Speaking as an outsider, I find it easier to admire the patriotism of Tennyson, which delighted to glorify the traditional qualities of Englishmen-a great love of personal independence, a prepossession in favor of liberty for others-than to sympathize with Mr. Kipling's imperialist sentiment, which desires apparently to see every good Englishman engaged in the business of governing some one who is not English, and thereby liberated from the stunting circumstances of English life. The Englishman whom he holds up to glory is the Englishman anywhere out of England. Such Englishmen as are misguided enough to remain are in duty bound to shake off that stolid composure and self-satisfaction (which many of us have thought to be England's best asset) and live so far as possible in a perpetual panic. The whole thing seems to me part of a disposition to substitute bigness for great

ness.

In the meantime, actual war seems (as usual) a poor inspiration (Eschylus was the only man who ever wrote real poetry about contemporary war) and the "Service Songs" in this volume are none of them so good as, for instance, the ballad of "The Grand Trunk Road." "The Dirge of Dead Sisters" is better than these laborious exercises in a dialect where cockney slang is overlaid with purple patches; and much better is "Bridge Guard in the Karroo." But what madness in

duced Mr. Kipling to include the verses which he calls (most inaptly, by the way) "Et Dona Ferentes?" They would do well enough in an undergraduates' journal at Oxford or Cambridge, or for that matter in any not too literary newspaper. However, as they are there, one may observe that the refrain, "But oh! beware, my country when my country grows polite," suggests a

The Pilot.

reason why England's authority does not stand to-day, perhaps, at its high est point. One thinks of all Mr. Chamberlain's speeches and the English press before the war, or, indeed, of Mr. Kipling's own much applauded line "Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled," which described those who were not yet the enemy.

Stephen Gwynn.

The history of education in this England of ours is an extraordinary one, and, like Paradise Lost, proves nothing, though it illustrates, admirably enough, man's fallen state. The old common law, which is still our best inheritance, and (what is left of it) our noblest contribution to the civilization of the West, was sound as a bell on the subject of education-sound, that is to say, so far as it went. By the common law every free person had an unlimited right to education, though children born in villeinage could not be educated without the consent of their feudal lords. It has been suggested to me, in private conversation, by a conveyancer of Lincoln's Inn, that, inasmuch as servile tenures have never been abolished by statute, the child of a copyholder even to this day has no right to receive education without the consent of the Lord of the Manor. But as this point was not taken in the House of Commons it is not likely there is anything in it.

By 7 Henry IV. c. 17 (1406), it was expressly enacted that "every man or woman of what state or condition that he be" (this language would by itself be enough to destroy the contention of

the conveyancer, but for the fact that the statute now being cited was repealed in 1863) "shall be free to set their son or daughter to take learning at any school that pleaseth them within the realm." This bold statute, though it did not apply to Lollards, the only then known form of Dissent, displeased the clergy, always prone to consider education as their annexe, and many efforts were made to obtain its repeal or modification, but unsuccessfully. Four years later, in 1410, it was held, in the Gloucester Grammar School case (Year Book Henry IV., p. 4), "to be contrary to reason that a master could be disturbed from holding school where he pleased, save in the case of a University, Corporation, or a school of ancient foundation." Mr. Justice Hill declared that "to teach youth is a virtuous and charitable thing to do, helpful to the people, for which a master cannot be punished by our law."

This was the state of the law until we reach the disquieting and uncomfortable times of

the majestic lord, That broke the bonds of Rome. Henry VIII. was the most highly edu

cated man (unless indeed Mr. Lowe could dispute the title with him) who has ever played the part of President of the Board of Education, and he, instead of a Code, set forth a Grammar, to be used by all schoolmasters and teachers throughout the land; thus for the first time forging a link between the Crown and the elementary schools of the country.

Tests for teachers began in Elizabethan days, when the oaths, both of supremacy and allegiance, were required to be taken by all schoolmasters and public and private teachers of children. Nor did they stop here-nor could they have done, for we have now reached the time of a "Religion" (Church of Englandism) by law established. Acts of Parliament now required that every schoolmaster employed by any person or persons, body politic or corporation, should attend the Church services with regularity, and teach "the established religion." The Privy Council instituted a searching inquiry as to the "backwardness" of schoolmasters in teaching the "religion now established by the laws of the realm." No case, however, arose for "passive resistance" on the part of the public, since no rate or tax was raised for the cost of education.

The bishop first appears on this scene in the reign of James I., when it was provided by statute that no person should keep a school or be a schoolmaster, "except he were licensed by the bishop."

This is the high-water mark of Anglicanism.

It would be unfair not to add, that the toleration of the common law which we have seen destroyed by statute, was more apparent than real. As soon as the Lollards, our first Dissenters, appeared, toleration disappeared. To have expected Queen Elizabeth to allow a Popish recusant to keep a school would have been unreasonable.

Her age was not an age of religion, but of religious differences. It is an atmosphere familiar to all of us, and still congenial to many.

Archbishop Laud had things his own way in education for a while (and it would be wicked to deny his genuine love of letters), and then came the swing of the pendulum. The Puritans carried the country, not by leaflets and public meetings, but by hard fighting on many a stricken field.

Stout Skippon hath a wound; the centre hath given ground: Hark! Hark! What means the trampling of horsemen on our rear? Whose banner do I see, boys? 'Tis he, thank God! 'tis he, boysBear up another minute. Brave Oliver is here.

Neither "Brave Oliver" nor his Parliaments were minded to leave the education of the young in the hands of "scandalous" schoolmasters; and commissioners were appointed personally to examine both ministers and schoolmasters as to "ignorance or insufficiency," and to eject those who failed to pass this examination, allowing the ejected ones, if they went peacefully away, a fifth of their year's income. No ejected schoolmaster was allowed to set up a school in the place from whence he had been ejected. Parliament did not hesitate to define what it meant by "scandalous." A scandalous schoolmaster was not only the holder of "blasphemous and atheistical opinions," a curser and swearer, a Papist, an adulterer, a drunkard, a dicer, a breaker of the Sabbath-day, but also "such as have publicly and frequently read or used the Common Prayer Book," or reviled "the strict profession or professors of Religion, or Godliness," or "have declared or shall de clare by writing, preaching, or otherwise publishing, their disaffection to the present Government." The same Act of Parliament (1654, ch. 45) pro

vided that ministers and schoolmasters should keep the chancels, churchyards, and schools in as "good and sufficient repair" as the same buildings were "at the time of their being placed therein."

The schools referred to in this Cromwellian legislation were the endowed schools, but it may safely be assumed that, during the Puritan supremacy, as during the Anglican supremacy, severe tests of "conformity" were exacted from all schoolmasters and teachers. But no taxes were levied to maintain schools or to provide education for the poor.

When King Charles came back to his own, his Church "as by law established" returned with him, and, in the teeth of the monarch's pledged word, the Act of Uniformity was passed which (among other things) required every schoolmaster and tutor to subscribe the declaration of conformity to the Litany as by law established; and in 1665 the Five Mile Act expressly forbade any Nonconformist to teach in any public or private school.

The pendulum has swung back again; but a new spirit, or at any rate a new way of looking at things, is now beginning to be noticeable. A series of judicial decisions restricted ecclesiastical jurisdiction over education to grammar schools, and the bishop's license was declared unnecessary when the schoolmaster was the nominee of the founder or of a lay feoffee. Between the Bench and the Church there used always to be a healthy jealousy.

By a statute of Anne (13 Anne, c. 7, 1714), the teaching of reading, writing, arithmetic, and so much of mathematical learning as related to navigation, was freed from all restraints.

Protestant Dissenters, under the grudging provisions of the Toleration

I take leave to refer to the admirabl History of my friend Mr. Montmorency "State Intervention in English Education,

Act, gradually became respectable and wealthy bodies. Some of their academies in different parts of the country were famous places. The greatest of all Anglican bishops, the celebrated Butler, was educated in a Dissenting College. From time to time, Acts of Parliament were passed in favor both of Dissenting and Catholic teachers, and by the middle of George the Third's reign it may fairly be said that, although excluded from the Universities and the old Endowed Schools, and still required to go to Church to be married, Protestant Dissenters were left alone to worship God as they chose, and to teach and to be taught (at their own charges) as best they might be.

There is matter for thought even in this brief retrospect, but I must leave it to take up another line.1

Our old common law made for freedom rather than for what is now called culture. Whilst allowing anybody to teach, it did not require anybody to be taught. There was no duty on a parent, at common law, to educate his offspring in either sacred or profane learning. You had to feed your child, and clothe him according to your station; but more was not demanded of you. In the eye of the law, education was a charity; in the eye of the Church it was a religious duty. Every mass-priest was required, even in Anglo-Saxon times, to have a school in his house; whilst to found a grammar school has always been an act of charity, protected by the law, and supported by public opinion.

Contrast for a moment the different fortunes that have befallen these two central propositions of the common law on education-the freedom to teach and the freedom from being taught. The first had always to struggle for published at the Cambridge University Press. 1902.