I am sorry I cannot refer to any English works on the history of Education, except the essays of Mr. Parker and Mr. Furnivall, and _Christian Schools and Scholars_, which are mentioned above, but we have a very good treatise on the principles of education in Marcel’s _Language as a Means of Mental Culture_ (2 vols., London, 1853). Edgeworth’s _Practical Education_ seems falling into undeserved neglect, and Mr. Spencer’s recent work is not universally known even by schoolmasters. If the following pages attract but few readers, it will be some consolation, though rather a melancholy one, that I share the fate of my betters. R. H. Q. INGATESTONE, ESSEX, _May, 1868_. PREFACE TO EDITION OF 1890. When I was a young man (_i.e._, nearly forty years ago), I once did what those who know the ground would declare a very risky, indeed, a fool-hardy thing. I was at the highest point of the Gemmi Pass in Switzerland, above the Rhone Valley; and being in a hurry to get down and overtake my party I ran from the top to the bottom. The path in those days was not so good as it is now, and it is so near the precipice that a few years afterwards a lady in descending lost her head and fell over. No doubt I was in great danger of a drop of a thousand feet or so. But of this I was totally unconscious. I was in a thick mist, and saw the path for a few yards in front of me _and nothing more_. When I think of the way in which this book was written three and twenty years ago I can compare it to nothing but my first descent of the Gemmi. I did a very risky thing without knowing it. My path came into view little by little as I went on. All else was hid from me by a thick mist of ignorance. When I began the book I knew next to nothing of the Reformers, but I studied hard and wrote hard, and I turned out the essays within the year. This feat I now regard with amazement, almost with horror. Since that time I have given more years of work to the subject than I had then given months, and the consequence is I find I can write fast no longer. The mist has in a measure cleared off, and I cannot jog along in comfort as I did when I saw less. At the same time I have no reason to repent of the adventure. Being fortunate in my plan and thoroughly interested by my subject, I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations in getting others to take an interest in it also. The small English edition of 500 copies was, as soon as I reduced the price, sold off immediately, and the book has been, in England, for twenty years “out of print.” But no less than three publishing firms in the United States have reprinted it (one quite recently) without my consent, and, except in the edition of Messrs. R. Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, with omissions and additions made without my knowledge. It seems then that the book will live for some years yet, whether I like it or not; and while it lives I wish it to be in a form