We must not imagine that too much stress can well be laid upon the importance of an education to contentment, for it comes under the head of those things which are not adjuncts or acquisitions for a man, but which form the texture of his being. What a man has learnt is of importance; but what he is, what he can do, what he will become, are more significant things. Finally, it may be remarked, that, to make education a great work, we must have the educators great; that book-learning is mainly good as it gives us a chance of coming into the company of greater and better minds than the average of men around us; and that individual greatness and goodness are the things to be aimed at rather than the successful cultivation of those talents which go to form some eminent membership of society. Each man is a drama in himself—has to play all the parts in it; is to be king and rebel, successful and vanquished, free and slave; and needs a bringing-up fit for the universal creature that he is. * * * * * _Ellesmere_. You have been unexpectedly merciful to us. The moment I heard the head of the essay given out, there flitted before my frightened mind volumes of reports, Battersea schools, Bell, Wilderspin, normal farms, National Society, British Schools, interminable questions about how religion might be separated altogether from secular education, or so much religion taught as all religious sects could agree in. These are all very good things and people to discuss, I daresay; but, to tell the truth, the whole subject sits heavy on my soul. I meet a man of inexhaustible dulness, and he talks to me for three hours about some great subject—this very one of education, for instance—till I sit entranced by stupidity, thinking the while, “And this is what we are to become by education—to be like you.” Then I see a man like D—, a judicious, reasonable, conversable being, knowing how to be silent too—a man to go through a campaign with—and I find he cannot read or write. _Milverton_. This sort of contrast is just the thing to strike you, Ellesmere: and yet you know as well as any of us that to bring forward such contrasts by way of depreciating education would be most unreasonable. There are three things that go to make a man—the education that most people mean by education; then the education that goes deeper, the education of the soul; and, thirdly, a man’s gifts of Nature. I agree with all you say about D—; he never says a foolish thing, and does a great many judicious ones. But look what a clever face he has. There are gifts of Nature for you. Then, again, although he cannot read or write, he may have been most judiciously brought up in other respects. He may have had two, therefore, out of the three elements of education. What such instances would show, I believe, if narrowly looked into, is the immense importance of the education of heart and temper.