I feel with you in some measure about the dulness of the subject of education. But then it extends to all things of the institution kind. Men must have a great deal of pedantry, routine, and folly of all sorts, in any large matter they undertake. I had had this feeling for a long time (you know the way in which you have a thing in your mind, although you have never said it out exactly even to yourself)—well, I came upon a passage of Emerson’s which I will try to quote, and then I knew what it was that I had felt. “We are full of mechanical actions. We must needs intermeddle, and have things in our own way, until the sacrifices and virtues of society are odious. Love should make joy; but our benevolence is unhappy. Our Sunday-schools, and churches, and pauper societies, are yokes to the neck. We pain ourselves to please nobody. There are natural ways of arriving at the same ends at which these aim, but do not arrive. Why should all virtue work in one and the same way?” . . . “And why drag this dead weight of a Sunday-school over the whole of Christendom? It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.” Now, without agreeing with him in all points, we may sympathise with him. _Ellesmere_. I agree with him. _Dunsford_. I knew you would. You love an extreme. _Milverton_. But look now. It is well to say, “It is natural and beautiful that the young should ask and the old should teach”; but then the old should be capable of teaching, which is not the case we have to deal with. Institutions are often only to meet individual failings. Let there be more instructed elders, and the “dead weight” of Sunday-schools would be less needed. I think the result of our thoughts would be, that there should be as much life, joy, and Nature put into teaching as can be; but I, for one, am not prepared to say that the most mechanical process is not better than none. _Ellesmere_. Well, you have now shut up the subject, according to your fashion, in a rounded sentence; and you think after that there is nothing more to be said. But I say it goes to my heart— _Dunsford_. What is that? _Ellesmere_. To my heart to see the unmerciful quantity of instruction that little children go through on a Sunday. I suppose I am a very wicked man; but I know how wearied I should have been, at any time of my life, if so much virtuous precept and good doctrine had been poured into me.