Priestley was now wholly engrossed in the business of teaching, and although nominally tutor in the classical languages and in the _belles lettres_, there was practically no department of education in which at one time or other during the half-dozen years of his sojourn at Warrington he was not called upon, or did not offer, to instruct. He enlarged and published the _Grammar_ to which reference has already been made, and began a treatise on “The Structure and Contemporary State of the English Language,” the material for which he eventually gave to Croft of Oxford for the compilation of his _Grammar_ and _Dictionary_. But what particularly impressed him as a practical educationist was that whilst most of his pupils were designed for situations in civil and active life, every article in the plan of their education was adapted to the learned professions. There was hardly any medium between an education for the counting-house, consisting of writing, arithmetic and merchants’ accounts, and a method of instruction in the abstract sciences. He proceeds to trace how this came about:— “Formerly none but the clergy were thought to have any occasion for learning. It was natural, therefore, that the whole plan of education, from the Grammar School to the finishing at the University, should be calculated for their use. If a few other persons, who were not designed for Holy Orders, offered themselves for education, it could not be expected that a course of studies should be provided for them only. And, indeed, as all those persons who superintended the business of education were of the clerical order, and had themselves been taught nothing but the rhetoric, logic and school-divinity, or civil law, which comprised the whole compass of human learning for several centuries, it could not be expected that they should entertain larger, or more liberal, views of education; and still less that they should strike out a course of study for the use of men who were universally thought to have no need of study, and of whom few were so sensible of their own wants as to desire any such advantages. “Besides, in those days, the great ends of human society seem to have been but little understood. Men of the greatest rank, fortune and influence, and who took the lead in all the affairs of State, had no idea of the great objects of wise and extensive policy, and therefore could never apprehend that any fund of knowledge was requisite for the most eminent stations in the community. Few persons imagined what were the true sources of wealth, power and happiness in a nation. Commerce was little understood, or even attended to; and so slight was the connection of the different nations of Europe that general politics were very contracted. And thus, men’s views being narrow, little previous furniture of mind was requisite to conduct them.”