“O for the coming of that glorious time, When, prizing knowledge, as her noblest work And best protection, this imperial realm While she exacts allegiance, shall admit An obligation on her part to _teach_ Them who are born to serve her and obey; Binding herself, by statute, to secure For all the children whom her soil maintains The rudiments of letters, and inform The mind with moral and religious truth, Both understood, and practised.” _Excursion_, Book ix. He was an avowed enemy, however, at a later period--for his views respecting the _modus operandi_ of teaching, had undergone some change since “The Excursion” was written--to all Infant Schools, Madras Systems, and Bell Systems. The former he regarded as usurping the functions of motherly duty; the latter, as dead mechanism. Speaking of the education of girls, he says:--“I will back Shenstone’s ‘School Mistress,’ by her winter fire, and in her summer garden seat, against all Dr. Bell’s sour-looking teachers in petticoats. What is the use of pushing on the education of girls so fast, and moving by the stimulus of Emulation, who, to say nothing worse of her, is cousin-german to Envy? What are you to do with these girls? What demand is there for the ability that they may have prematurely acquired? Will they not be indisposed to bend to any kind of hard labour or drudgery? And yet many of them must submit to it, or go wrong. The mechanism of the Bell System is not required in small places; praying after the _fugleman_, is not like praying at a mother’s knee. The Bellites overlook the difference: they talk about moral discipline; but wherein does it encourage the imaginative feelings? in short, what she practically understands is of little amount, and too apt to become the slave of the bad passions. I dislike _display_ in everything; above all, in education.... The old dame (Shenstone’s) did not affect to make theologians and logicians; but she taught to read; and she practised the memory, often no doubt by rote, but still the faculty was improved; something, perhaps, she explained, but trusted the _rest_ to parents and masters, and to the pastor of the parish. I am sure as good daughters, as good servants, as good mothers and wives, were brought up at that time as now, when the world is so much less humble-minded. A hand full of employment, and a head not above it, with such principles and habits as may be acquired _without_ the Madras machine, are the best security for the chastity of wives of the lower rank.” The above extract is from a letter dated 1828, and addressed to the Rev. Hugh Jones Rose, formerly principal of King’s College, London. It exemplifies, in a very striking manner, the change which had come over Wordsworth’s mind upon the subject of education, and does not strike me as being particularly creditable to him.