In general, _Punch_, as a moderate reformer, deals impartially with the contending claims of science and the classical curriculum. He believed in the liberalizing influence of the humanities, while he denounced academic arrogance, pedantry and exclusiveness. He might be described as a mitigated modernist in these years, in which he advocated the popularization of science by means of Institutes and similar centres of enlightenment, and welcomed new inventions--while reserving to himself the right to burlesque their possibilities, and to ridicule the pretensions of pompous professors and futile philosophers. He was at one with those rationalists who waged war on superstition and credulity, but he realized better than they did how deeply entrenched the enemy was in high places, and how mistaken was the view that the victory was already won. The friendly lines which he addressed to Faraday in 1853 are mere halting doggerel, but they are worth recalling, if only for their sound doctrine, which is as much needed to-day as it was sixty-seven years ago:-- Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday! Did you of enlightenment consider this an age? Bless your simplicity, deep in electricity, But in social matters, unsophisticated sage! Weak superstition dead; knocked safely on the head, Long since buried deeper than the bed of the Red Sea, Did you not fondly fancy? Did you think that necromancy Practised now at the expense of any fool could be? Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday! Persons not uneducated--very highly dressed-- Fine folks as peer and peeress, go and fee a Yankee seeress, To evoke their dead relations' Spirits from their rest. Also seek cunning men, feigning by mesmeric ken, Missing property to trace and indicate the thief, Cure ailments, give predictions: all of these enormous fictions Are, among our higher classes, matters of belief. Oh, Mr. Faraday, simple Mr. Faraday! Guided by the steady light which mighty Bacon lit, You naturally stare, seeing that so many are Following whither fraudulent Jack-with-the-lanterns flit. Of scientific lore though you have an ample store, Gotten by experiments, in one respect you lack; Society's weak side, whereupon you none have tried, Being all philosopher and nothing of a quack. EDUCATION