the _Metamorphoses_ or the story of the wars of Æneas, and enter life with no knowledge of the simplest facts of psychology. I look forward to a time not far distant, I hope, when our whole pædagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and Latin will then occupy the place which Assyrian or Egyptian hieroglyphic occupies now, and children will be directly prepared for the duties which await them. I have in preparation a book which I expect soon to publish, entitled _Positive Education_. It will appear anonymously, for society being constituted as it is, I am afraid that my name on the title-page would prevent me from finding employment. My object is to show how the moral fabric can be built up without the aid of theology or metaphysics. I profess no hostility to either, but as educational instruments I believe them to be useless. I begin with Logic as the foundation of all science, and then advance by easy steps (_a_) to the laws of external nature commencing with number, and (_b_) to the rules of conduct, reasons being given for them, with History and Biography as illustrations. One modern foreign language, to be learned as thoroughly as it is possible to learn it in this country, will be included. I desire to banish all magic in school training. Everything taught shall be understood. It is easier, and in some respects more advantageous, not to explain, but the mischief of habituating children to bow to the unmeaning is so great that I would face any inconvenience in order to get rid of it. All kinds of objections, some of them of great weight, may be urged against me, but the question is on which side do they preponderate? Is it no objection to our present system that the simple laws most necessary to society should be grounded on something which is unintelligible, that we should be brought up in ignorance of any valid obligation to obey moral precepts, that we should be unable to give any account of the commonest physical phenomena, that we should never even notice them, that we should be unaware, for example, of the nightly change in the position of planets and stars, and that we should nevertheless busy ourselves with niceties of expression in a dead tongue, and with tales about Jupiter and Juno? For what glorious results may we not look when children from their earliest years learn that which is essential, but which now, alas! is picked up unmethodically and by chance? I cannot help saying all this to you, for your _Musæ_ arrived just as my youngest brother came home from Winchester. He was delighted with it, for he is able to write very fair Latin and Greek. That boy is nearly eighteen. He does not know why the tides rise and fall, and has never heard that there has been any controversy as to the basis of ethics. Your affectionate godchild, HERMIONE.