We do not propose to go into that broader question of public education which, once within the scope of the law, and face to face with established national systems, immediately sets both hemispheres in a ferment; but to discuss that preliminary and more vital training whose silent power shows itself every day in the homes of thousands, neutralizing on the one hand good examples and wholesome teaching, and on the other often redeeming from utter badness its half-corrupted subject. And first taking the literal meaning of the word education, _i.e._ to _lead up_, or _out of_ (_e-duco_), we must remark that as education is coeval with the dawn of reason, so it is also continuous. It begins in the cradle, and goes on hand in hand with life to the grave. All experience, good or bad, is education, not only the lessons taught in school-hours, the lectures given in classes, halls, and colleges, not alone the books we read and the examinations we undergo, but, more emphatically, the places we frequent, the people we meet, the misfortunes we go through, the work we perform. Even prosperity is education, though seldom in the highest sense, but it is chiefly in the lower walks of fortune that the more important part of this daily and hourly education is imparted. For this reason specially, and in view of the future in which a chance word heard in the street or a stray visit to some place or person may become of such subtle and paramount gravity, should home education in the Christian sense of the word be encouraged to the utmost. More particularly should this be the case in non-Catholic countries. We have no outward atmosphere of religion to trust to; no wayside crosses to remind us of the sufferings which our sins caused our Blessed Saviour; no simple shrines to bid us remember to pray for our invisible brethren in purgatory; no street processions to bring vividly before our minds that our King is more than an earthly lord, and our Mother more than an earthly parent.