It is perhaps idle to expect any equalisation of opportunities by postponing every kind of specialism to a period beyond the elementary stage, until there is a more general agreement as to what constitutes a liberal education. If we apply the touchstone of Mulcaster’s conception, how much of the traditional lumber which is now obstructing our progress would have to be cleared away! We are the bond-slaves of two tyrants--the spirit of an outworn classicism and the spirit of a utilitarianism falsely so-called. Under the domination of the former we distort the curriculum of our higher-class schools, preparatory as well as secondary, by projecting into the elementary period and practically imposing on every scholar linguistic studies that should form a specialism only for a very few during the later years of school life. Misguided by the latter we debase our public primary education by filling up the time with subjects of mere information that neither arouse the interests of the learner nor afford a genuine mental discipline. It would indeed astound the Elizabethan schoolmaster who tolerated pre-occupation with the learned tongues only until his native English should reach a high enough point of cultivation to become a worthy receptacle of learning, and who lamented the temporary need for a medium which kept the student “one degree further off from knowledge” to find that after more than 300 years the shackles had not yet been cast aside. Nor would he be less dismayed to discover that the sole alternative offered to those who were excluded from what professed to be a liberal culture, consisted only to a very small extent of that direct knowledge of the facts and laws of Nature which he conceived to be the proper food during “our best learning time,” but mainly of the dry bones of second-hand experience. Mulcaster’s ideal will not be attained until we have devised a course of study up to the age of at least 14 or 15 years, which shall form a preparation for life that is applicable to all pupils alike--to boys and girls, to rich and poor, to those who can pursue their systematic education further, and to those who must discontinue it then to enter into the world of affairs.