If any one doubts this assertion, let him ask two or three very elementary questions in very elementary affairs of his neighbours and acquaintance, and note the answers he obtains. The thing is easily tested. Persons regarded as educated--persons who know all about the doings of a certain aggressive warrior of past times, who from mere greed of conquest cruelly attacked harmless savages, and then had the hardihood to describe his own misdoings in writing--are hopelessly lost and bewildered if you say to them, “What is your brain composed of?” “What is a choanite?” “What makes the leaves grow on the trees?” “Where does the soil in the garden come from?” “How does the dew find its way on to the grass?” “Why does a ball bounce?”--or some such questions which sound elementary and unscientific enough. But perhaps the knowledge required to answer these questions correctly belongs to departments of science which in most schools are regarded as extra subjects, and only taught occasionally and perfunctorily. It is certainly strange that information which ought surely to be imparted early, and which may be imparted in a most interesting and enjoyable way, should be put on one side for dry dates and grammar, a superfluity of arbitrary arithmetical rules, and the record of immoral conduct on the part of antique conquerors,--things which few wish to remember, and which sensible persons mostly take pains to forget. After all, we have only a limited space in which to store our knowledge. As we grow up, we have to learn the things that are suited to our several professions. We have no room for useless lumber, and must cast it out. It never ought to have cumbered the ground. Let the dates be for the historian, the grammar for the grammarian, the immoral records for the classical scholar, and the endless arbitrary rules for the dull. By the time we have specialised, we shall know what uninteresting details we are forced to master, and what we may safely leave to the encyclopædias. We shall not then have disquieted ourselves for nought. Our early education should before all things mean for us “the harmonious development of all the faculties.” For each of us and all of us should be laid the foundation of the love of God and the knowledge of such of His works as daily surround us. No other foundation can be secure.