country, and a benefactor to his poor native land. Pray, sir, can you account for the falling off in these good old schools?” “There are many reasons for it,” said I, “some of which might be removed, and some not. One reason is, that noblemen and gentlemen now send their sons to be educated either at the great public schools, or at private academies, where they meet only with persons of their own rank, and escape the mischiefs which are supposed to arise from mixing with persons beneath them in birth or station.—Great folly this. The best part of education consists in becoming acquainted, in early life, when the passions and perceptions are strong, with persons of every class, and all degrees of talents and opinions. Thus, asperities are softened, and a knowledge of men and manners is obtained, which can be acquired so easily in no other way. England is what it is, by this early admixture of high and low, rich and poor, one with another; and it will cease to be old England, free, liberal, and religious England, when men are taught to consider each other as almost belonging to a different race of beings from their very cradles. _Every_ man is an ignorant man who only knows his _own_ class.” “You are quite right there sir,” said the old man, “and all the experience of my long life proves it. I have seen a thousand times, that if men knew a little more of each other, half their prejudices on the subjects of religion, politics, and other causes of division, would vanish away at once: and these good old schools were great helps in making youths of all classes know and understand each other.” “Another reason for their falling away,” said I, “was their standing still while the world went on. They taught Latin and Greek, when Latin and Greek were the only necessary knowledge, and the only passports to wealth and distinction; and so long as that was the case, all classes were satisfied with them.—But the world soon wanted other knowledge.—It wanted arithmetic, land-surveying, engineering, and a thousand other things by which men make money, and get on in the world. But these things grammar schools could not or would not teach. So boys were sent to other places, where wise men, or pretenders to wisdom, professed to teach all that is necessary for these very enlightened times; and the old school benches soon became empty. There, grammar schools were wrong;—they should have adapted themselves more to the wants of the times; and then they might have flourished as of old, to the great benefit of the whole nation. But I am forgetting your story, and what is more, forgetting my dinner. Till we meet to-morrow, farewell!” CHAPTER V.