In this opinion, I think, the Count is too optimistic, for the lower classes were woefully uneducated, my early experience being that comparatively few could read and write, especially in the rural districts. The upper class, of course, received an education to prepare for the Universities; and, in the middle-class, a classical education was decidedly predominant over one that would fit its recipient for mercantile pursuits. The ordinary boarding-schools charged from thirty to forty-five guineas per annum, but their proprietors had a knack of including extras, which very greatly increased this sum. Here is an advertisement of a middle-class school in 1830-- "Exeter College, Snaresbrook, six miles from London, for the reception of gentlemen designed for mercantile pursuits, the legal and medical professions, the naval and military institutions, and the Universities. The number is limited, they are parlour boarders, and each has a separate bed. The establishment is under the immediate attention of the Principal and resident classical assistants, with the regular attendance of professional gentlemen of eminence in the departments of French, drawing, music, dancing, &c. Terms per annum--A mercantile course, with mathematics, history, geography, use of the globes, astronomy, etc., twenty-five guineas; or with the classics, in Latin, Greek, and including drawing, music, and dancing, thirty guineas; any one of the languages or accomplishments selected with the first course, four guineas. Every department of this establishment is arranged and conducted on the most comprehensive scale of liberality. The pupils are the sons of private and professional gentlemen of the highest respectability in London and various parts of the kingdom," etc. This was a comparatively cheap school. Let us take another, to which well-to-do people would be likely to send their children. It was situated near Newbury, and was conducted on the plan of a regular grammar school-- "Young Gentlemen are received from 4 to 20 years of age. Terms--from 4 to 10 years of age, 25 guineas; 10 to 15, 35 guineas; 15 to 20, 40 guineas; parlour-boarders, 80 guineas per annum." But there were lower class schools--such as Dickens has immortalized in Nicholas Nickleby. He says in his preface to the 1839 edition that he meant no one in particular, but we may, perhaps, think differently after reading what I have to write. We all remember the story when Snawley brings his sons-in-law to the Saracen's Head-- "'Mr. Squeers, I believe, sir?' "'The same, sir,' said Mr. Squeers, with an assumption of extreme surprise. "'The gentleman,' said the stranger, 'that advertised in the _Times_ newspaper?'