26 NOVEMBER 1887, Page 25

Schools, School - Books, and Schoolmasters. By W. Carew Hazlitt. (J. W.

Tarvia.)—Mr. Hazlitt has evidently a favourite speciality in school-books. He has collected them, we should judge, with a good deal of zeal, and has acquired a really considerable amount of know- ledge about them. Beyond this his knowledge, as far as practical utility goes, does not extend. His judgment about schools and his estimates of schoolmasters have bat little value. The great Busby, for instance, be regards as a mere pedant ; and his views on educa- tion have a certain crude modernism about them which is as unlike as possible to all that a really thoughtful writer would show. The system which our ancestors preferred may not be good for us ; it may be well to change it in part or altogether ; but that it suited them, and helped to mould a fine character in Englishmen, is almost self- evident.