On Wednesday, Lord Granville, the Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports, opened a new middle-class school and college at Dover, which has been established by a local company, for the sake of ovidin g a good, sound, secondary education at a very moderate price. The college is established in a building which was pre- viously the priory of St. Martin, and which has been repaired and .extended for the purpose, and a head master who is a dis- tinguished graduate of Cambridge, the Rev. Mr. Bell, has been secured for it. Lord Granville expressed his approval of the in- tention of the Company not only to give a good education, but to make the school pay so as to return a fair rate of interest to the shareholders, and of the programme, which apparently con- templates that science, the modern languages, and especially English, shall take an important place in the course of instruction, and that the pupils or their parents are to be
allowed to exercise a considerable option in the selection of the particular branches of study to be pursued. nisi is all very well, if the principle of option be not carried too far,—so as to permit the student or his parents to select incone gruous branches of study which do not fit into each other, and reject what is absolutely necessary to complete any coherent scheme of mental discipline. For instance, parental ignorance has been known to select chemistry and reject natural philosophy, without which chemistry is hardly intelligible; to select astronomy and reject mathematics, without which astronomy is a mere vague picture ; to select English literature, and reject English history. The British parent, often not oven half educated himself, and so much the more dogmatic, must be kept in some sort of subjection, if the mind of the British child is to be thoroughly disciplined.
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