The Debateable Land. By J. C. Tarver (I. Constable and
Co.) —It may be doubted whether during recent years there has been published a more important or suggestive book dealing with secondary education than this volume of essays by Mr. Tarver. Apart from the Importance of the subject-matter, the style will be found specially attractive. There is something very like "the vanished hand" of Matthew Arnold in such a passage as this, which appears in the "Epistle Dedicatory" to Arch- deacon Sinclair : "You were good enough to find my last book amusing.' I have done my best to render this one dull ; I have been warned that a large number of my fellow-countrymen whom I particularly wish to interest in the questions discussed in the ensuing pages cannot pardon anything of the nature of a joke in a work purporting to be serious ; earnestness and humour are to them incompatible qualities." It is hardly necessary to say, however, that Mr. Tarver is never dull, and indeed could not be dull though he tried. At intervals of by no means long duration we come upon passages like this : "In the world of letters the writer who is at the level of the average ignorance of his day will have a larger number of readers than he who writes for all time. It was better worth a man's while at the end of the last century to be a Samuel Richardson than a Samuel Johnson ; it is at least as lucrative now to be a Marie Corelli or Hall Caine as even to be a George Eliot." As was to be expected, Mr. Tarver has opinions of his own, and does not hesitate to give expression to them, as when he denounces the present-day tendency to value certain sciences for the money-getting facilities which are associated with them. On the subject of the subsidising of education he utters the decided opinion, which will, however, be regarded as heterodox in some quarters, that it is sound policy to subsidise Latin and mathematics, and even the enlightened teaching of modern languages not exclusively for commercial purposes ; but shorthand and book-keeping and scientific handicrafts of various sorts can, he thinks, safely be left to take care of themselves. Nor is it necessary to say that a writer who, addressing himself directly to the "County Councillor," speaks of "the incomparable silliness of our methods of dealing with educational matters as revealed by the Report of the Commission on Secondary Education," has some right to be heard upon such a subject as "The Debateable Land." The chapter on "Clerical Domination" is courageous and eminently worth reading, although Mr. Tarver can hardly be said to deal with the present time when he says that "criticism of any body of clergy, though common enough in private life, is indistinguish- able to most people from an attack upon religion." On the whole, however, the most enjoyable chapter is that on "An Ideal Teacher." This pattern educationist was William Johnson, who, born in 1823, was an assistant master at Eton from 1845 to 1872, ultimately took the name of Cory, and died at Hampstead in 1892. Altogether this book, if it bristles with disputable points, is also full of suggestiveness, and should be carefully read by all who are interested in the problems of secondary and superior educa- tion in the country.
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