Sir Henry Roscoe, in his address at the opening of
the Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh, on Tuesday, made some ex- cellent remarks on the extreme feebleness of a great part of our intermediate education ; but his speech, as reported, seems to make him try the character of that education by the amount of assistance given to it by the State. Surely this is not his real meaning. We cannot see why people who are in the middle class of life should ask the State to help them educate their -children out of resources which must be contributed in some degree even by the poor. We do not ask the State to help us in buying our private libraries or beautifying our private houses, and we do not see why we should ask it to help us in adding to the education offered in our elementary schools, those higher and broader studies which are the first requisites of a liberal education. As Sir Henry Roscoe says, the elementary schools stop at words of four syllables and at twelve times twelve in the multiplication-table ; and of course the middle classes ought to have the ambition to take their children much further than that. But then, why should they not also have the ambition to pay for that further educa- tion out of their own pockets P We are getting to lean on the State a great deal too much.
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