Education and Educators. By David Kay. (Began Paul, Trench, and
Co.)—It may be roughly estimated that this volume consists of three-parts notes and one-part text ; and we are inclined to agree with the author when he modestly says in his preface that the chief value of the book lies in the notes. A very wide range of authors has been searched to furnish them, for it must be understood that they are made up of quotations. Many of them are uncinestionably valuable and instructive, but it strikes us that they stand somewhat in need of classification. "Texts" are not the only quotations which may be made out of place, and used to confirm statements which are very far from being true. Words used with perfect propriety thirty or forty years ago, may well by this time have lost much of their force, especially in relation to a subject wherein so much change, and per- haps we may say advance, has taken place, as education. We do not find that Mr. Kay has mach that is new or striking to tell us. He deals mach with truisms, and he has a way of enlarging on a truism till he entangles himself with something like a paradox. "Every faculty must be duly, and not more than duly cultivated," is a proposition which we are all ready to accept. It does not strengthen it to say, "Sight, or hearing, or smell may be 80 highly developed, as to render life miserable." Here there is an ambiguity in the word "developed." It is, anyhow, most unusual that any One consciously and voluntarily developee these faculties till they become burdensome to him, though it is possible that, from circumstances beyond his con- trol, they may be morbidly sensitive. Even then, who ever heard of a man possessed of sight so acute, that it made his life miserable ? Something like misery may come of very acute hearing, yet we doubt whether the possessor of a very sensitive musical ear (and this is the only form, not morbid, that can be imagined) does not really consider it a very valuable qualification. Discordant noises may torture him, but he is more than compensated by exquisite appreciation of melody.
Previous page
