Mr. Matthew Arnold, who gave away the prizes at Dulwich
College on Wednesday, described that institution,—which is just supplying Harrow with a headmaster in its retiring headmaster, Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, and obtaining Mr. Gilkes in his place,—as an ideal school for the middle-classes, ideal in its buildings, grounds, equipments of every kind, as well as in the type of headmaster it chooses. Mr. Arnold lamented that the middle-classes, while their reign lasted,—it is now, he thinks, just over,—had not used it to supply themselves with a great network of such institutions as Dulwich College all over the country. So far from this having been effected, Mr. Arnold described the country as containing extremely few institutions of the type of Dulwich College, and in his opinion as caring very little to have them. The Democracy having now entered into possession, he thinks that the educational policy of the future will consist chiefly in improving the elementary schools, and will not gratify the hopes of the few who desire to see a polished type of intermediate education between the school intended for the children of the poor and the school intended for the children of the wealthy. The "intellectual poverty and effacement" to which the middle-classes have, by their own neglect, condemned themselves, constitute, it seems, in Mr. Arnold's opinion, a very blank prospect indeed. They have not cared for "sweetness and light," and to Philistinism and darkness they must now resign themselves—except, indeed, at Dulwich.
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