There are a million of teachers, and every one should have a copy of this work. No man is fit to teach in the high sense advocated by this author unless he has thoroughly mastered this work. It is easy to pull down a system, but not so easy to build it up; but in the New Education the follies of the old educational systems are not only levelled to the dust, but a higher and more practical, industrious, and crime-preventing system of training and teaching takes its place. This book will become the grand educational Bible for teachers in all countries where the English language is spoken.
Nor should it be in the hands of teachers only. Every intelligent father and mother, anxious for the development of their sons and daughters should study this book night and day. It should be translated into every European language, and also into Chinese and other Eastern tongues; the refined, æsthetic, and knowledge-loving people of Japan, were the work translated into their language, would enjoy it intensely.
A Japanese scholar has already undertaken the translation of the "New Education" in Japan. The JOURNAL has not room at present for the essays of correspondents, and I have only given a small portion of the essay of the learned Dr. Eadon, who is the most progressive member of the medical profession in England.
We are nearing the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. A London writer, reviewing the changes which have taken place in the period marks these notable points: A strange country was England in those far-off days; there was but little difference between the general state of society under William and the general state of society under George II. If we compared the courts of George IV. and William with the company of a low tap-room, we should not flatter the tap-room. Broad-blown coarseness, rank debauchery, reckless prodigality, were seen at their worst in the abode of English monarchs. A decent woman was out of place amid the stupid horrors of the Pavilion or of Windsor; and we do not wonder at the sedulous care which the Queen's guardians employed to keep her beyond reach of the prevailing corruption. A man like the Duke of Cumberland would not now be permitted to show his face in public save in the dock; but in those times his peculiar habits were regarded as quite royal and quite natural. Jockeys, blacklegs, gamblers, prize-fighters were esteemed as the natural companions of princes; and when England's king drove up to the verge of a prize-ring in the company of a burly rough who was about to exchange buffets with another rough, the proceeding was considered as quite manly and orthodox. Imagine the Prince of Wales driving in the park with a champion boxer!