_Dunsford_. Now, very likely, if more were made of them, you, and men who think like you, would begin to cry out “superstition”; and would instantly turn round and inveigh against the uses which you now, perhaps, imagine for cathedrals.
_Milverton_. Well, one never can answer for oneself; but at any rate, I do not see what is the meaning of building new churches in neighbourhoods where there are already the noblest buildings suitable for the same purposes. Is there a church religion, and is there a cathedral religion?
_Ellesmere_. You cannot make the present fill the garb of the past, Milverton, any more than you could make the past fill that of the present. Now, as regards the very thing you are about to discuss to-day, if it be the same you told us in our last walk—Education: if you are only going to give us some institution for it, I daresay it may be very good for to-day, or for this generation, but it will have its sere and yellow leaf, and there will be a time when future Milvertons, in sentimental mood, will moan over it, and wish they had it and all that has grown up to take its place at the same time. But all this is what I have often heard you say yourself in other words.
_Dunsford_. This is very hard doctrine, and not quite sound, I think. In getting the new gain, we always sacrifice something, and we should look with some pious regard to what was good in the things which are past. That good is generally one which, though it may not be equal to the present, would make a most valuable supplement to it.
_Milverton_. I would try and work in the old good thing with the new, not as patchwork though, but making the new thing grow out in such a way as to embrace the old advantage.
_Ellesmere_. Well, we must have the essay before we branch out into our philosophy. Pleasure afterwards—I will not say what comes first.
The word education is so large, that one may almost as well put “world,” or “the end and object of being,” at the head of an essay. It should, therefore, soon be declared what such a heading does mean. The word education suggests chiefly to some minds what the State can do for those whom they consider its young people—the children of the poorer classes: to others it presents the idea of all the training that can be got for money at schools and colleges, and which can be fairly accomplished and shut in at the age of one-and-twenty. This essay, however, will not be a treatise on government education, or other school and college education, but will only contain a few points in reference to the general subject, which may escape more methodical and enlarged discussions.