Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

The word superficial, its dictionary synonym being shallow, is one that will, I fear, be a rock of offence to many ; and yet I know none better. Mr. Morley, in his lecture on Popular Culture, expresses what I mean when he says : ' What I should like to see would be an attempt to compress the whole history of England into a dozen or fifteen lectures — lectures, of course, accom- panied by catechetical instruction. I am not so extrava- gant as to dream that a short general course of this kind would be enough to go over so many of the details as it is desirable for men to know ; but details in popular instruction, though not in the study of the writer or the University professor, are only important after you have imparted the largest general truths. It is the general truths that stir a life-like curiosity as to the particulars which they are the means of lighting up.' That is what I mean by superficial teaching, something which gives a desire in the child or the girl to learn. Instead of boring her to death with what teachers consider the roots and foundations of knowledge, and which no child can under- stand or appreciate, I would strive to arouse curiosity, and trust that she would go deeper herself when the desire for knowledge came. Mr. Morley goes on to say : ' Another point is worth thinking of, besides the reduction of history for your purposes to a comprehensive body of rightly grouped generalities. Dr. Arnold says somewhere that he wishes the public might have a history of our present state of society traced backwards. It is the present that really interests us ; it is the present that we seek to understand and to explain. I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through what is happening to-day. I 326 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN want to know what men thought and did in the thir- teenth century, not out of any dilettante or idle anti- quarian's curiosity, but because the thirteenth century is at the root of what men think and do in the nineteenth. Well, then, it cannot be a bad educational rule to start from what is most interesting, and to work from that outwards and backwards.' I mourned a good deal in my own youth over the fact that I had been very badly educated, and this certainly stimulated me, at a period when time was wanting, to do what I could for myself. But on looking back over the last thirty-five years — and speaking again, of course, only from my own very limited experience — I should say that all the women who have done best in life among my married kinsfolk and acquaintances were those who were most superficially and casually educated. Two women are known to me who have filled the highest positions admirably, who have been crowns of glory to their husbands, and have been universally recognised as women of the noblest type by all who have come in contact with them in many parts of the world. As children they were by no means exceptionally clever, and their regular governess education ceased at the extremely early age of twelve. They were left, with occasional masters, to learn what they could and improve themselves; but they had from their earliest years the great advantage of constantly moving about.