offeuce is loss of increase of his salary at the annual revision. I do not exaggerate when I say that the hopes and fears clustering round this annual increase of salary make hundreds of teachers and thousands of children wretched. If, as is usually the case, he obeys the Board official (who, be it remembered, is not chosen for his educational ability, but for his power of organization), he does so at the expense of his educational conscience. The recommendations of the Board inspectors are necessary to promotion; hence their approval is the matter of the greatest concern to teachers. For as the system of large factory schools makes the number of head-masterships few, and the number of assistants many, and, further, as head-masters inconveniently fail to die or retire except after many years, the applicants are out of all proportion to the vacancies. In my own town there might be in a year three or four vacancies for headships; and for these vacancies there would be a hundred or so qualified applicants. I appreciate the difficulty of making a choice; and the fatal ease of adopting the political device, namely, that of accepting the nomination of a member of the Board or Education Authority. But this involves a good deal of backstairs influence and what teachers called unprofessional conduct.

Some teachers made no disguise of their intentions. Meaning to get on, they frankly adopted the methods necessary. They sought out the powerful individual Board inspector, or political magnate, and unblushingly importuned him for favors. Canvassing disqualifies, technically, and, of course, such a teacher would know better than ask openly for promotion. But he would find out the favorite church or society or weakness of his victim, and then play upon it. Perhaps the political magnate thought of himself as an edu

cational expert, then our teacher would submit his difficulties to him for advice. Or he was an enthusiastic football patron, and then the method of procedure was different. In any case, by reason of insistency, by constantly hearing the name, or by constantly seeing the person, the man in power came to be habituated to the existence of such a teacher. And when the next appointment came to be made, as surely as one asks for such and such a soap, or for so-and-so's matches, the magnate suggested the name that had been so well advertised.

Now the point is that such a teacher might be, probably would be, the worst and not the best of his class. I am not supposing that many other teachers would not willingly adopt the same means, if they dared. But among the hundred or so qualified applicants, at least a few would be too honorable, too considerate of their profession, to advertise in this way; and, educationally speaking, they would probably be better teachers for it, at least in their relations with children. But for this they would pay the penalty of obscurity. I confess that the question of promotion is difficult; and sometimes I have been driven out of pity for the authorities to suggest that the teachers should appoint their own heads. Of one thing I am certain, that they would choose more wisely than the authorities possibly could. For, let it be repeated, the practical art of teaching is a "mystery" in the mediæval sense; it is a craft known only to craftsmen. And nobody can judge so well as the craftsman who is and who is not qualified to be a master craftsman.

The policy of building large schools is probably due to the causes that have established the factory system in manufacture. Apparently even the Socialists of the day are in favor of them, though they inveigh against the factory system in trade. All the argu

ments against the factory system in trade are applicable to the factory system in education, together with many more. The head-master of a school of four or five hundred children is not an educator or even a teacher. He is simply an organizer, a kind of clerk of the works. His personal relations with the children are small and ineffective. He must deal with them in companies and classes.

The alternatives of small schools are, I am told, too expensive to be thought of. Then let us not pretend that education is possible, but frankly say that the modern schools are bad. So many people are willing to admit that this part of the system is radically wrong, and that part of the system is radically wrong; and yet to object loudly if one says that the education given is bad. The tree, they admit, is thorn, but the fruit is grape. Surely this is not so. If almost every detail of the system is bad, the outcome is bad too. It will be a great step towards reform when we admit it.

I may be allowed to say a few words about Scriptural instruction from a practical standpoint. Properly speaking, I have never seen any Scriptural instruction that was different from ordinary instruction. The Scripture syllabus was on the same plane as the geography syllabus. There were so many statements to be taught, so many words to be explained, so many verses to be learned. That was all. And very dull and difficult work I found it. My last experience was with a class of boys, aged between six and seven, and numbering fifty or sixty. The syllabus of instruction for the first two months of the school year was the Lord's Prayer and the first three Commandments, with examples of their breach. I put it to any rational being whether he could explain to boys of that age the theological niceties of the Lord's Prayer and the first three Com

mandments. The vocabulary alone might have been Sanscrit in some respects, so unintelligible was it to the boys. Had there been no examination at the end of it all one might have done one's best to open the minds of the children to something like religious feeling. But what was expected as the result of the instruction was not a dawning spiritual faculty but the repetition of the Commandments, and a dictionary acquaintance with the meanings of the words. For all the religion in it the lesson might have been history. If that is what the present educational dispute turns on, then the present dispute is much ado about next to nothing. Of religious teaching, I repeat, I have seen none in any Board school, or, for the matter of that, in any elementary school at all.

But, what is your remedy? it may be asked. I have no immediate remedy. It is not my business to have remedies, at least from the popular standpoint. I have already said that the two vital factors of education are the teacher and the child. To my mind all discussions that do not realize this are beside the mark. So far as the child is concerned the teacher is at the mercy of the State. He cannot control the sources of supply; he must simply accept what the State puts into his hands. But once there, it is the business of the teacher to say not what shall be done to the child but how it shall be done. As a teacher. I admit the right and obligation of the State to define the objects and even the subjects of education; but I deny entirely the right or capacity of the State to define the methods of education. That is an art, and the collective control of methods of art is fatal. At the same time, I see also the difficulty of the State in this respect. So many teachers are below even the av erage intelligence of a State official. Hence some direction and control seem

to be necessary. Yet, in so far as they are exercised, the teacher degenerates.

Here we get into a vicious circle, the traversing of which makes the head giddy. What is the way out? I suggest that the only way out now and at any time from the educational muddle is to raise the standard of the teacher. Only by infinitely slow degrees can we raise the standard of the child. By rapid degrees we can raise, and have raised, the standard of school buildings and such material; but the work of raising the second vital factor of education, namely, the teacher, has scarcely begun. And the method of raising that standard is not difficult. As Cromwell raised a splendid army by the simple device of paying high wages, thereby commanding the services of the efficient, so the modern educational system could command superior teachers simply by paying for them. Loudly as the Union of Teachers has complained of the economic position of teachers, the general public does not yet realize the facts.

As a concrete instance, I may cite my own case. In my five years' apprenticeship as candidate and pupilteacher I received the total sum of £30, an average of £6 a year. Out of this I had to find my books. My two years in a training college cost me an entrance fee of £18, my clothes, books, expenses, and keep during holidays. At twenty-one, therefore, after seven years of teaching and training, my financial account with the nation was this: Received £30; spent, considerably over £100. From such a Spartan training one would naturally expect a fairly large salary. I received in my first year £80. By annual increments of £5, promised but not always given, I arrived, after seventeen years of teaching, at the magnificent annual salary of £120, with the chances of a hundred or so to three against a head-master

ship. Of course my case is far from being singular. In the next class-room to my own taught a man aged nearly sixty. He had been a head-master in a .country school, and was a most conscientious and painstaking teacher. His salary was less than mine.

People to whom I have told these facts have said, "Surely, the case must be exceptional." Yet when I first went to the city where I have taught for twelve years, there was not a single assistant teacher who was receiving £120 a year. Things have, in fact, improved, but my own case is still exceedingly common. Others have said: "Oh, but teaching is such a noble profession that teachers ought not to want high salaries. See what a privilege it is to mould the minds of the young." To this the obvious reply is that man cannot live by teaching alone. Teachers are like other people; they desire to marry and to set up a home; now and then also, however incredible it may sound, they like to go away for holidays, to have friends and pleasures; even, most extraordinarily, to buy books and to see the world. How much of this can be done on one hundred and twenty pounds a year? If the ideal teacher were a recluse, an ascetic, a person to whom all knowledge and experience came by nature, this sum might suffice. But the very opposite qualities are demanded. Above all, he should be a traveller, if he is to know the world he teaches; a frequenter of the society of many minds, if he is to have insight; a learner from things and books always, if he is to keep his fount of knowledge fresh and everflowing. And for these things money is necessary.

The result of the present scale of salary is obvious enough. The most sympathetic of managers whisper in private that the teachers are a poor set of creatures, more in need of education than capable of giving it. We

are a poor lot. I do not deny it. And so long as parents hesitate between sending a lad into teaching or into drapery, or a girl into teaching or domestic service, the elementary teaching staff will remain what it is, poor, incompetent, mean and dull. I am told that the fool of the family is now made a teacher. I can well believe it. If, like Solomon, I had a thousand children I would only make them teachers who were fit for nothing else. And how many times have I heard teachers say the same! Indeed, of the hundreds of elementary assistant teachers I have known, I have never known a single one who did not bitterly regret having been a teacher. This, of course, applies doubly to men. Women teachers, as a rule, exchange the profession of teaching for a noble profession; but men must remain. Thus it is that boy pupil teachers are so hard to obtain, and girl pupil teachers so easy. For girls it is a hard life, but, with luck, a comparatively short one. For boys, it is not much better than penal servitude for life.

But what would raising the standard The Monthly Review.

of payment do? In the first place, it would considerably reduce the bitterness now so common in teachers' councils; no small thing, considering the fact that that bitterness is imported into the schools. Secondly, it would gradually attract to the profession men of a superior type, who now find scope for themselves in journalism, private teaching, law, engineering, secretarial work, and the like. The leaven of even a little culture would serve to raise the average teacher's estimate of his profession. Thirdly, the mere granting of the raised wages would be an earnest of the State's belief in education, and in the nobility of teaching; a belief which, so far, in practical issue, may be regarded as little more than a pious opinion. I repeat still again, that the problem of education is the problem of the teacher. Of all Acts, and proposals for Acts, the genuine educationist asks only one thing-does it make for the improvement of the teacher? If yes, it is well. If no, then let the country rave as it will, no improvement will come of it.

CHAPTER I.

HOW BLAIR OF BLAIR CAME RIDING NORTH.

They called it Windy Hill, and rightly. Stark to the moor-top winds it stood, a sharp, steep hill, pointed like a spear; between the clumps of heather grew patches of short grass, which a few lack-lustre sheep cropped diligently, striving somehow to keep wool and hide together.

At the foot of the hill there stood a house, once fortified against all comers, but now half-ruined. From of old it had been named Windy Hall, though it was sheltered in a measure from the

east wind and the north. Two people only lived here-Sir Peter Lynn and his daughter Barbara-and folk in the valley-lands wondered how the two kept soul and body together. For it was known that not all their pride of race had brought them riches, though adherence to the Faith had long since brought them extreme poverty.

They found life hard, if the truth were known, until a stranger rode that way. It was near to the gloaming of

a winter's afternoon, and the sun was dipping red behind the crest of Windy Hill. Barbara had come from the neglected garden-full now of dry and frosty stems of last summer's weeds

had stayed for a moment to look down the valley, shading her eyes with a brown hand. She saw a horseman, spurring a hard-driven mare straight up the road that led to Windy Hill.

Women, they say, can scent love as swallows scent the coming summer. It may be so; at any rate, Barbara felt something stirring at her heart that, a moment since, had not been there. She watched the horseman gallop up the steep. She saw his horse falter as it neared the farmstead gate-falter, and stumble, and fall prone.

The rider jumped to the ground, deftly lighting on his feet, and stooped to feel the mare's body.

She approved the man. Because she had lived in solitude, with the hills and the streams for tutors-these, and Sir Peter's teaching that the Faith and the Cause were life's only serious issues— she was not afraid to look him in the face. Gravely, proudly, with a curious innocence and fearlessness, she measured and approved him.

"Has the Cause sped?" she asked. Muddied, haggard with long riding and long anxiety, the stranger might well have had any reason for escaping from pursuit. He might, for instance, have done murder, or have held up a coach on some neighboring heath. Barbara did not pause to make surmises; she knew that the friends militant of the Cause had marched far down toward London, and any rider, spurring with danger close following the hind-hoofs of his mare, must be a combatant on one or the other side. Instinctively, seeing the fashion of this stranger, hearing his voice, she knew that he was on the side of loyalty, and trusted him with the secret that Sir Peter Lynn was well-affected-a se

cret which, told to disloyal ears, might well have cost Sir Peter his liberty, if not his head.

Her trust was justified, as the trust of clean, hill-bred folk is wont to be.

"I am from Derby," he answered simply, "and the Prince-"

"Yes, yes, go on!" she said impetuously. She was shading her eyes with one hand, as if to see more clearly, as she looked at him, whether his news were good or evil.

"How shall I tell it?" he faltered. "It is not George's men that have bidden him retreat, but jealousy."

The girl's hand closed about her eyes. She seemed like one met by sudden news of death-death of some well-beloved-and the gray, winter's look of the moor behind her was all in keeping with the silence of these two. It was in keeping, moreover, with the silence following the retreat at Derby, three days ago.

"He won to Derby-and retreated?" she asked pitifully.

"No!" for the first time the stranger held his head high, and turned it half about as if listening for the skirl of Stuart pipes, the swish of Stuart kilts. "No! The Prince did not retreat-his Highlanders did not retreatit was the cursed leaders of the claus who had their jealousies."

"Ah God!" said Barbara, wistfully. She was looking at him steadfastly, and her brave eyes were dark as the hill-tops when the rain-mists lie on them. "There was jealousy? You tell me there was jealousy?"

The man's teeth showed like a wolf's, though at usual moments he was comely and well-bred. "It was my Lord Murray again," he said. "Murray has been stepfather to the Rising since its start. I wish he had died in Scotland and had been buried there, out of harm's way."

A woman's heart is a deep well to fathom. Out of her grief for Prince