home as a compulsory refuge. Education finally settled itself, as was inevitable as well as appropriate, in view alike of the present and the future, into the free gift of the State, impartially awarded to all its children, in degrees and varieties according to their natural capacity and aptitude. But, to the national credit, this was rarely any expense to the State, as the large and increasing means of its more prosperous citizens were ever emulatively offered to defray the cost. Repeatedly, at particular stages of the educational course, the millions of pupils were each and all carefully examined as to their respective dispositions, and their attainments physical and mental, so as to direct specially the further and higher education. The State thus appreciatively overlooked and estimated the vast and varied field of its future prospect and hope. It was truly the spectacle of a precious and priceless mine, which the State, as the privileged owner, could not but treat with all that science and skill which should secure from it the largest and best outcome.
The generation which inaugurated all this great change was not indeed fully rewarded by seeing and enjoying all its effects. Not indeed until the twentieth and succeeding centuries did we experience the full benefit of that great national movement. When scientific and technical education had come into full play, every one of the almost countless mass of workers was converted into an actual daily and hourly combatant in the battle of science, as well as of business and general progress. In thus ever marshalling forth the educated talent of the great mass of the nation, the new system gave to progress its prodigious
