During the latter, he not infrequently does his best to deaden the child's mental faculties.

In each case he is to be pitied rather than blamed.

The conditions under which he works, and has long worked, are too strong for him.

If we are to understand why secular instruction, as given in our elementary schools, is what it is, we must go back for half a century or so and trace the steps by which the "Education Department" forced elementary education in England into the grooves in which, in many schools, it is still moving, and from which even the most enlightened and enterprising teachers find it difficult to escape.
In 1861 the Royal Commission (under the Duke of Newcastle as Chairman), which had been appointed in 1858 in order to inquire into "the state of popular education in England, and as to the measures required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people," issued its report, in which it recommended _inter alia_ that the Grants paid to elementary schools should be expressly apportioned on the examination of individual children.

This recommendation was carried into effect in the Lowe Revised Code of 1862; and from that date till 1895 a considerable part of the Grant received by each school was paid on the results of a yearly examination held by H.M.Inspector on an elaborate syllabus, formulated by the Department and binding on all schools alike.