A Story with a Moral.

In the course of a lengthy address to the students and pupils of the Central Higher School, Sheffield, Mr Mundella, who has charge of the Education Department in England, showed, by an interesting personal experience, the value of free education. The following is the right hon. gentleman's glowing picture:—The story I was going to tell you was this—I was in Switzerland, in the Engandine. At the door of the hotel was a shop, where all kinds of souvenirs were sold, whether they were Swiss carving, or some French, German, or English articles. There was a blight, clever young woman selling all kinds of little souvenirs for people to carry away with them when they went home. A gentleman very well known to English people was staying in the same hotel with me, and he said, "That's a very bright girl that keeps that shop; I recommend you to go in and buy something." So I made a pretext to buy some trifle, and she addressed me in perfect idiomatic English. I asked her where she learned English, and she replied "At Lucerne." "You speak excellently," I said, "and of course you speak French and German, for they are your native languages? ' "Of course I do," she answered. "Anything else?" I asked, Oh yes, Italian and Dutch," and afterwards she confessed she also knew a little Spanish and was studying it. I found on making further inquiries that this girl was taught at Lucerne, and that it cost a franc a year—that is only 10d, which was spent in paper and pencils. I continued my investigations, and resolved that on my way back through Switzerland I would stop at Lucerne, and look more closely into their system than I had already done. And what did I find? I found rather a novel state of things. I think it would suit the teachers, I fancy it would suit the parents, and I am sure it would suit the Treasury; but I do not think we are quite ripe for it, and I do not see that we are likely to come to it yet. What I found was this—all the children of Lucerne, rich and poor, were, of course, subject to the same laws and attended the same schools—that the minimum age at which a child can leave school is fourteen, but that any child who desired to continue longer might go to the secondary school, where he or she might acquire those languages up to seventeen or eighteen. The director of schools in that Canton told me : "All our schools are free, all our children attend school, every child, however poor, masters two languages—French and German—and those who go to the secondary school must master at least one other." I said, "Who pays for these things?" "The commune city." "But don't they grumble?" "No; they know it is the safety of the rich and the best inheritance of the poor." "But," said I, "do you tell me that the rich people who live at the villas at the west end of the city, by the side of the lake, send their children to school with the poor children—the children of the boatmen and the laborers of the city?" "Certainly they do," was the reply, and this was confirmed by the treasurer of the city, an eminent physician I had occasion to call in. "Are there not some children who do not come to school clean?" I asked. "Do not the rich object to poor, dirty children?"

The answer was : "We allow no dirty children to come into our schools." I then said : "But you have diseases—you may have infantile diseases coming from the poor homes." "Yes," they answered, we take care of that; we have a system of notification of diseases, and we segregate any family where there is infectious disease." I put some other searching questions. I said, "You have plenty of governesses and tutors in private houses." But the answer was, "There is not a private teacher in the Canton of Lucerne." Thus, practically, the rich and poor go together through the whole curriculum. I further asked : "How, if you have a poor widow, with a large family, who wants to go out to work, and keeps her eldest girl at home to take care of the little ones—you don't refuse her?" "Yes, we do," they said, "we help the mother, but we do not allow the child to be neglected.' Then I went a little further. I thought of some of the poor starving children that we have in our great cities and towns at home, and so I said What do you do with the poor children who do not get enough to eat, and who have not clothes to come to school in?" The reply was : "We have a voluntary society in every town in Switzerland which provides for them. In Lucerne we have 4000 children on the school books, and 700 of these receive some assistance without any shame to themselves." I called the attention of a female teacher to some children that looked very poor, and I said "These look very poor." Yes, sir," was the reply, "they are the children of a very poor woman." Then she pointed out five children in her class, and said : "I happened to mention that these children were not properly fed, and the other children told it to their parents; and now they have three houses where they can go to dinner every day with their school companions. I had two or three classes last year, the richer children taking the poor home with them. And every year," she added, "at Christmas time in, every town the richer families send to the school visitors any clothes they have to spare for the use of the poor children." The physician to whom I have alluded said to me: "We Swiss people cannot live in our limited territory; we multiply very fast. We have to shave the scalps of the mountains for our grass to feed our flocks and herds; and we want to give our people enterprise and intelligence. We send thorn forth into the world, and we want that they should had themselves useful citizens wherever they go." There is a moral to be drawn from that. You may apply it to England from beginning to end, and you may, I am sure, usefully imitate the Lucerners in this town.