This is not education in its true and highest sense--_i.e._, the bringing forth the best that is in a man; not simply putting knowledge into him, but using the variety of gifts, which even the poorest in endowment possess, to the best possible end. And this seems more and more difficult as the stereotyped pattern is more and more enforced in board-schools, endowed schools, public schools, universities; and each bit of plastic material, while young, is forced as much as possible into the same shape, the only contention being who shall have the construction of the die which all alike are eager to apply to every individual of the nation.
Of all races which have yet existed there can be no doubt that the Greek was the one most highly endowed with artistic powers of all kinds; yet the Greek was certainly not, in our sense of the term, an educated man at all; his powers of every kind, however, were cultivated indirectly by the very atmosphere he lived in. His sensitive artistic nature found food in the forms and colours of the mountains and the islands, the sea and the sky, by which he was surrounded; by the human nature about him in its most perfect development; by every building--his temples, his tombs, his theatres--every pot and pan he used, every seat he sat upon; whereas no man's eye can be other than degraded by the unspeakable ugliness of an English manufacturing town, or, what is almost worse, by the sham art where decoration of any kind is invented or attempted by the richer middle class.
The theory that soil and climate and food produce instincts of beauty, as well as varieties of beasts and plants, is, however, evidently at fault in these questions; for if this were the case at one time in the world's history, why not at another? and the present inhabitants of Greece are as inapt as their neighbours in sculpture, painting, and architecture. Nothing, even out of the workshops of Birmingham, can exceed the ugliness of their present productions--_e.g._, a Minerva's head without a forehead, done in bead-work on canvas, fastened on to a piece of white marble, which was given as a precious parting gift from the goddess's own city to a valued friend. There seems now a headlong competition in every country after bad art. If we ask for lace and embroidery in the Greek islands, or silver fillagree in Norway,--if we inquire for wood-carving from Burmah, or the old shawls and pottery from Persia and the East,--the answer is always the same: we are told that there is "none such made at present." It is only what remains of the old handmade work that is to be obtained; the present inhabitants "care for none of these things." Sham jewellery from the "Palais Royal," Manchester goods, stamped leather, and the like, are what the natives are seeking for themselves, while they get rid of "all those ugly old things" to the first possible buyer for any price which they can fetch.