Although the commencing section has been thrown into the introductory
form, it has seemed to me necessary to annex a few lines by way of
preface, in order to explain that the following pages do not pretend to
deal exhaustively with the subject of which they treat, but offer to
public consideration a series of representative types and selected
specimens. To have barely enumerated all the authors and works on British
education would fill a volume much larger than that in the hands of the
reader.
My main object has been to trace the sources and rise of our educational
system, and to present a general view of the principles on which the
groundwork of this system was laid. So far as I am capable of judging,
the narrative will be found to embody a good deal that is new and a good
deal that ought to be interesting.
The bias of the volume is literary, not bibliographical; but its
production has involved a very considerable amount of research, not only
among books which proved serviceable, but among those which yielded me no
contribution to my object.