EDMONTON — EDUCATION all manner of sounds; and his method of preparing carbon filaments for the incandescent electric lamp. In 1878 Edison received the degree of Ph.D. from Union College, and in the same year was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honour by the French Government. Edmonton, a suburb of London, England, in the Enfield parliamentary division of Middlesex, 9 miles north of the City by rail. There is an ancient church containing interesting brasses and tablets, town-hall, and a free library. Cowper and Keats lived here for a time, as did Charles Lamb, who died and was buried here. In 1881 Southgate was separated from Edmonton parish. Population of urban district (3890 acres), (1881), 15,174 ; (1891), 25,380; (1901), 46,899. Edmunds, George Franklin (1828 ), American lawyer and statesman, was born in Rich-
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mond, Vermont, on 1st February 1828. He began the practice of law in 1849. He served in each House of the Vermont legislature at different times between 1854 and 1862, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1866, where he remained until 1891, when he resigned in order to have more time for the practice of his profession. He took an active part in the attempt to impeach President Johnson. He was influential in providing for the electoral commission to decide the disputed Presidential election of 1876, and became one of the commissioners. In the Republican conventions of 1880 and 1884 he was a candidate for the Presidential nomination. From 1881 until 1885 he was president pro tempore of the Senate. As senator he was conspicuous on account of his legal attainments, industry, and liberal opinions. He was the author of the so-called Edmunds Act of 22nd March 1882 for the suppression of polygamy in Utah.
EDUCATION. FORMER articles on the subject of education have appeared successively in the various editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and have well illustrated the very different aspects under which the subject of education may be viewed. Mr James Mill’s treatise in the Supplement of 1824 discussed with fulness and much acuteness various abstract questions—-e.g., the genesis of ideas ; the qualities of mind which it should be the chief business of education to develop; the instruments of instruction; the circumstances, whether material or moral, which operate upon and control mental growth ; and the right function of domestic, social, and political training respectively, as distinguished from formal didactic teaching by means of school lessons. Except for a descriptive reference to Jeremy Bentham’s famous experiment of a “ Chrestomathic ” dayschool, there is little in Mr Mill’s article which deals practically with the provision or organization of schools, or with any proposals for legislative action. The whole of this valuable paper is speculative and philosophical, and is highly characteristic of its author and of the spirit in which the subject of popular instruction was at first approached by the leading thinkers of his day. Dr J. D. Morell, one of the most distinguished of the first group of inspectors, contributed to the edition of 1858 an account of German and Swiss education, and a description of the tentative efforts which at that date the Government of Great Britain was making in the department of public elementary instruction. He foreshadowed with much ability the probable future of a State system in England on the lines laid down by Sir James Kay Shuttle worth—a system then in an early and experimental stage, and only beginning to attract the serious attention of British statesmen. Mr O. Browning’s article in the ninth edition is mainly concerned with the growth of educational ideas and theories. He followed the precedent set by Aristotle, who in book i. of the Metaphysics made a critical survey of the history of Greek philosophy from Thales to Plato, and an estimate of the merits of the chief metaphysical writers. As a descriptive history of the books and speculations which all through the Greek, Roman, and Renaissance periods have in different ways helped to shape opinion and policy on the subject of education, Mr Browning’s article is invaluable to the student who desires to take a vue d'ensemble of the several parts of the educational problem, and to know what are the ideals which have from time to time prevailed on this subject, and how far it has been possible to give practical effect to those ideals. Other branches of the general subject will be found treated in
detail in the articles Universities and Technical Education. In connexion with each of the countries of Europe and of the British colonies and dependencies there will be found facts relating to the educational provision made by their several Governments, and the way in which the law of public instruction is administered. The scope of the present article is thus definitely restricted. Its main purpose will be to trace the gradual growth of what may be called the English system, the forces which have controlled it, and the results it effected during the last quarter of the 19th century. It should be observed in limine that England has a unique history so far as public provision for the education of the people is concerned. That provision is not the product of any theory or plan formulated ^^a^er" beforehand by statesmen or philosophers. It English has come into existence through a long course educaof experiments, compromises, traditions, sue-tionaI cesses, failures, and religious controversies. Whathistory’ has been done in this department of public policy is the resultant of many diverse forces, and of slow evolution and growth, rather than of clear purpose and well-defined national aims. It has been effected in different degrees by philanthropy, by private enterprise, by religious zeal, by ancient universities and endowed foundations, by municipal and local effort, and only to a small extent by legislation. The genius, or rather the characteristic mental habit, of the English people, is averse from philosophical system, and is disposed to regard education not as a science, but as a body of practical expedients to be discovered empirically and amended from time to time as occasion may require. The tendency to distrust theorists and to be afraid of legislation has in England been strongly reinforced, and indeed largely justified, by the fact that most of the legal enactments of the past were negative and restrictive only, and were neither calculated nor intended to encourage educational progress. Henry YIII.’s ordinances respecting grammar schools forbade the use of any other than the authorized primers and Latin books. Elizabeth’s Act of Uniformity severely restricted the liberty of teaching; and the Act of Charles II. in 1662 obliged all schoolmasters, whether lay or clerical, to accept the declaration of Conformity, and to obtain a licence from the bishop or the ordinary. The Acts generally known as the Clarendon Code were even more stringent in their requirements, and the Occasional Conformity Act (1711) and the Schism Act (1713) put it out of the power of Dissenters to hold office or to keep any private or public school. Thus the
