In
the beginning they are, to children, only stories, but we know ourselves
that we can never exhaust the value of what came to us through the story
of the wanderings of Ulysses, or the mysterious beauty of the Northern
and Western myths, as the story of Balder or the children of Lir. The
art of telling stories is beginning to be taught with wonderful power
and beauty, the storyteller is turning into the pioneer of the
historian, coming in advance to occupy the land, so that history may
have "staked out a claim" before the examining bodies can arrive, in the
dry season, to tread down the young growth.
The second period makes appeal to the intelligence, as well as to the
imagination, and to this stage belongs particularly the study of the
national history, the history of their own race and country; for English
girls the history of England, not yet constitutional history, but the
history of the Constitution with that of the kings and people, and
further the history of the Empire. To this period of education belong
the great lessons of loyalty and patriotism, that piety towards our own
country which is so much on the decline as the home tie grows feebler.
We do not want to teach the narrow patriotism which only finds
expression in antagonism to and disparagement of other countries, but
that which is shown by self-denial and self-sacrifice for the good of
our own.
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