Originally published in 1938, this book is an attempt to present a study of eighteenth-century elementary education, not as the history of educational ideas, nor as the history of administration, in which two garbs the history of the history of education usually appears, but as the study of a neglected aspect of social history. Its main interest lies in the different reactions of philanthropic men and women in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to the movement for establishing schools on a religious basis for the children of the poor.