The generous catholicity of this comprehensive setting forth of the claims of education in its various phases, fits this discourse to serve, not only as the harmonious ending of the present volume, but, also, in a measure, to foreshadow and introduce the concluding volumes of this Report; which volumes are to contain accounts of the various public educational instrumentalities available for technical, and artistic training, now existing in the United States.

The grave importance of early elementary industrial training in the schools of the people, so tersely stated by Lord Reay in his opening sentences, and the indorsement of that statement both by Mr. Lowell, and Mr. Mundella, give to these inaugural proceedings a significance, which makes this report of them a fitting summing up and ending of the present volume.

II.-INAUGURAL ADDRESS BY LORD REAY.

* The International Educational Conference, in connection with the Health Exhibi tion, was opened at the new City and Guild's Institute, South Kensington, on Monday, the 4th inst. The chair was taken, at 11 o'clock, by the Right Honorable A. J. Mundella, M. P., vice-president of the council, and the large and representative company of visitors included the American, Persian, and Chilian ministers. A long list of foreign and English delegates followed.

Mr. MUNDELLA said: Your excellencies, my lords, ladies and gentlemen: In the unavoidable absence of my noble friend, Lord Carlingford, I have undertaken to preside at the opening of this conference. I shall not be so rash at this stage of the proceeding as to commit myself or the department with which I am connected to anything whatever. I have no doubt that during the present week we shall learn very much, to the great public advantage of the education of our country. I shall confine myself now to calling upon our worthy president, Lord Reay, to open the conference. [Applause.]

Lord CARLINGFORD (lord president of the council) entered the meeting a few minutes later, and took his place in the chair,

Lord REAY said: The building in which we are assembled marks a new departure in English education. Like most good things in England, it is the splendid result of local munificence, of local effort to satisfy a want long felt, at last acknowledged. The genius loci will, I hope, impart itself to the conference; and it too will, I trust, show us new channels of enterprise, and give to our thoughts on many subjects a new starting point.

We are not here to codify a system of education. We are aware that toleration of opposite views is the first result of a liberal education; that nothing could damage education more than fanatical adhesion to preconceived notions. In England, hitherto, we have been hospitable to every possible method of education, and we do not intend to ostracise any. The standard school, which all other schools are forced to follow, is a despotic institution which will not meet with favor in England.

I crave your indulgence for a few remarks on some of the burning questions of the day. If science is a constant inquiry into the causes and probable effects of the phenomena by which we are surrounded, it follows that we can never allow the process of inquiry to remain dormant. Constant observation of the various forces which are operating is the main element of education. The development of the powers of observation to satisfy an ever-expanding curiosity is at the root of every system of rational education. How to observe, and what to observe, in the past and in the present, is the ever-recurring function of education through life. Apply the test to the humblest and to the most exalted professions, you will see that the test does not fail. The agricultural laborer, whose work is of the most interesting description, will be efficient or inefficient, exactly in proportion as his faculty of observation has been developed. Nature will teach him something every day of his life, if he has been taught how to watch her workings. It is the same for the astronomer; observation is to him the first necessity.

IMPORTANCE OF DRAWING EVERYWHERE RECOGNIZED.

In primary education this truth is more and more recognized; and drawing, as well as elementary science and manual work, are being put in their proper places. Belgium is moving vigorously in that direction, following with reference to manual work, Sweden, where the slojel, or school of domestic industry, may well claim our attention. Two French ministers of education, Mr. Bardoux, and the present premier (Mr. Ferry), have given their verdict in favor of the extreme importance of drawing. Sweden also contributes to gymnastics that efficiency of training which-as we are so near to hygienics-I need only indicate with a word. The monopoly of the three R's is doomed, and the enthronement of the three D's-drawing, drill, and adroitnessapproaching.

* From "The Schoolmaster," August 16, 1884.

The primary school must not degenerate into a mere workshop. I do not agree with the procureur-general, de la Cholotais, when he complained of the subversive influence of the Jesuits in teaching children to read and write, who ought only to learn to handle a hammer or a plane. In pleading for rational being substituted for mechanical methods, I simply desire to rouse inquisitive tendencies, which, in many cases, now are deadened; to make the primary school, not the early grave of indi viduality, but an attractive spot where the productive use of leisure as well as of the hours devoted to work, coupled with the surroundings of prints and flowers, shall give pleasure to the boys and girls who frequent it. I need not say how important the invaluable report and recommendations of the royal commissioners on technical instruction are, and none more so than those bearing on agricultural education, to the effect that "in rural schools instruction in the principles and facts of agriculture, after suitable introductory object lessons, shall be made obligatory in the upper standards,” as it is in Ireland, and "that encouragement should be given, by way of grants, to practical work on plots of land attached to such schools." Agricultural education is considered in certain quarters as a luxury.

I may be allowed to use the strongest expressions to deprecate this extraordinary error. At the present moment the future of rural society is a great problem. The bearings of this problem on society in general are obvious. The land question is in all countries one of paramount importance. Ad nauseam we are told that land is a limited quantity, and then almost immediately after we are told that for that reason it should be made common property. The deduction to be drawn from that palpable axiom seems to me an entirely different one, namely, this: that we should throw into the management of land the highest possible skill. Gold is a rare commodity, therefore you only give it to a skilled artisan; on the other hand, the management of the soil which raises a host of scientific and economic considerations of the utmost delicacy is left in most cases to those who have not had any training in science or in the technicalities of agriculture. Farming is a pursuit which requires in these days the utmost skill and versatility. The fact is admitted, not by mere theorists, but by the most practical agriculturists in every country. We used to hear a great deal of the practical soldier as opposed to the academic soldier, but since recent wars we hear a great deal less of the former, though I do not wish that often great character to become extinct. So it is in the agricultural world. These years of depression have been the death-knell of unskilled farming. The notion of farming, of estate management, not requiring previous technical education, is quite as absurd as entrusting Her Majesty's iron-clad Inflexible, with its complex machinery, a floating laboratory; not to a scientific officer like Captain Fisher, but to a skipper of a Yarmouth fishing smack. I shall not inflict any statistics to-day on you; but I should like to know what the loss is resulting from unskillful agriculture.. Transform agriculture into a skilled pursuit, multiply men like Lord Walsingham, and we shall probably hear as little of the wish to reduce the surface of the globe to encampments of squatters as we now hear of a division of commercial navies, which are also a limited quantity, that cannot be expanded indefinitely. Not to be misunderstood, I should like to point out that in this case also science will not rob the people of enjoyment but add to it.

My friend, Sir John Lubbock, has insisted on forestry being taught. How much of enjoyment has been lost by the wanton destruction of forests, and the neglect of planting forests. The preservation of Epping Forest answers this question. By how much could the consumption of milk be increased if dairy farming were conducted on scientific principles? How are you to feed humanity in the next century if population continues to increase at its present ratio? How are you to stem the tide of immigration to the large towns? Only by giving to the rural districts that sense of pride which their inhabitants can only have if they realize that they are members of a body which commands universal respect, like the Army and the Navy, whose scientific branches have in recent years made gigantic progress. You see that in this respect, as in most other respects, I do not agree with Voltaire when he wrote to de la Chalotais, "I am grateful that you disapprove of learning for agriculturists. I, who am an agriculturist myself, do not want savants for that purpose." We do want savants, and I am happy to say that the University of Edinburgh has recognized this; but, in addition, we want trained agents, trained farmers, and trained farm laborers, just as much as we want trained merchants, trained manufacturers, trained mechanics, trained foremen, trained artisans.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION A NECESSITY.

Through technical education we must recover lost ground since the Middle Ages, when in Italy, at all events, an artisan was an artist. There is some injustice in the favorable view we entertain of our enlightened century as compared with the dark times which have left those splendid monuments of art.

The great controversy about the relative merits of the gymnasium and of the realschule has not yet invaded England. Is it because the classical school enjoys a sense

of perfect security, or is it because the technical instruction commissioners have only sounded the first note of alarm? One thing is certain: we shall have to make up our minds for a large increase of schools with a modern curriculum. What is called the perfect school, which embraces every branch of learning, would certainly never meet with favor in England. It would only lead to ancient and modern languages and science being all equally badly digested by the pupils. Such programmes, if approved by the Whiteball inspectors, would ere long attract the notice of sanitary inspectors of the local government board. The only chance of anything being taught thoroughly would be, not the efficiency of all, but the inefficiency of some of the teachers. This was illustrated in a German gymnasium, where the director, on being asked how it was that the Latin of his pupils was so satisfactory, replied, "Oh, because we are fortunate enough to have a very inefficient mathematical master." The exclusion of the study of the ancient languages does not mean the exclusion of the study of the institutions of ancient Rome and Greece. It is a fair question whether a student of German, reading German authors on the literature and institutions of Greece and Rome, will not have a deeper insight into their character than the youth who has been victimized to write hexameters. Will Mr. Warre make the study of German compulsory for all Etonians, as the bishop of Chester recommends? Will he put a stop to classics in all cases where the mind shows no capacity for their profitable influence? I do not go so far as Herbert Spencer, who quarrels with the sculptor of the Discobolus, because, unfamiliar with the theory of equilibrium, he placed him in a position which must cause him to "fall forward the moment the quoit is delivered." I do not believe that the Discobolus will cease to be admired by those who are versed in the laws of equilibrium; by German staff-officers, for instance, because Moltke approves of a scientific education in preference to a classical training.

There is a great deal of truth in Thiers' apprehension when he said, "At a time when religious convictions are weakened, if the knowledge of antiquity also became faint, we should have become a society without moral links of the past, exclusively acquainted and busy with the present, a society ignorant, lowered, only fit for mechanical industries." I also agree with M. Saint Marc de Girardin, "That if we were to clear out of our brain all the ideas we have received from the Greeks and Romans we should be frightened to realize how little remained." But the spectacle of Claude Bernard, the founder of French physiology, working in a cellar of the College de France, and shortening his life by the martyrdom inflicted on him through the absence of a laboratory, is quite as potent an educational factor as the philological research which culminates in the restoration of the original text.

HOW TO MAKE THOROUGH EDUCATION POSSIBLE.

A lawer ignorant of Roman law, a theologian ignorant of the Greek testament, an artist without classical training, seem to me imperfectly educated; but then an architect, an engineer, a doctor not trained in science, are equally unsound. The whole contention is simply one of possibilities. The hatter of a great statesman lately told him that his head had grown larger within the last ten years. We are told that a French physiologist has come to the conclusion that in generations, who from father to son have constantly used their brain, an enlargement of the skull has taken place, which, in ten centuries, would make a difference of six millimeters. The power of expansion is therefore limited, and we must have bifurcation, and if we give a variety of instruction in both schools by the teaching in both of modern languages and history, which cannot be neglected, we shall find a common ground for those who take up science and those who take up classics. Not a mere smattering of "Allgemeine Bildung" is the aim of English education; it has always striven after thoroughness, non multa sed multum." The bifurcation is rendered necessary by the very fact that a combination of both curricula would damage them both. If we are to give secondary education of any value to a large part of the population this is the only way of doing it, because they cannot afford to waste time on classics. The complaint is as old as Montaigne, who, in his day, bewails the fact of the great number of people whose mental growth was stanted by the inordinate desire to learn overmuch.

THE OBJECT OF EDUCATION TO STRENGTHEN, NOT WEAKEN, THE CHARACTER.

By education you do not want to enervate, but to strengthen, the will of the individual, and to give to his character a manly independence. The highest culture, undoubtedly, is found among the representatives of the classical school. It would be sheer ingratitude not to recognize that to it we owe writers like Newman, theologians like Lightfoot, orators like Gladstone, statesmen like Goschen, poets like Browning, artists like Alma Tadema, historians like Lecky, metaphysicians like Flint, essayists like Lowell, biographers like Trevelyan, critics like John Morley, not to mention names equally illustrious among the living and the dead, here and abroad.

*

The great bulk of the nation is not intended to speak and write, but to work, and must therefore be trained to satisfy the requirements, not of ancient Rome and of ancient Athens, but of society as at present constituted, with its extraordinary development of international relations It is the Realschule which makes it possible for young Germans to write letters in three or four languages besides their own, and to fight their way into the offices of our merchants at Manchester and at Bombay. Michel Chevalier said of the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures: "If it were not in existence it would be necessary to create it as the complement of the treaties of commerce." We have too long neglected that side of our educational system, forgetting that such schools are much more likely to benefit the greater number of those who frequent them than classical schools which only benefit a select few.

SCHOOLS MUST BE VARIED TO MEET VARIOUS NEEDS.

But if you have admitted that one type of secondary school is as impossible as one type of primary school or one type of University, you have recognized another great truth, namely, that you cannot centralize your education. The needs of nations, of localities, of individuals, are so varied that it is impossible to draw up one code. It will be unnecessary for me to remind this audience of the absolute failure to assimilate English, Scottish, and Irish education, though perhaps not everybody here would be prepared to consider this a satisfactory phenomenon. But let us ask our French friends whether they are satisfied with a centralized machinery. What does Pasteur say? How does he answer the question, "Pourquoi la France n'at-elle pas trouvé d'hom mes supérieurs au moment du péril ?" As follows: "While Germany was multiplying its universities, and establishing among them a most salutary emulation; while it was surrounding their masters and doctors with honor and consideration; while it was creating vast laboratories furnished with the best instruments, France, enervated by revolutions, always occupied with sterile aims at a better form of government, gave only a heedless attention to its establishments of higher education."

The late eminent Dumas, one of the eight inspectors of superior instruction in the University, speaks not less positively, "If the causes of our marasmus appear complex and manifold, they are still reducible to one principle-administrative centralization, which, applied to the University, has enervated superior instruction." A professor in the faculty of medicine, Lorain, boldly says: "We demand the destruction of the University of France, and the creation of separate universities." The Germans do not centralize; there is no Reichs Ministerium for education at Berlin. Ask Dollinger whether he would sanction the destruction of autonomy in matters of education in the various states of Germany.

My friend Sir Lyon Playfair assures us: "A free country like England will not tolerate state unity in education, any more than it has tolerated it in any region of her politics." Notwithstanding this gratifying assertion, he must allow me to look with considerable suspicion upon his conception of a minister of education. I am told that Herbert Spencer on one occasion maintained the opinion that we might, perhaps, be all the better for the absence of education, leaving it to the friction of life to develop individual powers. This is an extreme view; but it is more human than that of our poet Gascoigne, who says, "A boy is better unborn than untaught." Adventurous and enterprising men, though uneducated, have done great things. The tyranny which would compel the human race to be educated on identical lines seems to me to have nothing human in it at all; and I am quite certain of this, that our Empire can only be maintained if we give free scope to the greatest variety of methods of education. The French Canadian, the settler in New Zealand, the Parsee in Bombay, the ryot in the Deccan, the Scottish bursar at Aberdeen, the Connemara peasant, are all entitled to have that system of education which will develop on national and historic lines the strongest features of their race, though none of them may be able to compete for the Hertford scholarship.

If every nation were to give full play to the variety of talents which it contains, instead of trying to press their schools in one mold, we should hear less complaints of want of originality.

THE IDEAL OF A TRUE UNIVERSITY.

Are the universities to take cognizance of the technical part of education, or are they to take no part in this great movement? If the universities train our statesmen, our doctors, our lawyers, our clergy, our literary and our scientific men, I can see no reason why they should not also give us the highest engineering, artistic, financial, commercial, and agricultural skill. Why should the great institute which gives us its hospitality to-day not form part of the University of London of the future? The idea of a university is not to grind a certain number of individuals in a certain limited number of studies, and then invite them to write down answers to printed questions.

* Mr. Herbert Spencer has since denied that he is the author of this idea.