at them, either as private bequests, as they are at length ceasing to be regarded, or as public funds, the conclusion is the same: their proper destination is the support of learning and science.

If we look upon them as private bequests, and interpret the wills of founders and benefactors on the usual çi-près principle, we should be right in devoting to investigation of facts at first hand the funds which were left by the far-seeing men of the time of the revival of letters for the support of book-learning, which at that time occupied the place of modern science. That they so regarded the aim of these bequests is shown, amongst other things, very remarkably by the universal annexation to the enjoyment of them of the condition of residence within the Universities. When the whole, or the major part, of the materials of investigation was enshrined in libraries, to insist that a man should remain where libraries were, was to insist that he should remain in his workshop.

If, on the other hand, we are to regard these endowments as public funds, as is now generally agreed, is it right that such public funds should be consumed either in educating those who are practically as well able to pay for their own education as those who now receive a similar one at, say, the London University, an institution which is not aided by the State; or in supplying a lifemaintenance to a considerable body of able young men, in return for passing a good examination at the outset of life?

It is well known that the ordinary Fellow of a college does not dream for a moment that he has any duties towards knowledge or science. He regards the public

money which he enjoys as a portion in a freehold estate, to enable him to tide over the uncertain years which come at the commencement of the ordinary professional career, the brilliant rewards of which we have shown to be the cause of the decline of science in this country, because they enable the practical life to outbid in attractiveness the laborious, but most necessary, pursuit of truth.

TECHNICAL EDUCATION.

(1877.)

Professor Huxley has seized the occasion offered him by his promise to aid the Working Men's Club and Institute Union by contributing to their present series of fortnightly lectures, to state his opinion on a question which has lately been exercising the minds of some of the most influential members of various city companies.

For some time past a joint committee, representing the most important among these bodies, has been endeavouring to obtain information as to the best means of applying certain of their surplus funds to the assistance of what is called technical education, and there is little doubt that a proposal for a huge technical university, made some time ago, and the discussion which took place in connection with that proposal, has had somewhat to do in leading to the present condition of affairs.

Professor Huxley and some four or five other gentlemen have been appealed to by this joint committee to send in reports on what they consider the best way to set about the work, and it is from this point of view that Professor Huxley's lecture is so important. It was not merely fresh and brilliant and full of good things, as all his lectures are, but is doubtless an embodiment of his report to the joint committee.

We are rejoiced, therefore, to see that Professor Huxley is at one with the view that, after all, the mind is the most important instrument which the handicraftsman, whether he be a tinker or a physicist, will ever be called upon to use, and that a technical education which teaches him to use a lathe, a tool or a loom, before he has learned how to use his mind, is no education at all.

Professor Huxley not only defined technical education as the best training to qualify the pupil for learning technicalities for himself, but he stated what he considered such an education might be, and how the city funds can be best spent in helping it on.

Besides being able to read, write and cipher, the student should have had such training as should have awakened his understanding and given him a real interest in his pursuit. The next requirement referred to was some acquaintance with the elements of physical science -a knowledge (rudimentary, it might be, but good and sound, so far as it went), of the properties and character of natural objects. The professor is also of opinion that it is eminently desirable that he should be able, more or less, to draw. The faculty of drawing, in the highest artistic sense, was, it was conceded, like the gift of poetry, inborn and not acquired; but, as everybody almost could write in some fashion or other, so, for the present purpose, as writing was but a kind of drawing, everybody could more or less be supposed to draw. A further desideratum was some ability to read one or two languages besides the student's own, that he might know what neighbouring nations, and those with which we were most mixed up, were doing, and have access to valuable sources of information which

would otherwise be sealed to him. But above all-and this the speaker thought was the most essential conditionthe pupil should have kept in all its bloom the freshness and youthfulness of his mind, all the vigour and elasticity proper to that age. Professor Huxley then went on to explain that this freshness and vigour should not have been washed out of the student by the incessant labour and intellectual debauchery often involved in grinding for examinations.

We gather from this part of the address-we shall refer to the others by and by-that so far as Professor Huxley's advice goes we are not likely to see any great expenditure of the money of the ancient city corporations either in the erection of a huge "practical" university or in the creation of still another "Examining Board." How then does he propose to spend it?

Here we come to a substantial proposal which Professor Huxley may consider to be the most important part of his address. What is wanted, he considers, is some machinery for utilising in the public interest special talent and genius brought to light in our schools. "If any Government could find a Watt, a Davy or a Faraday in the market, the bargain would be dirt cheap at 100,0007.” Referring to his saying when he was a member of the London School Board that he should like to see a ladder by which a child could climb from the gutter to the highest position in the State, he dwelt upon the importance of some system by which any boy of special aptitude should be encouraged to prolong his studies, to join art and science classes, and be apprenticed, with a premium. if necessary. In the case of those who showed great fitness for intellectual pursuits they might be trained