Notices of Books.

Linear Drawing. By Ellis A. Davidson, Lecturer on Science and Art in the City of London Middle-Class Schools. Price 2s.-We have heard and read a great deal of talk during the past few years on the comparative merits of English and Continental artisans. We have been informed, and, no doubt, with a considerable amount of truth, that English workmen, as a rule, are entirely ignorant of the principles underlying the mechanical work they have been taught to do so well; that they work in the dark, and, as an inevitable consequence, they are charged with a lack of inventive power. The Book before us is the first of a Series, to be published by Cassell and Co., for the purpose of wiping away this stain on the character of our artisan population. It is a very good beginning. Practical Geometry should form part of the education of all our mechanics, inasmuch as it forms the basis of all the mechanical and decorative arts. Separate volumes of the same Series are to be devoted to the several brauches of scientific, or as it is called, Technical Education, such as masonry, mechanism, iron and wood work, &c., and we trust we shall be able to speak as favourably of these as of the first. The Book itself does credit to both author and publisher. The exercises are skilfully arranged and beautifully printed on strong paper. The several figures stand on the same page as the instructions, which will save time and trouble, and Drawings are introduced showing the practical application of previous exercises to trade and manufacture-two very useful features. It will prove a very useful manual for selfinstruction, and valuable to teachers as a text-book.

Book Keeping. By R. G. C. Hamilton and J. Ball. Oxford Clarendon Press Series. This little work contains a brief but clear exposition of the principles of Book Keeping by Double Entry, 'a method' as the authors well observe, 'equally applicable to every description of accounts, whether commercial, public, fiduciary (trust accounts), or private ; a method simple in its design and perfect in its results.' The writers grapple with the difficulties of the subject at once, and instead of having to wade through a hundred and fifty pages or so of comparatively useless matter connected with Single Entry, as is the case with most works on Book Keeping, the student will here find the principles of Double Entry, the only sensible method, clearly enunciated, thoroughly explained and illustrated in the course of about 30 pages. The appendix contains a complete set of mercantile transactions for one month, and we recommend the student, after a careful study of the illustrations given in the first part of the book, to work the examples contained in the appendix. A New Method for the Extraction of the Cube Root. By D. R. Meldrum. London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co.-The author states in his preface that 'in endeavouring to simplify the old and somewhat complicated system of extracting the cube root the method exemplified in the following pages was discovered.' We have carefully examined the examples given in the work, but we failed to discover the simplicity of the method adopted; we should have been glad had the author given us a hint as to the exact nature of its superiority over old methods. As compared with Colenso's plan we think it very intricate and complicated. In every case we found it longer, and requiring more figures. We cannot give an idea of the new method without reproducing the whole book, but we would draw attention to one example, No. 8, in which division has actually to be performed by the numbers 3030, 1010, 30390, 10130. The only difficulty in Colenso's method is in finding the 2nd root figure, as the trial divisor is generally very much smaller than the real divisor; but this difficulty soon disappears by practice. The plan advocated is ingenious, and we have no doubt of its originality; but we cannot recommend its adoption to teachers in preference to that which is given in Colenso's Algebra,

Educational Notices, etq.

Scholastic Registration Association.

The Committee of this Association has passed the following important resolutions:

'That it is expedient, in the prospect of a General Election, to remind Schoolmasters throughout the Country of the valuable opportunity thus presented of enlisting the future Members of the House of Commons in favour of such a Bill of Scholastic Registration as shall give to the public the means of discriminating between duly qualified Teachers and incompetent empirios.'

"That the Committee recommend to the Association to introduce a Bill into Parliament early next year.'

Alterations in the Science Directory.

Some important alterations have been made in the nature and amount of the assistance afforded by the Science Department, which have been announced in a circular printed and distributed to Science Teachers in anticipation of the new Directory.

I. Those relating to Scholarships and Exhibitions have been already given in detail in our last April number; and those relating to the Whitworth Scholarships, in the June number.

II. Building grants are offered on these terms:-A grant in aid of a new building, or for the adaptation of an existing building, for a School of Science may be made at a rate not exceeding 2s. 6d. per square foot of internal area, up to a maximum of £500 for any one School, provided that the Schools

(a) Be built under the Public Libraries Act.

(b) Be built in connection with a School of Art aided by a Department Building Grant.

And provided that there is a population in the neighbourhood which requires a School of Science; that it is likely to be maintained in a state of efficiency; and that the site, plans, estimates, specification, title, and trust deeds are satisfactory. III. The Examinations (May) are of two kinds, but held on the same evening and conducted by the same committee:

The Class Examination,

The Honour Examination, of a highly advanced character.

The Class Examination is of two grades or stages; the first stage or Elementary Examination, and the second stage or advanced Examination.

In the first stage or Elementary paper, the grades of success are a first, a second, and a third class; in the second stage or advanced paper, a first and second class. To the first class in both stages are given Queen's Prizes.

Queen's Medals cannot be taken by persons engaged in teaching.

IV. Henceforward only those persons can become qualified to earn payments who take honours at the May Examination. [The Examination is dispensed with in the same cases as before.]

Payments on results are made either directly to teachers, or to the committee or managers of the School. When classes are formed by a teacher incidentally, in addition to his regular duties, the payment may be made directly to him. Where there is a regularly organised Science School with day, or day and evening classes

in Science, the payments will be made to the Committee. The question of a School claiming under this head, will be specially considered by the Department.

The payments claimable for each student in each subject are:-£3 for a first class in the Elementary stage, £2 for a second class, and £1 for a third class; and a further payment of £2 for a first class, and £1 for a second class in the advanced stage, provided the student has in a previous year passed in the Elementary stage. These amounts are reduced as before.

Payments are made to the committees on the same scale as above, but no payment of more than £15 will be made on account of any one student, nor will the total payment to the School exceed a maximum of £2 per successful paper worked at the Examination by artisan students taught during the preceding year.

These payments may be divided in any proportion the Committee think fit among the teachers of the School, and a proportion not exceeding 20 per cent., nor exceeding the local voluntary contribution to the expenses of the School, may be deducted by the Committee in aid of such expenses.

V. Science teachers who have taught two years consecutively, and passed not less than 30 students each year, are allowed second class railway fare, and £3 towards their expenses while living in London for the purpose of visiting the South Kensington Museum and other Metropolitan institutions, in order that they may acquire, for the benefit of their students, a knowledge of the latest progress in those Educational subjects which affect the Schools, on condition that they remain there five days at least.

Register of the Month.

The Social Science Congress.

The congress met at Birmingham this year on October 1, under the presidenc of the Earl of Carnarvon, Lord Lyttelton presiding over the Education Section. Primary Education met with its fair share of attention. In his opening address Lord Carnarvon said.

'For myself I will not deny that ever since the great constitutional change of last year, the question of primary education at least has assumed an importance far beyond that which it possessed in former years. I do not under-rate the results that we have obtained under our existing system, but in the interest and for the very safety of society, I think we must enlarge the borders of that system. There are classes which it does not now touch, there are classes which it only touches and no more. The lowest part of the middle classes, in spite of some recent and most noble efforts, are too often receiving an education as bad as it is--proportionately to their means-expensive, whilst a not inconsiderable portion of the agricultural class remain comparatively untaught, and, if untaught, then open to every delusion that falsehood can suggest, or credulity accept. The day when ignorance, whether in town or country, was regarded as a means of safety to the rest of the community is past, and the alternative of docile stupidity, never justifiable, is, in our present circumstances, impossible. A knowledge of other classes, in other parts of the country, of the difference of wages, of employments, of the new markets for labour here and elsewhere, is dawning, and sometimes it may be feared, through mists of prejudice and ignorance.

This, if it were common, would be a source of living danger to the State, for when the real forces of Government and the authority in political questions, alike

of initiative and of final appeal, have been virtually committed to the people at large, it is only just towards them, as well as expedient for the rest of the community, to give them the means, as far as may be, of exercising that tremendous power with judgment, uprightness, and patriotism.'

He then paid a tribute of praise to the American Common School system, though he could not consider it as a model for our imitation, and resumed:

'Hitherto voluntaryism, self-government, denominational and consequently religious instruction, with a certain amount of State aid and inspection, have been the accepted principles of English primary education. Speaking cautiously, but looking to the circumstances and feeling as well as the wants of the country, I hardly see how we can altogether dispense with any one of these principles. We may perhaps add to them, we may recombine them, but the uniform conversion of a voluntary into a compulsory, of a religious into a secular system, are neither necessary, nor I think at present desired. The concurrence of a permissive and a compulsory power, in which some persons have sought for a compromise, is open to obvious objections, and presents difficulties doubtless of many kinds; but extreme logical precision will probably not be required, and the state will, I hope, as heretofore, in carrying out whatever changes are necessary, do as little violence as may be to existing agencies and forms, and, consequently, to the convictions of men. Subject, however, to certain conditions, she will, I think, require that where voluntaryism is proved to fail, there, somehow, efficient education, whether in town or country, shall be provided, nor will she in spite of many practical difficulties recognise as insurmountable the objections which are made to an extension of the principle of the Factory, or half-time Acts to some of the rural districts.

'Though you have proposed for discussion the distinct question, how far compulsory education is desirable and under what conditions, I will not enter further upon this grave subject than to observe that the equally grave question of religious instruction-with all its subsidiary consideration of the when, the how, the where, the what, the how much-is inseparably blended with it. It will be ultimately found impossible to consider one apart from the other, and I am bound to say that any system which fails to include a distinct and sufficient religious teaching-by which I mean a teaching founded upon definite doctrines, and not upon an impalpable and shadowy religionism, calculated to embrace all creeds and to give offence to none-will not, in my humble opinion, do justice to children or to teachers, or satisfy the desires and convictions of that great body in the State who, whatever their sectional differences, agree in recognising the vital influence of religion.'

Lord Lyttelton, whose fine intellect, vigorous English nature, and racy humour make him so well worth listening to on most subjects, commands special attention when speaking on the topic of Education from the wide experience he has lately so laboriously acquired as a hard working member of two school commissions. His speech took a wide range, embracing the subjects of university reform, middle class schools, continental systems, Education secular, religious, compulsory, free, public, private, male and female. It may indeed be best described by a phrase which he himself applied to the speculations of certain writers on Education, 'a brilliant dawn of luminous atoms.' On primary Education he says, speaking of the views of some of our advanced reformers amongst other things, 'Men seem often to speak on this matter as if the effect of such great changes in our education system would simply be, that other things continuing much as before, a great many more persons would be able to read, write, do sums, have a little knowledge of history, geography, political economy, and common things, than now. Far, indeed, is this

from being the truth. The school-system of a country, even if we look only at its day schools, inmeasurably more if we include boarding schools, affects the whole moulding of the national character, and that of every man, woman, and child in the country-down to its very roots, up to its very summit. This is so in England, it is still more so in Scotland, it is so everywhere. To adopt the American, or the French, or the Prussian system, would be to adopt that which would powerfully tend to assimilate the English or the Scotch character to the American or the French, or the Prussian character. This may be very desirable, only let us be sure it is what we do desire. Let us be sure, when we read such a book as Mr. Hepworth Dixon's, whether we consider the political condition of France and its history for the last 80 years; when we estimate the practical force and weight in the civilized world of Germany, its power, for example, as compared with England of reproducing itself, its own type, its own vitality, over the globe-let us be sure that we are looking fairly at all the elements of the question, favourable and unfavourable, when we bend such longing eyes on the elaborate legal systems of education in those countries.'

Again speaking of secular education he says:

'I cannot help asking if, even for the attainment of these purely moral objects in schools, we are not working at an enormous disadvantage, to say the least, i: we reject the aid of Christianity, and adopt what is termed the secular system? In a Christian country I may surely assert even without any theologic dogmatism so much as this, that Christianity is not a code of laws, or a record of facts, or a suggestion of sentiments, or a partial disclosure of mysteries which concern us not but a power-a power, the mightiest that we know, offered to those who will grasp it, to enable them to conquer what is evil in themselves, and to advance towards the realisation of their own better hopes and aspirations. Whatever we may hold about original sin, no one denies that at least an immense number of the children born into the world will go wrong if left to themselves, and this is enough for my purpose.

'On the modern notion, that the above views may be admitted, but that the substance of Christianity, even defined as I have done, may be taught and employed so as to embrace all, or nearly all, who profess and call themselves Christians in such a country as this, I shall not much dwell. It is difficult to believe that any one can really hold this as more than a mere theory.'

On the subject of compulsory Education he is thus plain spoken :'Now I must first put in a caveat against the slashing style in which vehement pamphleteers and others often argue this question, or rather do not argue it, but think self-evident not only the premises that it is to the clear interest of the State to have an educated population-which of course it is-but their inference that therefore it it is the duty of the State to create that education by direct means. This is one of the oldest of fallacies, and has lately been exposed by Mr. Mill and others. What it is to the interest of the State to have, it is not always to the interest of the State, nor to the duty of the State, to attempt to get by direct means. It is no less to the interest of the State to have a healthy population; but still it does not go beyond general measures on the subject, nor interfere between a parent and his child in respect of it, except when neglect or ill-treatment becomes inhumanity. And it may be observed that not long ago the self-evidence of the matter was held to be the other way. One of our clearest and most practical writers, one of our models of common sense, Paley, in his Moral Philosophy,' written about a century ago, places, as of course, the Education of children in the list of matters to which the compulsion of human law does not apply.