it. It is part of a miserable system which pervades the ool course in general, and which results from our great riety to bring in a number of subjects, and our unwillingness, en a number of incompatible things are offered to us, to ke a selection among them; and so the whole school course ruined....... That is one of the reforms which is most pressing, d, to put my views of this subject in a practical form, if. were a schoolmaster or were drawing up a time table for school, I should be inclined to take some such practical p as this. Every important subject which is taught at all ould, as a rule, come round pretty nearly every day. One es not want to be over-precise, and therefore I say pretty arly every day. But a lesson once or twice every week in an aportant subject does not count. The results are not permant. Unless it comes pretty nearly every day, it does not very uch signify. And the course relating to a particular subject ould last, in my opinion, at least a year or two. If it does ot come round pretty nearly every day, and for a year or two, he probability is that no permanent impression is made.”

Here we are treading on very dangerous ground-the time o be given to rational science teaching; but it is a difficulty which will solve itself. During the past few years this kind of Feaching has been on its trial, and has come out of it splendidly. It has steadily taken a more and more prominent position in public favour. It has come to stay. Even now, however, the enormous possibilities of associating with it instruction in other subjects by the removal of some of those unnecessary and baneful partitions, by which instruction in various branches of study is separated

r-tight compartments, is only immust not hurry matters. Vast these later years of the ninend the

system is absolutely

ars ago. But,

lly in educa

principal events which have left their influence on the history of the movement, and have helped to shape our present schemes and methods of instruction.

We cannot consider the problem of industrial education altogether apart from that of education generally, nor without reference to the relations between employer and employed, and to many other matters affecting the life and work of the labouring classes.

It is difficult for us to realise the social and intellectual condition of the great mass of the population at the beginning of the present century. Wages were low, commodities were dear, the hours of labour were long, and the standard of living was altogether different from what it is at present. The first Factory Act passed in 1802 reduced the hours of labour to twelve (exclusive of meal-time), and provided safeguards to mitigate the hardships of apprenticeship. There was no provision for the general education of the people, and the century was more than two-thirds spent before the right of children to receive the rudiments of education was recognised as an obligation on the part of the State. The lot of young children who were sent to work wholly untaught was aggravated by the growth of the factory system, consequent on the introduction of machinery into mills; and the dislocation of labour and the crowding of workpeople into the towns led to very deplorable conditions of existence: The old laws of apprenticeship were still in operation, but the relations of employer and employed were undergoing a rapid change. This was particularly the case in the Textile Trades, in which the inventions of Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright and others had produced a revolution in the methods of production, and had destroyed the quasi family life which the apprentice formerly enjoyed under his The unrestricted use of untrained child labour was the crying evil of the first years of the century, and elicited powerful protests from the great reformers of that time; but it was not till some years later that their efforts bore fruit.

master.

Wordsworth in his Excursion, published 1814, pitifully describes the condition of the factory employed child :

"The boy, where'er he turns,

Is still a prisoner;...

Behold him-in the school
Of his attainments? No; but with the air
Fanning his temples under heaven's blue arch.
His raiment, whitened o'er with cotton flakes
Or locks of wool, announces whence he comes.
Creeping his gait and cowering, his lip pale,
And scarcely could you fancy that a gleam
Could break from out those languid eyes."

and so on; and then he goes on to say:

"Can hope look forward to a manhood raised

On such foundations?"

The whole of the eighth book of the Excursion is interesting as a description of the condition of factory children of this time, and is a fervent protest against the neglect and hardships to which they were then subjected. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a few years later, gave a still more pitiful expression to the cry of the children:

"For oh!" say the children, "we are weary
And we cannot run or leap;

It stands to the honour of Sir Robert Peel that he was the first to bring Parliamentary legislation to the aid of the apprentice. Under Peel's Act of 1802 the hours of apprenticeship wére `shortened, night work was abolished, the instruction of children employed in factories was made obligatory, and Inspectors were appointed to see that the law was kept. This was the first Factory Act, and under it the evils of apprenticeship

as affecting factory children, were, in some measure, alleviated. At this time workpeople were still legally prevented from combining with a view of improving their position. In 1799 a Bill was passed to prevent "unlawful combination of workmen," a law which practically placed the working classes at the mercy of their employers. In 1806 journeymen compositors employed by time were prosecuted for taking part in a strike; and it was not till 1824-5 that the Combination Laws, which pressed so heavily upon the working classes, were repealed. The only instruction available at this time for the bulk of the people was that given in the Sunday Schools and the Parochial Charity Schools, where the teaching was limited in quantity and poor in quality. Two-thirds of the population grew up without being able to write their own names. Moreover, the heavy Paper Duty imposed in 1711 went a long way to counteract the benefits conferred by printing; and a tax on newspapers of 4d. per copy effectually prevented a wide circulation.

Very early in the century a twofold effort was made to improve the condition of the working classes by providing some kind of teaching for children and adults. These two movements were closely connected, although they developed on different lines. To the one may be ascribed the origin of the present system of elementary education, and to the other may be traced the beginning of our elaborate machinery for evening technical education.

There was no lack at this time of earnest, enthusiastic men who deplored the ignorance in which the mass of the population was immersed, and who looked to education as the surest means of increasing the happiness of the working classes, of lessening crime, and of promoting the prosperity and well-being of the nation. John Stuart Mill in his Autobiography tells us that his father, James Mill, "felt as if all would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if all sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word and in writing, and if by means of the suffrage they could nominate a legisla

ture to give effect to the opinions they adopted'." The younger Mill lived to see some of his father's aspirations realised, but he was less hopeful than his father as to the improving effect of any change of circumstance on human nature.

Sir Joshua Fitch, in his little work entitled Educational Aims and Methods, says, "The 18th century was not distinguished in our own country, at least, by any important educational enterprise." No historian will be able to cast that reproach on its successor. The two names which stand prominently forward at the commencement of the century, in connection with the history of popular education, are Dr Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster. It was while in India that Bell, owing to the want of a sufficient number of teachers, was reduced to invent what has since been known as the monitorial system, a device for utilising the older children to instruct the younger, which was an important step in school organisation. In the year 1797 he published a pamphlet describing the Madras system of setting pupils to teach each other. He himself was so satisfied with the results of his experiment that he said, "I think I have made great progress and almost wrought a complete change in the morals and character of a generation of boys." This system, which would seem now-a-days to have little to recommend it, was not then regarded as a mere makeshift, but as a method of school management of permanent and real value; indeed, as the best possible means of organising instruction in, all schools. Although Bell's pamphlet was published before the close of the 18th century, he himself did not become a public educator in England till a later date.

Meanwhile Joseph Lancaster, the son of a Chelsea pensioner, who had displayed from earliest youth great enthusiasm in the cause of Education and Religion, was preparing the way for the establishment of a system of schools for the people.

1 Autobiography, J. S. Mill, p. 106.