Act in the metropolitan district by making the area that of the union instead of the parish. Again, why have we in our educational institutions so few members and students belonging to the great shopkeeping community? It is on account of the excessively long hours in London shops. This, again, is to a great extent owing to the difficulty in such immense communities of obtaining and securing common action. I hope that next session we may do something to mitigate this great evil. Free libraries and shorter hours in shops are two of the most pressing wants in London. Still, I can not help thinking that Mr.Mundella was rather too severe on us. Can any provincial city show a nobler work than that carried on by Mr.Quentin Hogg at the old Polytechnic Institution? The members and students now, I understand, number nearly ten thousand, and not only does Mr.Quentin Hogg devote an immense amount of time to the work, but the annual cost to him can not be much below £10,000 a year. If it had been in one of our provincial cities we should probably have heard more of it. Londoners are, perhaps, too modest. Our London School Board has done its work efficiently, and is generally blamed for spending too much rather than too little. Again, the stimulus which has been recently given to the cause of technical education in England has no doubt been very greatly due to the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute, so ably directed by Sir Philip Magnus. The Commissioners on Technical Instruction, in their interesting report on technical education, have given endless cases showing the great importance of technical instruction, and I can not help thinking that much more technical education might be introduced even into elementary schools. Something of the kind, indeed, is done in the case of girls by the instruction in needlework and cookery, which latter, I am happy to see, is showing satisfactory results. Why should not something of the same kind be done in the case of boys? There are some, indeed, who seem to think that our educational system is as good as possible, and that the only remaining points of importance are the number of schools and scholars, the questions of fees, the relation of voluntary and board schools, etc. "No doubt," says Mr.Symonds, in his "Sketches in Italy and Greece," "there are many who think that when we not only advocate education but discuss the best system, we are simply beating the air; that our population is as happy and cultivated as can be, and that no substantial advance is really possible. Mr.Galton, however, has expressed the opinion, and most of those who have written on the social condition of Athens seem to agree with him, that the population of Athens, taken as a whole, was as superior to us as we are to Australian savages."
That there is some truth in this probably no student of Greek history will deny. Why, then, should this be so? I can not but think that our system of education is partly responsible.
Technical teaching need not in any way interfere with instruction
