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rigorously adhered, kept him within somewhat narrow lines in this respect, but all that could be done to gratify his correspondents and writers he took care to do. A severe disciplinarian, he was the most generous and appreciative of chiefs, and there was probably not one of his personal staff who would not gladly have gone to the other side of the world to have been of the least assistance to him. Many of the conditions of journalism have changed greatly since Mr. Delane made the 'Times' a power throughout the world; but his marvellous qualifications for his duties, his almost superhuman powers of work, his wealth of knowledge, his wonderful faculty of perceiving the drift of public opinion and grasping the hidden meaning of events-in these gifts he has never been excelled.

The American journey was the last important incident in Lord Houghton's life. He went about among his friends almost as much as ever, but his health was gradually breaking down, and he seems to have been conscious that he was gradually falling more and more into the background. A generation was coming to the front which knew him not, and he had no longer the elasticity of mind which would have enabled him to enter into its spirit and share its moods. One of the last public dinners at which he was present was that given to Mr. Edmund Yates in May 1885, and on that occasion Lord Houghton's friends did not fail to mark a great change in him. He made a short speech, and received a most hearty reception from the very numerous company, which had representatives among it of almost every branch of literature and art, science and commerce. When he sat down he remarked to a friend, 'I think that is my last speech-I am very ill, not fit to be here. I came to show respect for Yates; and what a clever speech he has made! I like to hear him refer to his early difficulties, it makes the literary swells so angry.' He chuckled, but the tears were in his eyes. It must have been in the preceding August that Mr. Wemyss Reid saw him at Fryston, and hearing him complain of bad health asked him what was the matter. 'Death,' he answered gravely; that is what is the matter with me; I am going to die. . . I am going over to the majority,' he added, ‘and, you know, I have always preferred the minority.' An odd accident occurred to him a few weeks afterwards. He was at the Durdans, Lord Rosebery's house, and one night he fell out of bed and broke his collar-bone. He told his biographer that he had dreamed he was being pursued by Mr. Gladstone in a hansom cab, and that in his struggle to escape from him he had fallen on the floor.' In August 1885 he went to Vichy with his sister, Lady Galway, and had not been there many

hours

hours before he was seized with a difficulty of breathing, and soon passed quickly away. He was buried at Fryston, the service being conducted by the Archbishop of York, who himself 'went over to the majority' in the closing month of 1890.

Mr. Wemyss Reid has brought together in an appendix some of the sayings of Sydney Smith, Carlyle, Macaulay, and others, gathered from Lord Houghton's commonplace books. There is nothing very new or remarkable in them. The esprit of a clever saying often vanishes in the process of conveying it to paper. Lord Houghton's anecdotes came with much greater point from his own lips than they possess in print. Some of his own thoughts which he jotted down from time to time are marked by great shrewdness, penetration, and common sense. 'The mine of truth,' he remarks, is deep in many hearts, though only openly worked here and there.' And again: Every man who finds himself in the wrong has learnt something.' Of his own character he wrote: 'He hoped little and believed little, but he rarely despaired, and never valued unbelief, except as leading to some larger truth and purer conviction.' His belief was certainly not large or deep in its nature, but it was probably deeper than he thought. He described himself as a 'Puseyite sceptic,' and Carlyle as a Free Kirk infidel.' He thought that it was much easier to be a pure-minded and unselfish Liberal than Tory.' There is a good deal of truth in this: You calculate the spiritual advancement of the people by the number of church and chapel sittings; you might just as well decide the amount of food consumed in a house from the number of square feet occupied by the kitchen.' And this also has doubtless been felt by others besides Lord Houghton: The worst effect on myself resulting from attendance on Parliament is that it prevents me from forming any clear political opinions on any subject.'

Lord Acton says that Lord Houghton 'loved to be thought a failure.' We very much doubt it, but we believe that he felt very seriously, and sometimes bitterly, that his life had practically been a failure, regarded from the point of view of his early hopes and aspirations. One of his own notes about himself is this: 'I look on the Parable of the Talents as the Law and the Gospel, and could almost be contented to lose my faculties in the consideration that I was relieved from the responsibility of employing them.' Unless we totally misunderstand this, it supplies the explanation of his never having made the mark which other men have made with far inferior gifts. He could Vol. 172.-No. 343.

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not,

not, as we have already suggested, grapple with a disagreeable task day after day. Men have attained to great success in public life with a tenth of Lord Houghton's abilities, but they could plod and push-especially the latter. That was entirely out of Lord Houghton's range. He could not press his way to the front by the arts of self-advertising. There are various roads to political preferment, and he was so constituted that he would not have been able to go far enough on any of them to win the prize. When he had seen the nature of the path, and the character of the associates with whom he was destined to walk, he would have turned back. As he grew older, he perceived clearly that nothing had improved. It must frankly be admitted that his cherished ambitions were ungratified, but he must have been conscious that he had accomplished a vast amount of good for others who were unable to help themselves, and who, but for his kindly aid, would have been numbered among those who fall by the roadside and disappear. Not every man who has seen all his great ambitions realised has had the closing scenes of life irradiated by the sympathy which accompanied Lord Houghton to the grave.

ART.

ART. VII.-1. Returns issued by the Education Department. London, 1890.

2. Report of the Committee of Council on Education (England and Wales). London, 1890.

3. The New Code of Regulations, by the Right Honourable the Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education. London, 1890.

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HERE is no characteristic on which Englishmen are more disposed to pride themselves than their practical power. They are inclined to think that in the adaptation of means to secure the desired end they enjoy a superiority to all other nations. They have no doubt some ground for this vaunting; but whilst allowing that, it must also be said that they are capable of making pitiable failures; and when party spirit or religious animosity is allowed to enter their minds, those failures become somewhat humiliating.

We fear that the experiments in national education made during the last half-century must be regarded as illustrative of a want of practical power in dealing with a most important subject. If we look candidly at the facts, it cannot be said that the education of our labouring population has been a success, whilst the cost at which it has been carried on has been altogether out of proportion to the good effected. Whenever the system pursued has been examined by experts, such serious defects have been discovered, that violent changes have had to be made; and it is not too much to say that, in the last forty years or rather more, during which we have had a system of popular education controlled by the Government of the country, there have been what amounts to three revolutions: the first in 1861, directly dealing with the quality of the education given; the second in 1870, with the quantity; and now a third in 1890, when the quality of education is again brought under review. That there is a present need for such revolution the following extracts from the Report of the Education Commission, which appeared a couple of years since, convincingly show :—

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We are bound, however, before entering upon the consideration of the curriculum, to call attention to the fact, that witnesses of all classes testify to the imperfect hold of knowledge gained in elementary schools. It is obvious that to teach a child to observe and think by proper training of the mind will more effectually develop its capacity and faculties than premature initiation into matters beyond its intellectual habits. We regard this as one of the most important matters which we have to investigate in connexion with elementary instruction, and we do not hesitate to affirm that a

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thorough

thorough grounding in the rudiments of knowledge is an essential condition of any national system, which is to secure permanent educational results. If these permanent results fail to be attained in the case of reading, writing, and arithmetic, which all children leaving school must, to some extent, keep in practice, it may be feared that knowledge of other subjects, not engaging their attention after they quit school, will evaporate, and thus much time devoted to such subjects will be practically wasted.'* 'Looked at from all sides, it is plain there is room for much improvement in reading.'† 'Good reading is at the present time often sacrificed to instruction in spelling.' But little evidence was given on the matter of handwriting, although much was said about the spelling.'§ • The Inspectors should be instructed at their annual visits to see that the children have been taught, as far as their years permit, the principles of the rules of arithmetic as well as their working. This cannot be done on paper, but evidently requires to be attended to carefully. The evidence we have listened to shows how many teachers fail to understand that, looking at the matter from the lowest point of view, the best results are likely to be attained, and in the shortest time, by the employment of intelligent methods.' ||

·

Taking the first sentence we have quoted from this Report as laying down the right principle by which the excellence of a popular system of education is to be tested, and then looking at the conclusions arrived at by the Commission as to the manner in which our system is to be judged by that principle, we fear that no other conclusion is possible than that the system has been anything but a success. It may be well to examine the steps by which our present position has been reached, that we may have some idea of the causes to which the want of success is attributable.

It was not till 1839 that the Government can be said to have taken more than a nominal interest in national education, and it was not till seven years later that it became responsible for directing it. For some few years before 1839 it had given annually a comparatively small sum towards assisting in the erection of elementary schools; but in expending this sum it assumed no responsibility: it was equally divided between the National Society, as representing the Church, and the British and Foreign School Society, as representing the Protestant Dissenters, to apply according to the requirements for school building by their respective constituents; and upon receiving a certificate from one of these societies that a school was completed, the Government paid its quota. On these societies

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