SKETCH OF SIB HENRY BOSCOE. 403 



the room ; and phonographic reports of all the lectures were printed and 

 largely sold for a penny each at the door of the hall. This experiment 

 was 60 successful that it was repeated in the following years ; and 

 when, in 1875, the first six series of lectures, in which many other most 

 eminent scientific men had taken part, were published in three volumes 

 under the supervision of Professor Roscoe, he was able to state that 

 each lecture on the average during the six years had been attended by 

 nearly one thousand persons, and that from five to ten thousand cop- 

 ies of the penny reports of each had been sold, while the demand for 

 back numbers still continued. 



The idea of educating the people, especially artisans, in science, is 

 one which Professor Roscoe has held much at heart and on which 

 he has spoken often and to the purpose. Yet he has not failed to see 

 that the problem was a complicated one, surrounded by many difficul- 

 ties, and that progress in solving it would have to be made deliberately 

 and slowly. In 1871 he wrote in "Nature" concerning a proposition 

 for the establishment of a national working-men's university, to be 

 founded with special reference to instruction in those subjects which 

 have a direct bearing on the arts and manufactures, recognizing the 

 desirabilty of providing for instruction of the kind, but, foreseeing the 

 danger of any attempt to secure it failing, through lack of means or 

 want of good management. He estimated that an income of from 

 £80,000 to £100,000 would be needed to support a people's university 

 on a truly national scale, anything less than which would be a practi- 

 cal failure. But the financial difficulties, he added, were by no means 

 the only or most important ones which would beset the new university. 

 These would only begin to be felt when the scheme had been started 

 — "such as dangers of giving an instruction too purely theoretic, 

 or of running into the worse evil of teaching details without scientific 



A few years after this, we find him engaged in a discussion re- 

 specting the teaching of science in schools, in which he supported the 

 position that no satisfactory advantage could accrue from this sort of 

 instruction, until the subject was "placed upon its true position of edu- 

 catio7ial equality, both as regards range and time, with classics and 

 mathematics, and no system of regulations or of examinations can be 

 said to fulfill its object in which this position is ignored." " I am fully 

 aware," he said, in another letter, " of the importance of a firm mathe- 

 matical foundation, and I am far from wishing to overwhelm the 

 younger boys with science before they have mastered the elements of 

 arithmetic and grammar and languages. . . . The mistake, as it seems 

 to me, which is prevalent respecting science-teaching in schools, is the 

 notion that it is a subject to be lectured upon for two hours per week 

 to those already educated, and who show an aptitude for it, while it 

 can and ought to be introduced at a definite period as a regular part 

 of school-worJc. It is now usually made an extra subject, a quasi- 



