ESSAY-REVIEWS 613 



The Commission made many important recommendations 

 as regards technical education and, to quote again from Sir 

 Edward Thorpe : 



11 During the ten years that followed the publication of the 

 Report, Roscoe, in common with several of his colleagues, 

 addressed innumerable public meetings throughout the country 

 in order to make its lessons as widely known as possible. The 

 work of the Commission bore fruit in the Technical Instruc- 

 tion Act of 1889, and still later and to a greater extent in the 

 Education Act of 1902. . . . Although more than thirty years 

 have passed since the Report of the Technical Instruction 

 Commission was issued, it may still be read with profit. Indeed 

 the lessons it teaches are singularly applicable to the present 

 juncture. In spite of what has been accomplished, Roscoe was 

 far from being satisfied with our national position. In 1906 

 he wrote : 



11 Much remains for us in England to accomplish in the 

 organisation of our secondary and scientific training, in which 

 our competitors are before us, and of which the importance 

 and the effects are well summed up in the following opinion of 

 an eminent German manufacturer : 



' We in Germany do not care whether you in England are Free Traders or 

 Protectionists, but what we are afraid of is that some day your people will wake 

 up to the necessity of having a complete system of technical and scientific 

 education, and then with your energetic population, with your insular position, and 

 with your stores of raw material it will be difficult, or it may be impossible, for us 

 to compete.'" 



11 In 1884 a knighthood was conferred on him, as stated in 

 Mr. Gladstone's letter when intimating the Queen's pleasure, 

 'in acknowledgment of his distinguished service on the Technical 

 Education Commission.' " 



Regarding the other activities of Sir Henry Roscoe as a 

 member of Parliament, his share in the founding of Manchester 

 University, and of the Society of Chemical Industry, we must 

 refer the inquirer to the biographical sketch which is the subject 

 of this review. 



Unfortunately, owing to the limitations of a review, one 

 cannot write in detail as to the educational work of Prof. 

 Meldola beyond referring to his numerous warnings in lectures 

 delivered at the Royal Society of Arts, or in his Presidential 

 addresses to the Chemical Society, the Society of Chemical 

 Industry, and the Society of Dyers and Colourists, in which he 

 referred in particular to the decadence of the British coal-tar 



