3 z8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Act in the metropolitan district by making the area that of the union 

 instead of the parish. Again, why have we in our educational institu- 

 tions 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 under- 

 stand, 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 yeai\ 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 re- 

 cently given to the cause of technical education in England has no 

 doubt been very greatly due to the City and Guilds of London Tech- 

 nical Institute, so ably directed by Sir Philip Magnus. The Commis- 

 sioners on Technical Instruction, in their interesting report on techni- 

 cal 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 instruc- 

 tion 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 advo- 

 cate 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 Aus- 

 tralian savages." 



That there is some truth in this probably no student of Greek his- 

 tory 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 



