52 Transactions of the 



Corporation of Bristol, who had sent them many things that re- 

 minded them of the history, dignity, and good cheer of their great 

 city, nor to the Philosophical Institution, who had gone out of its 

 way to help them in so marked a manner. To one and all, both 

 lenders and helpers, they were really grateful for what they had 

 done on that occasion. He might perhaps be expected, on that, 

 the first time they had made any public use of their Museum and 

 Library, to say a word or two as to their ideas in connection with 

 those matters, and why it was that they laid any special stress 

 upon the fostering of such a thing as a Museum as a kindred part 

 of their institution. There were two reasons why he held it to be 

 important that those things should be developed as parts of any 

 school which intended to be a great or a useful school. One 

 reason was, that hitherto in this country far too little attention 

 had been paid to out-of-school life. They had worked very hard 

 in various ways to educate boys in school, but out of school the 

 life had been allowed to grow very much at hap-hazard. There 

 was no exact or methodical provision made for the growth of 

 character, the moulding of it in any particular direction. That had 

 been one of the great defects of education hitherto. They ought 

 to do more for the cultivation of young people, not merely while 

 they were under education, but through the whole period of their 

 life, because it was during the out-of-school period of early life 

 that the most important influences were brought to bear upon 

 them. Thus it was that so much attention had been paid to such 

 matters as cricket and football, and that boys had been encouraged 

 to organise their life. It was to work out such ideas that they 

 had their debating societies, their literary societies, tlieir botanical 

 gardens, their workshops, and their scientific societies (cheers) ; 

 and it was part of that work in which those present had been in- 

 vited to help that night. The whole system of education happened 

 to be changing in their hands just at present ; science Avas the 

 new learning at the present time, and no doubt by-and-by the 

 whole face of education in England would be changed by the new 

 position which science and scientific teaching must take. But new 

 learning required new methods, and they who had anything to do 

 with education were sufiering under the influences of tradition. 

 Education hitherto having been chiefly linguistic — those methods 

 which they had inherited for the study of languages would have 

 to be altered, even with the study of languages itself. They learnt 

 few things so thoroughly and really as they ought ; and having 

 studied words so long they were content very often when they had 

 arrived at them, without having reached the sense they were in- 

 tended to indicate. It seemed to him very often that even the 

 study of languages was not worth so much as it used to be. 



