172 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 



the evening, and learns to make exactly the articles required in 

 the trade, so that on leaving the workshop he is able to command 

 the full wages of a workman, and, indeed, in some departments, 

 as in shawl-designing, a pupil in the fourth year may be worth 

 70Z. or 80L to the master. I saw 140 apprentices thus occu- 

 pied, and there is no doubt that the plan is thoroughly suc- 

 cessful. It might be applied to reformatories, so as to give lads 

 a real trade education, and interest them by allowing them to 

 make things which they know are of real use ; but my chief 

 object in drawing your attention to the Ecole St. Nicolas was 

 neither to insist on its economy nor its successful industrial 

 education, but to the admirable mechanical drawing which is 

 executed by lads at a very early age. I fear that I must have 

 wearied you by ringing continual changes on those two words, 

 and I will endeavour to justify the high value which I have 

 attached to this branch of elementary education by quoting the 

 following passage from the report of the French Commission on 

 Technical Education : 



' Drawing, with all its applications to the different industrial 

 arts, should be considered as the principal means to be employed in 

 technical education.' 



Granting the great importance of drawing, you may fairly 

 ask me what analogous proposals I have to make as to mathe- 

 matics, mechanics, chemistry, and physics ? I may remind you 

 that I have already expressed the opinion that these great studies 

 will not be successfully prosecuted without a great reform in all 

 our middle-class schools, effected by parliamentary legislation 

 of a very difficult nature. I fear the elementary schools, in- 

 spected and aided by the Council on Education, can do nothing 

 to forward these studies, except by improving the foundation on 

 which they ought to be built ; and I am certain that the grants 

 administered by the Science and Art Department can do very 

 little to meet the requirements of the country as to these great 

 studies. Indeed, I am not prepared to hand over the scientific 

 training of the country to that department. The subject of the 

 introduction of public graded schools, with classical and scien- 

 tific courses fit for this great country, is too vast a subject to 

 be treated of as part of an address. I am not propounding a 

 complete scheme for the scientific regeneration of the country, 



