April 1, 1897. 



KNOWLEDGE. 



87 



be given to their efforts ; that they shall be attended to, 

 encouraged, and supported." 



These words were spolien in 180D, and during all the 

 turmoil and political disquietude that marked the opening 

 years of the century. However willing and receptive 

 the ears, the time was inopportune. The minds of the 

 auditors might be convinced, but their energies were 

 preoccupied with the arts of war rather than with those 

 of industry and peace. A generation later, and when 

 Europe had settled down after the fall of Napoleon, 

 Davy's teaching began to bear fruit. We have seen how 

 far it had matured at the time of the Queen's accession, 

 and in the years immediately subsequent to it : how far 

 has it been attended to and supported since '? 



As regards chemical education the difference is enor- 

 mous. There is not an important town in the kingdom in 

 which chemistry is not taught, and, on the whole, well 

 taught. Almost every manufacturing town in the country 

 can show a public chemical laboratory far better equipped 

 with appliances for teaching, and even research, than were 

 the most famous laboratories of sixty years ago. In the 

 matter of the introduction of the teaching of physical 

 science into our schools, the force of public opinion is 

 gradually making itself felt, although the head master, as 

 a rule, hardly yet realizes the full significance of Faraday's 

 weighty words when he said : " I do think that the 

 study of natural science is so glorious a school for the 

 mind that, with the laws impressed on all created things 

 by the Creator, and the wonderful unity and stability of 

 matter and the forces of matter, there cannot be a better 

 school for the education of the mind." 



Things, however, have improved since the time that 

 Faraday told the Public School Commissioners that the 

 fact that the natural knowledge which had been given to 

 the world in such abundance vvas untouched, and that no 

 sntficient attempt was being made to convey it to the 

 young mind, growing up and obtaining its first views of 

 these things, was to him a matter so strange that he 

 found it difiicult to understand. The opposition which 

 Faraday felt was so difficult to overcome, but which, 

 he added, he had not the least doubt in the world 

 ought to be overcome, has been to some extent relaxed, 

 and, in the curt but characteristic language of the forms, 

 " stinks " are at least tolerated, even if they are not 

 encouraged, in the curricula of most public schools. It is, 

 however, in the newer provincial colleges that the teaching 

 of chemistry has received its greatest development. Owens 

 College, Manchester, founded more than forty years ago, 

 has become, mainly by the influence and organising power 

 of Sir Henry Eoscoe, and of his successors. Profs. Dixon 

 and Perkin, one of the foremost schools of chemistry in 

 the country. The great success of Owens College has 

 stimulated almost every large town to provide itself 

 with an institution of similar character, and colleges 

 of university type, all of them with well-equipped chemical 

 laboratories, are now to be found in Liverpool, Leeds, 

 Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol, 

 Cardiff, Aberystwith, Bangor, and Dundee. Institutions 

 of a less ambitious type, although provided for the most 

 part with good accommodation for instruction in practical 

 chemistry, are met with, amongst other places, at Bradford, 

 Huddersfield, Preston, Oldham, Chester, Newcastle-under- 

 Lyme, Portsmouth, Southampton, Camborne, Edinburgh, 

 and Glasgow. All the older universities have followed suit. 

 The university laboratory at Cambridge is one of the best 

 arranged in the kingdom; Edinburgh is also admirably 

 provided with the means of pursuing research in the higher 

 branches of the science, as are the recently opened 

 laboratories of St. Andrew's and Aberdeen. With the 



exception of University and King's Colleges, and the 

 Eoyal College of Science (into which has been merged 

 the chemical teaching of the Royal College of Chemistry 

 and of the Royal School of Mines in Jermyn Street), 

 all the more important schools of chemistry in London 

 are comparatively modern. The City and Guilds Institute 

 in South Kensington, built in 1883, and the associated 

 Institute in Finsbury, erected a short time previously, owe 

 their origin to the action of the City companies, who 

 have been instrumental also in founding or in assisting a 

 number of the Polytechnics scattered round London, such 

 as the Goldsmiths' Institute at New Cross, the Battersea 

 Polytechnic, and the East London Technical College, 

 which has its home in the People's Palace. A great 

 number of the Polytechnics and minor colleges above 

 named are dependent upon aid from the Department of 

 Science and Art, or are supported by funds at the disposal 

 of County Councils. Indeed, the liberation of the "beer" 

 money, and its very general application to so-called tech- 

 nical education, has had a very marked effect in diffusing a 

 knowledge of the elementary principles of science. Whether 

 the money is in all cases spent to the best advantage may 

 be open to question. There is, indeed, little doubt that 

 more real good might be accomplished by a better method 

 of allocating the amount, as, for example, by some system 

 of co-ordinating County Councils within specified areas, 

 with a view of subsidizing secondary schools and the 

 colleges of university type situated within the area. This, 

 however, as a part of the general question of what is the 

 best method of dealing with secondary education in thia 

 country, is too complex a matter to be dealt with now. It 

 is pretty plain that before many more years have passed a 

 Parliamentary inquiry will be demanded on the working of 

 the present method of allowing each County Council to do 

 practically what it likes with what it imagines to be its 

 own. 



No record of the educational work in science of the last 

 sixty years would be complete without some reference to 

 South Kensington. The system and its results have been, 

 at times, the subject of much hostile, and, it must be added, 

 not very well informed or altogether impirtial criticism. 

 But I venture to think that any dispassionate and unpre- 

 judiced inquirer, who will take the trouble to make him- 

 self master of the subject, will be constrained to allow 

 that the Department has done great and permanent service 

 to the cause of scientific education in this country. The 

 general standard of scientific knowledge has been enor- 

 mously increased by the hundreds of science classes created 

 by its agency, and which otherwise would have been non- 

 existent. How far it will be allowed to continue on its 

 present footing remains to be seen. It is, however, certain 

 that the science teaching which it has called into existence, 

 and which it has fostered and encouraged, is too much an 

 integral and essential part of our educational system to be 

 abolished, whatever may be the machinery of State by 

 which it is to be directed and controlled in future. 



What Englishmen of science have done in the way 

 of chemical inquiry and discovery during the Victorian 

 era, the pages of the rhilosop/iicul. '/'ninsaciioiis, and of 

 the Journal of the Clicmicid Socii'ti/, abundantly indicate. 

 The names of Faraday, Graham, Williamson, Hofmann, 

 Frankland, Miller, Schuuck, Stewhouse, Brodie, Andrews, 

 Gladstone, Crookes, Perkin, De la Rue, Miiller, Eoscoe, 

 Schorlemmer, Rayleigh, Eamsay, Dewar, are associated 

 with experimental investigations which mark points of 

 departure in the history of chemical progress during the 

 last sixty years. These investigations range over every 

 department of chemical inquiry, from the isolation of new 

 elements — the preparation of new compounds of great 



