220 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. IX 



keeping accounts, Technical Education would have done 

 all that can be required of it. 



And his suggestions about buildings was at once 

 adopted by the Committee, namely, that they should 

 be erected at a future date, regard being had primarily 

 rather to what is wanted in the inside than what will 

 look well from the outside. 



Now the Guilds formed a very proper body to set 

 such a scheme on foot, because only such wealthy 

 and influential members of the first mercantile city 

 in the world could afford to let themselves be despised 

 and jeered at for professing to teach English manu- 

 facturers and English merchants that they needed to 

 be taught ; and to spend 25,000 a year towards 

 that end for some time without apparent result. 



That they eventually succeeded, is due no little to 

 the careful plans drawn out by Huxley. He may be 

 described as "really the engineer of the City and 

 Guilds Institute ; for without his advice," declared 

 one of the leading members, "we should not have 

 known what to have done." 



At the same time he warned them against indis- 

 criminate zeal; "though under-instruction is a bad 

 thing, it is not impossible that over-instruction may 

 be worse." The aim of the Livery Companies should 

 specially be to aid the practical teaching of science, so 

 that at bottom the question turns mainly on the 

 supply of teachers. 



On December 11, 1879, he found a further oppor- 

 tunity of urging the cause of Technical Education. 



