1877 TECHNICAL EDUCATION 221 



A lecture on Apprenticeships was delivered before 

 the Society of Arts by Professor Silvanus Thompson. 

 Speaking after the lecture (see report in Nature, 

 1879, p. 139) he discussed the necessity of supplying 

 the place of the old apprenticeships by educating 

 children in the principles of their particular crafts, 

 beyond the time when they were forced to enter the 

 workshops. This could be done by establishing 

 schools in each centre of industry, connected with a 

 central institution, such as was to be found in Paris 

 or Zurich. As for complaints of deficient teaching of 

 handicrafts in the Board Schools, it was more 

 important for them to make intelligent men than 

 skilled workmen, as again was indicated in the 

 French system. 



As President of the Royal Society, he was on the 

 above-mentioned Committee of the Guilds from 1883 

 to 1885, and on December 10, 1883, distributed the 

 prizes in connection with the institution in the Cloth- 

 workers' Hall. After sketching the inception of the 

 whole scheme, he referred to the Central Institute, 

 then in course of building (begun in 1882, it was 

 finished in 1884; the Technical College, Finsbury, 

 was older by a year), and spoke of the difficulties in 

 the way of organising such an institution : 



That building is simply the body, not the flesh and 

 bones, but the bricks and stones, of the Central Institute, 

 and the business upon which. Sir F. Bramwell and my 

 other colleagues on the Committee have been so much 

 occupied, is the making a soul for this body ; and I can 



