84 TECHNICAL EDUCATION. [LECT. 



prospect that what is wanting will, before long, be 

 supplemented. 



Those powerful and wealthy societies, the livery 

 companies of the City of London, remembering that 

 they are the heirs and representatives of the trade 

 guilds of the Middle Ages, are interesting themselves 

 in the question. So far back as 1872 the Society of 

 Arts organised a system of instruction in the techno- 

 logy of arts and manufactures, for persons actually 

 employed in factories and workshops, who desired to 

 extend and improve their knowledge of the theory 

 and practice of their particular avocations ; 1 and a 

 considerable subsidy, in aid of the efforts of the 

 Society, was liberally granted by the Clothworkers' 

 Company. We have here the hopeful commencement of 

 a rational organisation for the promotion of excellence 

 among handicraftsmen. Quite recently, other of the 

 livery companies have determined upon giving their 

 powerful, and, indeed, almost boundless, aid to the 

 improvement of the teaching of handicrafts. They 

 have already gone so far as to appoint a committee to 

 act for them ; and I betray no confidence in adding 

 that, some time since, the committee sought the ad- 

 vice and assistance of several persons, myself among 

 the number. 



Of course I cannot tell you what may be the result 

 of the deliberations of the committee ; but we may all 

 fairly hope that, before long, steps which will have a 

 weighty and a lasting influence on the growth and 



1 See the "Programme" for 1878, issued by the Society of Arts, 

 p. 14. 



