XVI TECHNICAL EDUCATION 425 



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 instruc- 

 tion in the technology 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 par- 

 ticular avocations ; 1 and a considerable subsidy, in 

 aid of the efforts of the Society, was liberally 

 granted by the Cloth workers' Company. We have 

 here the hopeful commencement of a rational or- 

 ganisation 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 confi- 

 dence in adding that, some time since, the com- 

 mittee sought the advice 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. 



