66 Technical Education. 



by our Queen's College. We in Belfast may fairly leave the 

 high cultivation of science and original research with the 

 College, and content ourselves by the endeavour to utilise the 

 provisions of the Science and Art Department and the Guilds 

 of London Institute for the benefit of the industrial classes. 

 While acknowledging the superior excellence of both organisa- 

 tions for the accomplishment of their intended purpose, there 

 is a certain amount of incoherence about them that militates 

 against their complete success. The Public Libraries Act was 

 intended to remedy this defect, by placing in the hands of a 

 permanent municipal authority funds for the promotion of 

 popular technical education by the establishment of Libraries, 

 Museums, and Schools of Music, Science and Art, and more 

 effectively to apply such other funds as may be voluntarily placed 

 in their hands for similar purposes. Many of the chief towns 

 of the kingdom have utilised the powers of the Libraries Act 

 with great effect, in exciting public interest in favour of tech- 

 nical education and raising noble buildings as appropriate 

 homes for Literature, Art, and Science. 



Belfast will probably have, under the powers of the Act, a 

 municipal building architecturally equal to any, but to make 

 it complete as a means of promoting technical education, it 

 should embrace an economic museum and art gallery, and if 

 external or voluntary aid will admit, it should provide class- 

 room and workshop accommodation for the teaching of science, 

 art, and technology, thus forming one central educational 

 establishment or Victoria Institute, qualified to teach the 

 principles and practice of science and art in their relation to 

 our national industries, as successfully as the Queen's College 

 prepares the students for the University. And if our wealthy 

 merchants of Belfast would only strive to realise such a scheme 

 this Jubilee year, it would go a great way towards stimulating 

 the Government to provide for the Queen's College the addi- 

 tional accommodation for scientific demonstration which it has 

 claimed so long and still so badly requires. Whether this can 

 be accomplished or not, the central institution, even as an 

 auxiliary to the Schools of Science, Art, and Trade cannot be 



