374 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xxiv 



Further, although the committee as a whole recom- 

 mended that discretionary subjects should be extras, he 

 wished them to be covered by the general payment, in which 

 sense the report was amended. 



This Education Committee (proceeds Dr. Gladstone) con- 

 tinued to sit, and on November 30 brought up a report in favour 

 of the Prussian system of separate class-rooms, to be tried in 

 one school as an experiment. This reads curiously now that it 

 has become the system almost universally adopted in the London 

 Board Schools. 



In regard to examinations Huxley strongly supported the 

 view that the teaching in all subjects, secular or sacred, should 

 be periodically tested. 



On December 13, Huxley raised the question whether the 

 selection of books and apparatus should be referred to his Com- 

 mittee or to the School Management Committee, and on Jan- 

 uary 10 following, a small sub-committee for that object was 

 formed. Almost immediately after this he retired from the 

 Board. 



One more speech of his, which created a great stir at 

 the time, must be referred to, namely his expression of 

 undisguised hostility to the system of education maintained 

 by the Ultramontane section of the Roman Catholics.* In 

 October the bye-laws came up for consideration. One of 

 them provided that the Board should pay over direct to 

 denominational schools the fees for poor children. This 

 he opposed on the ground that it would lead to repeated 

 contests on the Board, and further, might be used as a tool 

 by the Ultramontanes for their own purposes. Believing 

 that their system as set forth in the syllabus, of securing, 

 complete possession of the minds of those whom they taught 

 or controlled, was destructive to all that was highest in the 

 nature of mankind, and inconsistent with intellectual and 

 political liberty, he considered it his earnest diify to oppose 

 all measures which would lead to assisting the Ultramon- 

 tanes in their purpose. 



Hereupon he was vehemently attacked, for example, in 

 the Times for his " injudicious and even reprehensible tone " 



* Cp. "Scientific Education," Co//. £ss. iii. p. iii. 



