sixteen years of age reading, it may be, Homer and Virgil and Racine, and, alongside of them, infants under six years of age learning their letters and the multiplication table, and young men of eighteen and twenty, who, according to age, ought to be in the Universities. There is no uniformity or organisation throughout the country, but schools have been left just as they have grown up, or old schools have been amalgamated with new, so that the general result is a sort of ill-ordered patchwork, and the great marvel is how much good comes out of this disorder."

It is surprising that, in face of these and similar statements, the effort to grade schools and to improve organisation was not extended all along the line. The result has been that, while Elementary Education was put on a new basis in 1872, Secondary was left to muddle along as it could, and the confusion has been rendered worse confounded by partial measures adopted in the interval since then. Secondary Education awaits its reorganisation.

Nor is this all. The Education Act of 1872 was, in fact, disastrous, if not to Secondary Education, at any rate to the Secondary Schools.

The reasons are not far to seek. It established Elementary Education securely, and provided it with ample funds. New governing bodies were set up, School Boards, which thought their exclusive duty was toward Elementary instruction, and which, besides, doubted of their statutory powers to aid the higher class schools. It was only certain Secondary Schools that actually came under the administration of the School Boards; but they had soon a special reason to lament the change of control, and to long for the old days of more generous Burgh government. Besides, their chief source of revenue, fees, was greatly reduced through the competition of the higher departments of Elementary Schools, which soon became efficient, and could supply the education required by a certain class of children at a much cheaper rate than could the higher class school which had not Government grant or rates to fall back upon. Many of the private adventure schools were killed outright, while the Public Schools

1 The Argyll Commission had reported (vol. iii., p. xii.): “In these circumstances we do not propose that any change shall be made in the management of the Burgh and other Secondary Schools of Scotland".

languished through want of funds; the educational requirements were constantly increasing, and the means of meeting them, which were at the disposal of the Secondary Schools, dwindling rather than increasing, until within the past few years, notably in 1892 and 1899, funds specially designed for their assistance have been secured, and they are now at last beginning to emerge from their long eclipse. The consolidation of funds and simplification of administration are still urgently required in order to free them from the trammels of multiplied conditions and examinations which everywhere cramp their action.

Among the present Secondary Schools there are a considerable number which had their origin in endowments bequeathed by pious founders for the benefit of Education. Their interests now are pretty nearly the same as those of the schools that were originally under the management of Burghs, but their past has been very different. A separate chapter would be required if an attempt were made even to sketch the history of Scotch Educational Endowments. The matter is to be referred to only that we

may be in possession of the salient facts regarding the institutions occupying the field of Secondary Education.

But

The endowments specially applicable to Secondary Education were chiefly attached to "Hospitals," which were at once boardinghouses and schools, with their benefits confined to pupils drawn from a certain class of the community; with one exception in Glasgow and one in Aberdeen they were all situated in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. They numbered eleven, and had a gross revenue of some £50,000 per annum in 1868. there were other endowments, many and varied, which, in the attempts made at reform, were included in the same general category and dealt with by the same Acts of Parliament and other instruments. Even before the passing of the Act of 1872 the subject was taken in hand, and from 1869 onward there are series of Acts and Commissions, each going a little further than the preceding, designed to bring the old mortifications into line with changed circumstances. One need hardly do more than name the Colebrooke Commission of 1872 and the

Moncrieff Commission of 1878. But the later one, presided over by Lord Balfour (1884-90), is of much greater importance. It may be

said to have settled the destination of endowments, at least for the time. It dealt with the whole range of Education, and, after due inquiry into special circumstances in each locality, submitted its schemes for the approval of Government in the case of endowments amounting to nearly £200,000 per annum.

The general effect of the reform of endowments has been to render available for pressing wants considerable sums that were previously tied up by restrictions that had ceased to be applicable to the conditions of the country: it was a national gain. But the immediate effect was to some extent undesirable. The Endowed Schools which were opened up became competitors in various instances to Burgh Schools in the immediate vicinity, and the same state of things extended more or less throughout the country. The Endowed Schools had funds to draw upon which the historic Burgh Schools, put under the School Boards in 1872, had not. A common source of in