people are anxious to buy will not really be given, but sold; though the halo of endowment may somewhat bewilder both tutor and parent, and, whether by coruscation or obfuscation, take school and college bills out of the ordinary complexion of commercial transactions. One important result of the general demand for education. should be that the capital of endowments should pass gradually from its present position of secure investment to that of productive, if hazarded, employment. Unless this is done the endowments will continue to have an obstructive effect. They will hinder the free operation of ordinary capital, and perpetuate the discreditable state which now characterises the secondary education of England, which may be summarised as ineffective grammar schools, supplemented by unsuccessful commercial schools.

The suggestions I have ventured to make in reply to the questions proposed are:-1. That the University Local Examinations be extended so as to cover the whole range of secondary schools, and sustained in three divisions, "senior," "junior," and "preliminary," applicable severally to first, second, and third grade schools. 2. That training colleges for secondary masters should be established in each University, and that these training colleges should be adapted to receive students at a younger age than that at which they are now ordinarily admitted into the Universities, in order that the influence of the Universitý may be felt at a lower level of society than it now reaches. 3. That the University system should cover the country by adding to Oxford, and Cambridge, and London, a Northern or Midland University, and so distributing the

greater work which the country is beginning to expect from Universities into four centres. 4. That instead of one educational council in London, four provincial councils, each connected with a University, should group the middle classes, with the secondary schools and examinations, into a northern, southern, eastern, and western system. 5. That subordinate to these provinces, the counties, boroughs, and unions of parishes should each become educational areas; and, (6) lastly, that the administration of the endowed property should be conducted more and more on commercial principles, the capital being embarked in the business of education, and the accruing profits assigned so as to advance education as a whole; and, while paying due regard to founders' special intentions, to ensure that their combined benefactions shall (as they would indisputably have desired) confer progressive benefit on the nation at large.

CHAPTER VII.

AUTHORITY AND ADMINISTRATION.

IF the schools of England should ever be brought under some such provincial organization as I have suggested, distinguished by University centres, it would be necessary to

determine carefully the several sources of authority and the respective limits of administration. Simply as an indicating signal to arrest attention, I will try to sketch a scheme of school government with subordinated functions and areas.

1. My first postulate is that the several grades of public middle-class schools shall correspond with already recognised civil divisions of the country, so as to have in all cases a familiar local basis to rest upon. Just as the elementary schools are distributed by parishes or parochial school-districts, so I would connect the schools immediately above the elementary, i.e., the third-grade middle schools, with the union or enlarged parochial township. It may be expected that the union will become more and more an important civil division, and it is possible that some of the obsolete or scattered functions of parishes may be revived or recombined in the wider area, and that these larger districts, at least in the case of the rural unions, may merge their merely pauperised associations among more honourable attributes, and be incorporated with municipal powers. Nothing would more tend to give a new dignity

to the union than that it should be accepted as the basis of the super-elementary schools, and perhaps gradually draw the elementary schools themselves into a position of less dependence on State grants and religious rivalry.

The second-grade schools I would assign, for the range of their work and its control, to counties, single, or contiguous and united; and the first-grade schools to larger divisions, consisting of three or more counties. In order effectually to carry out this civil and local distribution, I should like to see the larger towns (say with a population over 150,000) taking rank as counties.

2. My second assumption is that the authorities of the several schools in the union, the county, and the division, might be partially subordinated to each other, and find their ultimate appeal and control in the educational centre of the province, which is to be a University: subject, of course, in the rare cases requiring its intervention, to a supreme national authority. Thus there would be reference from the educational council of the union to that of the county, and from the county to the division, and from the division, lastly, to the

provincial centre, and thence, if really necessary, to the Government.

3. My third expectation is that a satisfactory source of authority would be found in the ownership and charge of the educational property. If a School Fund were formed for each district-divided into shares with limited liability, so that the school capital of the district, in the shape of school buildings, sites, and furniture, could be easily valued into this fund, with the addition of any reserve property -then both private individuals interested in the district, and also the trustees of endowments, might be reasonably expected to become shareholders, and in proportion to their shares would be entitled to election of trustees, directors, or governors. This ownership, actual or entrusted, of school property seems to me, after much reflection, to be the only sound source of authority in a system that is intended to be public, without State subsidy or direct official administration. A moderated desire for commercial profit, combined with an honourable concern for public interest, would, I believe, in any district bring together out of the gentry, farmers, and tradesmen, a body who