who can only estimate the value of the education given by its effect upon party politics, or by the benefit or injury it will inflict upon the Church, or its excellence by the percentage of passes and the character of the merit grant, do well to limit their remarks on the education question to what bears on these and similar topics. They serve to divert attention from the real point at issue and to hide, as they may think, or to manifest, as it may appear to others, the narrow sectarian spirit by which they are actuated. Το me the only matter really worthy of serious debate, and to which all others should be subjected, is the consideration of what system will raise up the most patriotic and law-abiding citizens and implant in them principles which will lead them, in the fear of God, to be honest, sober, pure, truthful, honourable, upright men and women. The test I should wish to see applied to all schools would be the manner in which those educated in them answer to these conditions after they have been proved for a few years by the trials and temptations of ordinary life.

apply these tests.

Perhaps it may be said that so far as we can they prove the excellence of our modern system. It may be said that the number of criminals tried has fallen from 17,578 in 1870 to 12,099 in 1889, the latest return. Those who put forward this argument ignore or forget the very serious alterations in the criminal law that have been made in the interval, and the enormous extent to which these alterations affect the result.

In 1870 there were 11,539 children in these institutions; in 1889 27,938. Then, again, the number of offences summarily dealt with has grown from 526,869 in 1870 to 689,158 in 1889; whilst the cost of the police has increased from £2,182,521 in 1870 to £3,734,916 in 1889, and this although we were assured that the saving in our police rate would pay the education rate. I would also cite the rapid growth of strikes, with the barbarous manner in which those engaged in them treat those not connected with their organisations, as an illustration of the influence which the change in the religious instruction given in so many schools has had upon the people brought up in them; for it must be remembered that it is frequently said by the newspapers that the mass of those most prominent in strikes are the younger men. In 1870 such VOL. IV.-No. 23.

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events were comparatively rare; in 1891 the daily papers are seldom, if ever, found without some information concerning them. Before 1870 the basis of the moral teaching was the fear of God : since then it has been in many schools the influence which immorality of any kind may have upon a man's position in the world, and success in acquiring money; or, in other words, enlightened selfishness.

And now to turn from the principle at stake in the discussion of the education question to that of free education, which is for the moment specially before us. It is not correct to say that "the National Society has capitulated," and we have yet to see what the Conservative party will do when the subject is discussed in Parliament. What it would be correct to say is that the National Society has determined to stand aside until the proposals of the Government are before the country, and then to determine what line it will take with regard to those proposals. The question as at present stated is a political, rather than an educational, one. It is brought forward because it is expected to benefit a large class of the poorer members of the community, not with the design of benefiting the schools or education. For the Church to have opposed before it knew what the proposal was would have been represented by those now taunting it for silence as hindering those who needed the help from gaining it. I do not see how the payment of the children's fees by the Government can in any way alter the relations of the managers of the schools to Government. It would certainly be difficult to regard the remission of fees as a principle, when at the outset we have seen that all elementary schools were free. It is also clear that it must be a matter of indifference to the managers by whom the fees are paid. It is assumed that the amount the Government will pay will only represent the average sum now paid, and as managers can now claim the fees from the parents, the schools will be no gainers. If, as in the case of all averages, some are benefited, it must follow that others will be sufferers to an equal extent. On what, then, does the claim rest for more popular control over the schools in the event of the Government paying the children's fees instead of their parents? Or if the claim is made for greater

influence to be given to the State, it must not be forgotten that the Education Department has already overwhelming power in all that relates to elementary education; so that there is no ground left for the Government claiming more authority in the management. The buildings in which it is to be carried on must be erected according to plans of which the Education Department has approved; or, if already built, they must be altered to suit its requirements. The only teachers who can be employed must have received its authorisation to teach, whilst it determines the minimum number that must be employed. The curriculum of study must be that which it directs, and the hours which are to be devoted to each subject must be approved by its appointed officer. An inspector commissioned by it has to visit the schools annually, and unless its requirements have been complied with there will be no grant made, whilst the sum actually awarded depends entirely upon his award. The hours in which religious teaching can be given are fixed by its unalterable rule, and every child who wishes to be exempted from such teaching has only to express the wish for it to be complied with. The liberty of the managers is therefore brought within the narrowest limits, and the chief-almost the only-matters left for them to decide are the character of the religious teaching to be given to those willing to receive it, and the selection of the persons (out of those approved by Government) by whom it may be given, and to supply the funds needed to carry on the schools; whilst their task in obtaining such funds in School Board districts is enormously increased by their subscribers having to pay heavy rates for the maintenance of a system which they disapprove, and the funds they have to raise being increased by their school being compelled to pay out of its scanty revenues towards the support of the hostile schools, which are endowed to whatever extent their managers like with the whole wealth of the community.

ROBERT GREGORY,

Dean of St. Paul's.

LTHOUGH every form of exercise is in its degree training,

A and, on the other hand, the larger part of training is

exercise, it will tend to "lucidity" to deal with the two subjects separately. As exercise is the physical duty of every man, woman, and child, while training is necessary only in the case of candidates for Olympic crowns, or rather, the cups which are their modern equivalents, it will be convenient to begin with the former.

That a certain amount of exercise is needful for health is one of the few things about which all doctors are agreed, and one of the still fewer things as to which medical teaching is submissively accepted by the non-professional public. Unfortunately, intellectual assent no more implies practical performance in the domain of hygiene than in that of morals. It is by those "in populous cities pent," by professional and business men chained to the desk or the consulting room, and by women, that exercise is most apt to be neglected. With regard to young ladies, indeed, it is not so very long since nearly all exercise worthy of the name was tabooed by Mrs. Grundy as only fit for tomboys and as tending to give an appearance of robust health which was thought to be incompatible with refinement. More rational notions are now beginning to prevail, however, and the limp anæmic maiden with uncomfortable prominences is rapidly giving place to a type more like the Greek ideal of healthy womanhood. The ruddy-cheeked, full-limbed girl of to-day, who climbs mountains, rides, swims, rows, and is not afraid of the health-giving kisses of the god of day, is a living illustration of the value of exercise. She is healthier, stronger, more

ïissom, and withal more intellectual, more energetic and self-reliant, as well as more amiable and better tempered, than her wasp-waisted beringleted great-grandmother, with her languid elegance and her Draconian code of feminine decorum. In the physical "betterment" which is so conspicuous in the girls of the period lies the best hope for the future of our race.

A belief appears to be widely entertained that there is a certain antagonism between brain power and muscular development, and it is inferred that we are as inferior to our forefathers in bodily prowess as we are superior to them in intellectual activity. The moral is supposed to be pointed by the example of the "noble savage"; and the lithe, sinewy frames of the Zulus and Hadendowas are contrasted with the less powerful physique of our men. So far, however, from physical deterioration being a necessary consequence or accompaniment of intellectual progress, there can be little doubt that we are, on the whole, better men than our predecessors in body as well as in mind. Your antique Roman was a fine specimen of the human animal, as is still visible to us in his big bones and the rough imprint left thereon by the mighty thews and sinews which once moved them. Modern Englishmen, however, need fear no comparison in this respect with the noblest Roman of them all. As regards our own ancestors,we have a sure proof that they were inferior to us in physique in the fact that the armour in the Tower is much too small for the Guardsmen of the present day. Of course, so many stunted inheritors of generations of physical and moral disease people the slums of our great cities, and so many "unfit" persons are now kept alive by improved medical art, who in the good old times would not have survived infancy, that I daresay, if the whole population is taken into account, our average height and chest girth might make a poor show beside those of certain nations of antiquity and some savage races of the present day. The case would, however, be different if our large stock of weaklings which modern benevolence and science save from premature "elimination" were first deducted from the total.

Though "muscular Christianity"—that curious cult of the biceps as a divinely appointed instrument for the regeneration of sinnersmay be said to have died with its prophet, the principle that the