Cavendish College takes a position of its own. If not, like them, exclusively a Church of England institution, it claims to be not less sincerely and resolutely a Christian college. Consistently with its professed desire "to comprehend undergraduates of different religious denominations without either lowering the importance of religious influence and teaching, or interfering with the conviction of individuals, and, therefore, to allow no prescribed preference or exclusion to apply either to tutors or students," it could not take any ground less wide than the university itself with regard to the religious beliefs of its inmates. But while perfect freedom and equality in the eye of the college is thus assured, the need for practical religious communion remains. To supply this need provision has been made for a permanent chaplain in orders, and the services of the Church of England are adopted, not only in accordance with the practice of the older colleges, including the most liberal, but because they afford the only practicable ground of cordial union in a society which aims to be as wide as the nation itself. How cordially all classes may be expected to unite on this basis is proved by the actual composition of the governing body of trustees and directors.

The

There is one other matter connected with the establishment of Cavendish College that may require explanation. The capital by which it is being founded has been raised through a joint-stock association, called the "County College Association, Limited." title of this association was so chosen because it was hoped and intended that the new college, if established in the university, might become a centre of attraction and guidance for more than one of those public schools which have recently been formed or revived in various counties of England; and through which the middle classes of England are in some degree, though far too partially and precariously, enabled to keep pace with the raised educational requirements of the day. That a greater number of the boys who rise to the top in these schools should be induced to aim at higher results than a local certificate, and to claim a place for themselves, and so for their schools and families, within the most ancient and honoured educational precincts, was the thought that really prompted the formation of the County College Association, and led to the establishment of Cavendish College. The selection of the county as an area for the distribution and regulation of public schools above the elementary has been justified by experiment. Several good schools have sprung up with a distinct county designation, and the grammar and other schools brought under new schemes by the Charity Commissioners, under the Endowed Schools Acts, are grouped for convenience of report, and will perhaps before long be grouped for administration, within county limits. At a time when what may be called imperial tendencies are somewhat over-straining national resources, and when, in education as in other matters, the State assumes more and more an

active responsibility in supplying public wants, the English middle classes must look with anxiety to local areas and institutions as standing-ground for the efforts they must make in order at once to retain their independence, and keep pace with the progress of the day. Though the counties of England may have been somewhat too jealously connected with territorial power and aristocratic prestige, yet it is certain that they may prove for the future invaluable areas, within which honourable associations for the general improvement of all classes of home-bred Englishmen may flourish. To connect the county educational associations with the universities is to give them a centre where their too narrow provincial influences may be widened and elevated, without any sacrifice of their independence. Thus, and thus only, the inevitable tendency of State administration to check and stunt free local life may be neutralized. Thus the critical stage, which, according to Lord Hartington and Mr. Forster, has already arrived, when the State must take cognizance of the intermediate education of the country, may be safely encountered if on the one hand the masters of our schools, public and private, and on the other the parents, students, and general public, are able to say to the Government,-Give us facilities for organization and combination; give us a fair and just distribution of endowments; give us a growing connection between the elementary and the intermediate, the intermediate and the higher schools, and trust us as Englishmen to work out our own affairs. Whatever State inspection and control is found indispensable to give some coherence to a necessarily varied and incongruous system, let it be in action as remote and impalpable as possible, and let it be jealously kept sacred from party influences, whether political, religious, or social. These influences-inevitable tokens of life and movement-will always humble and submerge themselves before pure patriotism, pure learning, and pure religion. In the counties, the universities, the Christian schools of England, these precious inheritances, may long survive and flourish.

New institutions, like new wine, must wait to be appreciated. Years must pass during which what is crude may mature, what has been irrelevant to the permanent object may be worked off. Time, therefore, will be a necessary element in determining the true value of Cavendish College. Twenty years, though a large slice out of one man's life, is a short period in the existence of any institution deserving to survive. I am able to look back twenty years and recall the expectations and resolutions with which, after a winter spent on the Nile and devoted to some study of educational questions as they were then understood, I returned to Devonshire, to propose, with the encouragement of some kind and powerful friends, the experiment of a county school. For twenty years I have watched and partly directed the progress of that experiment, and latterly have been able to repeat it under many parallel but some different circumstances in

Norfolk; and, meanwhile, in several other counties, with more or less success, similar attempts have been made to found public schools better and cheaper than those generally frequented by the middle class. Under my own eye schools begun in very isolated districts with three or four pupils, and with little or no precedent to guide them, have grown into large institutions with between one and two hundred boarders; and at a cost of from thirty to forty guineas have satisfied not only the expectation of parents and the requirements of the University Local Examinations, but the peculiar condition upon which they were established of aiming at independence and commercial success by the payment of a dividend (limited to five per cent.) on the capital expended. During the twenty years that these experimental schools have been successfully developed I have again and again had occasion to observe and regret a want of sympathy between the higher and middle schools, and have learnt how impossible it is by merely local machinery to make effective breaches in the social partition walls which have indeed their gates of ingress opening readily to golden keys but resisting all other approach. And observing this I have, during these twenty years, more and more become awakened to the importance of finding or founding one or more institutions which, holding their own ground well and beyond dispute within the highest educational circle, should yet reach and directly encourage schools planted beyond that circle. Other measures of educational extension are the crumbs that fall from high tables, and will prove quite insufficient to nourish or even stimulate effectively the intermediate schools. An occasional sizarship is but a poor link to connect the external apparatus of local lectures and examinations, local colleges and universities, with the true vis vitæ of the University itself.

I may be permitted to look forward twenty years. Cavendish College may have grown in that time to its full proportions; the stream which now trickles may be flowing strong, and from all parts of England a vigorous youth may be passing from improved and flourishing schools to complete at the university their preparation for active life. Not a few will be returning to these schools as graduate teachers, themselves imbued with the best educational influences of their day, and not only able mechanically to teach, but qualified even unconsciously to diffuse good sense, good manners, and high principles among their pupils. They will have met at college coevals from all parts, formed friendships, acquired tastes, corrected faults, estimated characters, applauded true excellence. The stamp appended to their name of B.A. or M.A. will mean more than reams of flashy testimonials which now circulate between the scholastic agents and the masters of middle schools. Nor will they, as now, find it difficult to retain their raised literary and social tastes when merged in the chaos of great cities, or scattered in provincial towns and villages. Uni

versity men twenty years hence will not be a mere reserved clique in any county or neighbourhood. Those who try to keep their heads above the waters of ignorance and frivolity and coarseness will not be rari nantes in gurgite vasto. For the teachers of the future will meet everywhere their fellow-graduates, men whom no occupation can degrade, who turn all trades into honourable professions.

I will not presume to foresee the events of the next twenty years, to judge what party will predominate, what statesmen will be in power, what clouds of war will burst or disperse, what revolutions will arise or be suppressed; but it is no idle prophecy to foretell that the seed already carefully though casually sown will bear fruit and ripen, and the steps hitherto feebly and tentatively taken towards opening the higher education to larger circles of students will lead to widespread results. It may pass as a pardonable presumption if I presume to foresee, through Cavendish College, the consummation, within twenty years, of a great national reform.

JOSEPH LLOYD BRERETON.

ANTIQUITIES AT THE PARIS EXHIBITION.

TH

THE historical Exhibition of the Trocadero Palace is unquestionably one of the most interesting portions of the great universal Exhibition, and one affording most subjects deserving of study to the erudite visitor. It is true that not many countries have taken part in it. Neither the public nor private collections of England, Germany, or Italy have contributed any of the treasures they might so easily have submitted to public inspection. Spain, Belgium, Egypt, and Japan alone have empowered their commissioners to organize historical departments, while the National Museum of Pesth has associated itself with the French section. But this latter, admirably arranged as it is by M. de Longpérier and his colleague M. Schlumberger, suffices to form one of the rarest and most interesting collections of objects of art and curiosity that can possibly be met with.

This collection consists exclusively of loans from private French sources, chiefly found in Paris itself, and of contributions sent by the municipal museums of provincial towns. French collections do not in general take such high rank as English, much less is said about them, but they are well worthy to compete with the latter. It is however, only at the Trocadero that any exact idea can be formed of the amount of art treasures which France possesses scattered among private hands, or in the collections of towns of secondary importance, in addition to the riches of her national museums. And yet many these towns have shrunk from exposing their precious things to the risks of transport, and refused to take part in the Exhibition. Of Parisian and provincial amateurs many have only sent a mere selection, a few favourite specimens; while others have yielded to the paltry objection a jealous exclusiveness feels to the public sharing in the enjoyment of its treasures, or to the promptings of political dis

of