the first requisite is that there be a proper differentiation or grading of schools. All public schools must teach the elementary subjects; but the higher subjects will never be taught well if every public school considers itself entitled to be regarded as a "school in which efficient instruction is given in the higher branches." If all schools are to teach the higher subjects, they will be taught only to small classes, imperfectly organised, with none of the stimulus of competition amongst the scholars, and with no adequate remuneration either in money or position to the teachers. If the higher instruction given is to be good in quality, it must be given by high-class teachers, well paid, able to devote their whole time to the organisation of higher work, and able to count upon the continuous attendance of their scholars for at least four years. The whole work should be conducted and tested, not according to officially fixed standards, as in the specific subjects, but according to more pliable and comprehensive tests, in which the whole character of the work done by the teacher shall be fairly gauged, and attention concentrated rather upon the development of the intelligence as a whole, than upon reaching a particular minimum in a particular subject. To engraft a higher department upon selected public schools here and there in suitable localities would be a matter of no difficulty. There is no objection to uniting under the same roof the teaching of elementary subjects with that of higher subjects; the only essential thing is that the teaching of the higher subjects should be organised and maintained upon methods applicable to the kind of instruction and the kind of result which it is their business to give,

case of Glasgow. There are certain schools in Glasgow upon which the School Board has devoted especial care, and in which they are attempting to organise a really high course of instruction. Garnethill School is a typical school of this kind; and another public school in Glasgow Woodside School-was able last session to send up a student to the university, who was, in point of real literary training, equal to the best scholars sent up by secondary schools. Now Garnethill is not merely a school which adds on a few specific subjects to the ordinary school course; it has a secondary course of four years' duration. It has a staff of teachers for the express purpose of teaching the higher subjects; it prepares for the university examinations with considerable success; and I have no doubt that it will receive further improvement and development. Now what has been done at Garnethill can be done elsewhere in specially selected schools. Glasgow has room for several schools of this kind, and I trust that, whether by the exertions of the Board or by a larger and more systematic recognition on the part of the Education Department, we may see similar schools springing up in various parts of the country, offering to the able students in every district an education, whether literary or scientific, which will make their scholars fit recipients of higher education at the university or elsewhere.

But it is evident that even the School Board of Glasgow do not adequately recognise the distinction between schools properly equipped like these, and an ordinary public school which teaches the "higher branches." Under the new educational schemes for Glasgow, a large number of bursaries

have been created, to be held for two or three years by able and deserving boys after the completion of their ordinary school course. These bursaries must be held at schools" in which efficient instruction is given in the higher branches." Already some 300 bursars have been appointed under these provisions, and it was to be hoped that special care would have been taken to confine those picked 300 to a few picked schools such as Garnethill-some certainly might have been sent to the High School-in which a course of really higher instruction is offered. Instead of this, the School Board, it seems, has insisted that almost any school which teaches specific subjects may be regarded as satisfying the conditions on which the bursaries are held, and no less than thirteen schools have been permitted to have a share in the instruction of these bursars. Such a decision is much to be deplored. The stimulus which would have been created by the presence of so many good scholars in one school will be lost by scattering them in small numbers over many schools; and the scholars will not all have the benefit of going through, as the scheme provided, a course of "efficient higher instruction." Glasgow might well have several good schools of the type of Garnethill: it is quite impossible that it can maintain as many as thirteen. Let it be enacted that no school be considered under these schemes as 'giving efficient instruction in the higher branches" unless it were declared by the Education Department to fulfil this condition. The addition of the words, "in the opinion of the Education Department," would remove the difficulty, and ensure that the schools selected were really of a superior type. This point is one of great importance, and attention needs to be

called to it, as it applies to a very large number of the schemes made by the Endowment Commissioners.

The first condition, then, for having the higher subjects really well taught, must be a proper differentiation of schools. And the second condition follows as the natural corollary of the first there must be a proper differentiation of teachers. It is absurd, and contrary to all the experience of all other countries, to suppose that every good teacher of elementary subjects can, if he chooses, or if he be set to it, become a good teacher of secondary subjects. The acquirements needed for the two purposes are entirely of a different order; the methods and aims of the two kinds of work are essentially different; and to some extent the training and methods required of elementary teachers absolutely disqualify them for the work of higher education. I have already insisted on the narrow, cramping, and actually deadening effect of the ordinary pupil-teacher course; it is only the very best minds that rise superior to it. Here is a proof of it. Under the present system, a certain picked number of those who enter the training colleges are allowed to attend the university, for certain classes, during the two years of their course; but it is only a few of these picked students who really take a good place in the university, and can be pronounced fit to teach the higher subjects. The mere possession of a good Government certificate is no proof whatever that the holder is fit to teach in a secondary school; and yet many members of school boards look to no other qualification than this, and imagine that any certificated teacher can be turned on, like the tap in a conjurer's barrel, to teach any subject which they desire to be taught. Even the ordinary M.A.

degree is, by itself, no sufficient test of qualification, unless evidence be obtained that the holder has specially distinguished himself in those higher subjects which he will have to teach. What is wanted is a special honour qualification, of a distinctly higher type. The candidate should either have obtained university honours in some department of his M.A. course, or else a special honour grade should be instituted in the examination of schoolmasters now conducted by the universities, with especial reference to the standard required for higher class schools. The University of Glasgow has lately laid before the Scottish Education Department a scheme for a special schoolmaster's examination of this kind; the other universities have offered to make arrangements of a similar character. In England, no man has a chance of obtaining a mastership in a good secondary school unless he has taken high honours at the university: and until managers of schools in Scotland have some tangible means of distinguishing the honour-man from the mere pass-man, the teaching of secondary subjects can never be placed upon a satisfactory footing, The idea that every certificated teacher can be expected to have the scholarship, the culture, the capacity to use the finer and larger methods required for highclass teaching, is as absurd as to suppose that a prize Clydesdale would have a fair chance of winning the Derby.

If these two fundamental conditions be secured the differentiation of schools, and the differentiation of teachers - then the development of our secondary school system will become mainly a question of money. Without more means, high-class teaching

cannot be got; without more means, the various internal reforms which are needed cannot be introduced. In this article, which I have confined strictly to educational points, I abstain entirely from entering on the question of finance, or suggesting from what source funds are to be found; but if things are to be put right, the public cannot understand too soon that education forms no exception to the law which regulates the price of all commodities. If they want a really good thing, they must pay a really good price for it. There is such a thing as high-class education, and there is such a thing as shoddy education; the public may choose which they like, but they need not expect to pay the shoddy price and get the first-class article. The necessary

cost must be provided from one source or another. Let the State do her part, let parents do their part, in paying willingly a higher price for an incalculably better article; there will still be room for the generosity of benefactors. To quote the words of the late Scotch Secretary, spoken in Edinburgh in November last :—

"If this work is to be done, it

must be done by Scottish people in obedience to Scottish needs; and if my views could reach beyond these walls, and if I could influence by anything I say, those worthy and publicspirited men who have done, and who are doing so much for education in them to do what they can to endow all parts of Scotland, I would ask secondary schools, not in the first instance by the creation of bursaries, but by the creation of some form of endowment which shall put them in a position to carry out with freedom and with efficiency that great work the university which is so absolutely of preparing the Scottish youth for necessary for the efficiency of our education."

G. G. RAMSAY.

IT is much to be regretted that the Royal Commission, of which the Report now lies open before us, was restrained from pushing its inquiries further than into "the system under which the patterns of warlike stores are adopted, and the stores obtained and passed into the service." Sir James Stephen, it is pretty clear, in accept ing the chair when it was offered to him, looked forward to a far more extensive field of inquiry than this. He was at once confronted, however, when the Committee met, with a difficulty on which he had never counted. The first witness called was the then Secretary of State for War, whose reply to the first question put to him stated frankly "that to inquire into the whole administration of the War Office," were it only for a few years back, "was not the purpose for which the Commission was appointed." Here was a poser. The officials who adopted the patterns of warlike stores, and passed them into the service, are all the subordinates of the War Minister. For him they acted, and by his authority they expended enormous sums in the purchase of weapons, on the trustworthiness of which the efficiency of the army depended. It might be desirable enough, in the event of a discovery being made that the weapons so purchased were worthless, to spot the individuals through whose hands they passed into those of our soldiers and sailors. But what advantage to the public service could

arise out of this so long as it is not ascertained whether or not the first-class official, in whose name the delinquents acted, knew anything at all of the line of business which he is well paid to direct? And if by chance it came to light that in this particular instance the great man was an ignoramus, would not the suspicion be immediately awakened that in other instances not less important he might be quite as much, if not more, in the clouds? Where, then, was the use of going into the inquiry at all, unless it were made thorough? So, evidently, Sir James Stephen thought; and hence, while adhering to the letter of his instructions, he has so dealt with his witnesses, and with the evidence tendered by them, that a good deal of light is thrown, as it were obliquely, on points which successive Administrations have done their best to keep dark. What he and his brother Commissioners hint at rather than express, we propose in the following pages to make clear.

There can be little doubt that the day is not far distant, if indeed it be not dawning upon us already, when a searching inquiry into all the details of military administration in this country will be forced by public opinion upon the notice of the Government. Still less can it be doubted that the result of such inquiry will be to compel a change, were it only to take the shape of an abject return to the system which prevailed prior to the Crimean war. No doubt, to a genera

tion which knows nothing about that system except what history or tradition may have told them, an administrative machine which was worked by six heads, each, to a great extent, independent of all the rest, may well appear to have been liable to constant friction. And it would be idle to deny that, in times when no master-spirit took its place among them, friction sometimes occurred. But from the hour in which the Duke of Wellington became a member of the conclave, friction was impossible. Differences of opinion might indeed arise, when did five or six men ever think exactly alike on any subject-but in presence of an authority to whom all equally looked up, such differences were easy of reconciliation. For our own part, therefore, supposing no other alternative to be possible, we should infinitely prefer going back to things as they were forty or fifty years ago, to a continuance for another year in the state in which we now find ourselves. For, after all, what were the defects inherent in the old system when contrasted with those that are inseparable from the new? That is a question which cannot be answered without explaining briefly, but clearly, how the old system hung together. And forasmuch as the Royal Commission has gone some way towards provoking curiosity on that head, there can be no reason why we should scruple to deal with it in detail. According to the view taken of the subject by Sir James Stephen's Commission, there were in the country, prior to the Crimean war, five members of the Government directly concerned in the management of military affairs. First came the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies,

concerning whom the Report says no more than "that he had the direction of general military policy." This is rather an ambiguous phrase to employ respecting a functionary who was a member of the Cabinet for the time being, and who took no more charge of the military policy of the country than by communicating to the other functionaries, hereafter to be named, the decisions at which, on military subjects, the Cabinet had arrived. But this is not all. As the Cabinet is the constitutional adviser of the Sovereign, so the instructions issued by the Secretary of State were the Sovereign's instructions, and bore necessarily, and for obvious reasons, only on large questions. Through him the Sovereign settled the numbers at which the peace establishment of the army should be kept up, what the composition and distribution of its several parts should be, and, in the event of war, the theatre on which hostilities should be carried on, the force to be so employed, and the general to command it. Beyond these limits the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies never thought of interfering, while Parliament took care that the funds necessary to keep the machine in working order should be voted from year to year on estimates submitted to its consideration.

2. The Secretary at War was the successor of a functionary heard of for the first time in the reign of Charles I. as "the King's Secretary." England had then no standing army, and knew nothing of a military hierarchy in any shape. The King's guards and the handful of mercenaries who garrisoned the King's fortresses received the King's orders through the King's Secretary, who stood