must not cry or raise his voice in the streets. The public will not listen to the grievances of a schoolmaster, or discuss his wrongs, whether he be Mr. Browning of Eton, or a Mr. Goffin. The Morning Post follows suit; but, instead of gilding the pill, like the Times, it tells the schoolmaster flatly that his claim to belong to a profession is simply ridiculous.

THE best answer to these criticisms is a simple statement of the aim and objects of the Union, as set forth in the Report of the Executive and the Address of the President:-(i.) To secure a proper appeal from the decision of the Inspectors and of the Education Department. (ii.) A reform in the appointment of School Inspectors. (iii.) A revision of the Code, and an abolition of the principle of individual payments for individual passes. (iv.) To correct the over-supply of Teachers by limiting the number of Pupil-teachers, and by stopping the sideentrances into the profession.

EACH of these propositions is, we admit, an open question, but the last is the only one which savours of tradesunionism. Yet, in spite of Mr. Bright, it must be clear that it is as much in the interest of the public as of existing teachers, that incompetent or less competent candidates should be excluded. If the profession is glutted, the better class of pupils will cease to be attracted, and the public will have to put up with an inferior article. Suppose bishops were to take to ordaining literates wholesale, the clergy would have a perfect right to complain. No one accuses doctors of trades-unionism because they seek to make the entrance into the profession more stringent.

This

As to the second proposition, few would maintain that the appointment of School Inspectors, as at present conducted, is altogether satisfactory. Formerly, a Firstclass at one of the Universities was a sine quâ non. test, though insufficient, was some safeguard against incompetence; but, of late years, even this restriction has been removed, and Pass men have been appointed, whose sole claim was, that they were related to a noble lord, or had served as tutor to his children. Whether the Inspectorate should be reserved as a prize for successful schoolmasters, is a different question, and the arguments against it seem to us to preponderate. But that elementary schoolmasters should be eligible is a reasonable claim; and it is also reasonable to insist that Inspectors shall, before their appointment, make themselves thoroughly conversant with the working of an elementary school, and serve some more thorough apprenticeship than the present clerical routine of a Sub-inspector. Of the 128 Inspectors and Senior Inspectors, only four have had any experience in teaching.

It will be remembered that a memorial, signed by most

of the Head-masters of our chief Public Schools, and other distinguished public men, was presented at the end of 1878 to the Council of the Senate of the University of Cambridge, praying that candidates for an Honour degree might be relieved from the obligation of passing the Greek portion of the Previous Examination; or, in other words, that a knowledge of Greek should no longer be essential to a degree at Cambridge. The Senate thereupon appointed a Syndicate to consider the question; this Syndicate was reappointed in December, 1879, and has just issued its Report, which is now before us. From the evidence they have collected from Head-masters and others, they are of opinion that a number of able and industrious students are at present excluded from the University by the necessity of passing in Greek. They therefore recommend that, in the case of candidates for Honours, French and German be accepted in lieu of one classical language. They suggest also, that in order to discriminate Honour men and Pass men, an examination be held twice a year in Mathematics, Greek, Latin, French, German, and the Elements of Physics, and that every candidate for the relaxation in respect of Greek, be required to pass in one, but not more than one, of these subjects.

IF, as is highly probable, the recommendations of the Syndicate pass the Senate, we shall have every reason to be satisfied, though we should, ourselves, have preferred the alternative of French or German. Perhaps the two together are not more than an equivalent to Greek; but it would not be hard to fix a standard in either, and that not a very high one, which would be more than tantamount to the beggarly modicum of Greek required for the LittleGo; and, in the present state of education, we look on any multiplication of subjects as in itself an evil.

Having fully considered the subject in an article on "Compulsory Greek at Cambridge," which appeared in the Journal of January 1879, we need add no further comments, but we print in another column some valuable extracts from the answers received by the Syndicate to questions sent by them to Head-masters and other leading educationists. Seeing that most of the writers were memorialists, the general tenor of their answers is curiously conservative. Not one, except perhaps Mr. Huxley's, would commend itself to Professor Bain, and even Mr. Huxley would seem to him a trimmer.

THE Lancet invites teachers and school-keepers generally to supply brief statements of the system employed by them as regards sanitary arrangements in their several establishments. The points to which it specially directs attention are-(i.) the ventilation of school-rooms; (ii.) the length of time spent in study, and the method of study; (iii) the posture of the body; (iv.) the management of light; lastly, details on the system of dietary, discipline, and punishments.

THE verdict in the case of Howell v. West and Jones is one of which we must profess ourselves heartily glad, not only on account of Dr. West, an able and respected schoolmaster, but of the profession generally. The case of infectious diseases is one of the most perplexing that a schoolmaster has to meet; and the public, whether teachers or parents, will generally agree with the finding of the jury-that Dr. West could not, under the circumstances, have acted otherwise than he did. The case, however, affords another illustration of the benefits of compulsory sanitary inspection, not only to the public, but to schoolmasters. If the Infirmary at the Epsom Royal Medical College had been inspected and approved by a government

famous Seventh Clause-are being put into execution. On the 1st of last month, the Prefect of Paris proceeded to laicize thirty-two Communal schools, by expelling the Frères and Sœurs who held them, and handing over the premises to other teachers. In most cases, it would seem that nothing but the premises was transferred. Ninetenths of the pupils, headed by their teachers, marched out of the old buildings, and resumed their work in new ones.

THE City Companies, whether aroused by Professor Huxley's reminder, or stimulated by the General Election, are showing a laudable energy in promoting educational work. Last month, we announced the appointment of Mr. Philip Magnus as Organizing Director and Secretary of the City and Guilds of London Institute for the advancement of Technical Education; and we may add that they could not well have chosen a gentleman who combines so well all the requisite qualifications for the post-scientific knowledge, wide experience as a teacher, and powers of organization. It is now announced that the Drapers' Company have promised £10,000 towards the new building for the Schools of Technical Science in Cowper Street, provided a like sum is raised from other sources. The same Company has offered to the London School Board four Scholarships of £30 a year for four years. The successful careers of former scholars of the Board ought to stimulate other donors to follow the example of the Drapers' Company.

THE Corporation of Oxford have done a good work in starting a High School for boys, and well deserve the compliments that were paid them by Prince Leopold and Sir William Harcourt, on the occasion of laying the foundation stone. The new school is to be endowed with no less than 53 scholarships, 30 of which are to be held by boys coming from the elementary schools of the city. It will thus serve as a stepping-stone between the Primary School and the University, and will, it may be hoped, restore to Oxford some of those attributes of a genuine University which have been gradually disappearing during the last century. Bedford has long had, and Winchester now has, such a school, and in Bradford and elsewhere its place has been to some extent supplied by the Grammar School. It is not extravagant to hope that, in the course of the next twenty years, no important town will be without one.

THE degrees of the 29th March-an inevitable but none the less regrettable consequence of the rejection of the

THE MONITORIAL SYSTEM.

BY REV. W. A. FEARON.

DO not come forward as a panegyrist of the monitorial system. I should be prepared to maintain, that it is acceptable, serviceable, and for most schools even necessary; but it does not, by any means, seem to me a sacred possession which it is profane to touch; rather, I regard it, as so much in Public School life has to be regarded, as, in itself largely evil, necessary to avoid greater evils. A great deal of the educating value attributed to it, is really due to the intellectual atmosphere by which the Sixth Form is necessarily surrounded, to the closer intercourse with the Head-master and the House-master, to the combination of age and intelligence, which carries with it necessary responsibility and influence. And, if the system does not seem to me immaculate as a system, much less does the application of it in Public Schools of the present day seem to me beyond reproach. To whatever various causes we may attribute the phenomenon, it is a fact that, in many large schools, it is found extremely difficult to keep up an effective government by Prefects in all the separate Houses of the school-that there is a great lack of corporate feeling among the Prefects-and that, owing to this last circumstance, the system is often liable to abuse, from the weakness, or excessive zeal, of individuals.

There is, probably, hardly any point of school life about which it is more difficult to collect certain evidence; the theory and the practice of monitorial authority are, in many cases, so very wide apart. From information specially collected, however, it may perhaps be stated, that at all leading schools, except Eton, the monitorial system exists; and that, at all schools where it exists, some form of corporal punishment by Prefects is a recognised element in the system. It is not surprising that this mode of punishment should have seemed repulsive and degrading to the very able Commissioners who reported on our Public School system to the late Emperor of the French. But, if and late victims from various schools, whether the victim one may accept the unanimous testimony of late Prefects, ought to feel degraded or not, the fact remains that he does not. While almost everything else is objected to somewhere or other, the corporal punishment seems to be joyfully welcomed as a good old friend by everyone.

For the rest, the system appears in two divergent formsafter a full-blown, elaborate, and comprehensive type, or in looser and more confined application. In the latter case, the Prefects keep necessary order, and punish what is condemned by the moral tone of the school merely; in the former, they are more strictly deputies of the Masters, punishing offences against school rules, though not condemned by public opinion, and acting as a sort of school police. It seems to follow, as a corollary, that in this case, on the one hand, there is much more precise organisation,