in the past, to provide education of every grade, and to pass on their best scholars continuously to the universities. The higher education which they thus supply has been mainly carried out under the system of "Specific Subjects"; and there are many School Boards, and some educationists, who maintain, and probably many who honestly believe, that the higher education of the country can be adequately supplied by the cultivation of Specific Subjects alone. Under this system, scholars who have passed the Sixth Standard are kept on in special classes as ex-Sixth scholars, working through the stages of Latin, or Mathematics, or other subjects included in the table of Specific Subjects; and it is a very general belief that an eduation of this kind may be considered the lineal successor of the old system of the parish schools, under which so many men in the olden time rose to distinction, both in the universities and in life. To the ordinary public, who understand little of the distinction between higher and lower education, but who comprehend very keenly the distinction between higher and lower fees, the attractions of a School Board school, equipped to carry out a "specific subject" system, are very apparent. If they send their sons to the High School, they will have to pay an average fee of from £8 to £10 per annum. If they send them to such schools as the Academies in Edinburgh, Glasgow, or elsewhere, they may have to pay a fee of £12, £15, or even £18 a year. On the other hand, the Public School has handsome buildings, it is admirably equipped, lighted, and ventilated. The external arrangements are probably more handsome to the eye than those to be found in the best secondary schools; and when the parent is informed that for a fee of £2, £3, or, in some rare cases, 4 per annum, he may obtain for his sons an education which will fit them for the universities or professional life, it is not to be wondered at that he should prefer the school recommended by arguments of so practical a character. Added to this, in the case of the Board School he feels that he has the advantage of an annual public inspection. The parent can see the reports; he finds that an average of 96 or 98 per cent has been passed in the ordinary subjects of instruction, and that, after passing the Standards, his son can be carried on to receive what is called "a higher education" by means of Specific Subjects. What such a result means, from a purely educational point of view, he does not pause to inquire; he not unnaturally thinks that a public school, supported by a public authority, attested by public tests of efficiency in matters on which he can himself form a judgment, offers him a greater guarantee of excellence than a school managed by private governors, conducted on a system of the details of which he is unable to form an opinion, and certified by examinations which have, as yet, no official character. Thus the advantages on the side of the genuine secondary school are visionary and uncertain, while the arguments in favour of the public school are obvious and intelligible; and the average parent, who has no special means of forming an opinion as to the differences which distinguish true secondary education from that which is secondary in name only, prefers naturally the advantages which he can see and understand, to those which are unseen and unintelligible. If this be a fair statement of the facts, it is clear that there is as yet no apparent appreciation in the public mind of the distinction between secondary and elementary schools, or of the fact that for many years past all educational authorities, both in this country and elsewhere, have been agreed that no system of education can be satisfactory or complete which is not founded upon a careful grading of schools, according to the functions which they have to discharge. In England, the principle that schools should be graded in accordance with the particular character and 'standard of education which they profess to supply, has been long acknowledged. The enforcement of this principle was the chief object of the report of the celebrated Schools Enquiry Commission; and the main work of the Commissioners appointed under the English Endowed Schools Act of 1869 has been to effect its realisation. It is impossible to take up any book or paper which deals with education on the Continent, without discovering that the educational systems of other civilised countries are founded upon a principle totally different from that which dominates the public mind in Scotland. They are organised upon the principle that a secondary school supplies not only an extension of an elementary school, but differs from it essentially in kind, and must be taught and organised upon essentially different methods. In the language of the Schools Enquiry Commissioners, vol. i., pp. 178, 179, "Instruction, when most suitably ordered, is not one continual piece of which any length cut out at discretion shall yet be a whole." If the education of a boy is intended to be continued until the age of fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen, it should be organised from the first upon different principles from that which is to terminate at eleven or twelve. The celebrated educational ladder of which we have heard so much in Scotland, and which extends from the primary school to the university, is not to be formed simply by adding on to the upper end a few more rungs of the same shape and strength as those which constitute its lower portion. Still less can its advantages be attained by an attempt to perform the gymnastic feat of flying from half-way up the ladder to its top without any rungs at all. In the words of the late Secretary for Scotland, the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, spoken in Edinburgh in November last,— "I need not tell you that there is a real necessity in any sound and complete educational system for good secondary schools. You cannot do without them. Teach what extra subjects you choose in your elementary schools, carry them as far as you like, they will never really fill the place of secondary schools. Compel the university as you will to give training to a large number of youths of comparatively imperfect knowledge, you may impair the efficiency of the university, but you will not adequately fill the gap which should be filled by the secondary schools." In Scotland alone of all countries, the principle embodied in these wise remarks seems to be imperfectly understood. If they were adequately realised by the public, it is impossible that the present state of matters as regards secondary education in Scotland could be allowed to continue. If the public opinion of the country recognised that Secondary Education was an essentially different thing from Elementary Education, and that without an adequately equipped system of secondary instruction neither the university nor the higher education of the country can be established upon the ordinary education given in our elementary schools? a sound basis, the means for supplying it would not be wanting. Either public opinion would demand that the resources required for its maintenance should be provided from public sources; or else private enterprise-whether in the shape of private munificence, or of a readiness to pay the price for which alone an article of higher value can be supplied-would fill the blank. But it is not the purpose of the present article to consider the question of "ways and means." That is a question which is rather political than educational in its character, and has nothing to do with the decision of what is strictly a technical educational question-viz., whether secondary education is or is not an article differing wholly in kind from elementary education, and requiring a totally different set of conditions for its maintenance, development, and success. Putting, therefore, for the present, all questions of finance aside, the question of the moment is to ascertain whether there is any evidence of a plain and practical kind which can be adduced to show not only that the present condition of secondary education in Scotland is unsatisfactory-for upon that point all educationists are agreed but that the special reason why it is unsatisfactory is that the distinction between secondary and elementary education is not practically observed in our school system, and that the importance of the distinction is not sufficiently recognised by the public. Can it be shown that there is an intellectual development which can be expect ed, on the whole, to be supplied by well-organised secondary schools, and which cannot be looked for, except in exceptional cases, from the extension or development of Before passing to review any facts which may lead to a decision upon this important point, it may be well to clear the way by pointing out that in the views of educational reformers there are two objects constantly held up to the public view, and constantly confused with each other, which are not only entirely distinct, but are to a large extent inconsistent, and even contradictory. These two objects are (1) the attainment of a higher standard of education; and (2) the wider diffusion of education. It is impossible to explain adequately this distinction without touching on the question of university education and university reform; but as it is not my intention in the present article to enter upon the university question as a whole, I shall only do so in so far as may be necessary to throw light upon the particular point which is now being discussed. It has long been the familiar boast of Scotland that her schools of every grade have made it their aim to pass on their best scholars, drawn from every rank of life, however humble, to the universities; and it has been the special boast of the universities that they are in touch with the nation as a whole,-that they draw their students from no special rank or class, but open their gates to all who have the talent, the industry, or the ambition, to turn to practical account the opportunities of instruction which they afford. The ringing of the changes on this theme has formed the main staple of educational oratory, in so far as it has been expended on the universities. That the universities are national institutions; that they include students from every rank of life; that in every village school germs of genius are being fostered which may some day be developed into professional or literary distinction by the university incubator,-these are topics which have been dwelt upon times without number by those who have contrasted the Scotch university system with that of England and other countries. The fact is true, and the praise is just. There are hundreds-thousands of men who have risen to eminent or important positions, encouraged by our popular universities to turn talents to account which, under a more exclusive system, might have remained unknown or undeveloped. But there is another side to the picture; and there has been no lack of critics in these latter times to proclaim loudly the deficiencies and shortcomings of our Scotch university system. These critics speak with many mouths, from many points of view, and with various degrees of knowledge or of ignorance. They do not all agree with each other; they are by no means always consistent with themselves. But they have had no difficulty in pointing to certain conspicuous blots upon our Scotch university system, many of which have long been acknowledged by all competent to form an opinion upon the subject; and though the remedies suggested may not always be those most suitable to the case, though the objects aimed at are in some cases mutually destructive to each other, it is most advisable that the whole subject should be freely discussed with the fullest light that can be thrown upon it; that we should consider the causes from which the educational deficiencies of our universities spring, estimate the merits that are to be set against those deficiencies, and if we seek to apply a remedy in one direction, be prepared for the con sequences that may follow in another. It is impossible to combine the merits of two conflicting systems; and if we are not prepared to face the adverse results of a proposed change, it is vain to enumerate its advantages. In the various recent discussions which have taken place upon university reform, two essentially different objects have been mixed up together. The main charge against the universities, brought up over and over again both by the schools. and by the public, is that their standard of education is not sufficiently high; that they admit all and sundry to their classes without distinction or inquiry into the character of the previous education they have received; and that the whole standard of university teaching and university work is lowered in consequence. On the other hand, there has been a great and powerful demand for an extension of university teaching. A cry has been raised against permitting the universities to maintain any longer what has been called the "university monopoly." These critics maintain that no special privileges should be accorded to the universities; that university education should be disseminated throughout the country by university lecturers, whether in daily or evening classes, wherever students are to be found ready to avail themselves of such advantages; and that attendance such courses of lectures, delivered under conditions far less continuous and exacting than those required by the university, should count for university purposes, and be accepted by the universities as equivalent to the attendance given in their own classes. What these reformers desire is to popularise, not to elevate, university instruction. They object to a "mono at poly" in their desire to escape it, they rush into the arms of a superstition. They imagine that the magic of a name is such, that by prefixing the term "university" to the instruction given to miscellaneous classes in short courses of popular lectures, the whole results of a long continuous education, culminating in three or four years' attendance at the university itself, may be attained. This idea reached its culminating-point of absurdity in a speech recently delivered at a meeting of the General Council of Glasgow University, when a member of Council expressed his indignation that in a report dealing with university extension, the Senate of the University had indicated that it would be undesirable to give university certificates of merit to students who had attended popular courses-some consisting of ten lectures each-and so place upon them the same stamp of excellence which is bestowed on students who go through a course of five or six months' continuous work, preparing work carefully every day, and successfully going through their oral and written examinations. And yet these same critics, in the very next breath, will denounce the work done in the university classes as insuffi cient; they declare the standard of teaching is too low; that no adequate care is taken to see that the students reach that standard; and that the universities grant their certificates on far too easy terms. It is hard to answer at once a two-edged criticism like this. It is scarcely necessary to point out that these two different lines of reform are wholly distinct, and in many respects entirely inconsistent with one another. It is one thing to desire to see higher education spread as widely as possible from one end of the country to the other; it is another, and quite different thing, to desire that there should be certain institutions organised under special conditions with a view to securing the highest possible results. It is vain to demand that the universities shall increase the stringency of their requirements, and at the same time offer all the advantages of university education to those who have fulfilled none of these conditions, and have exhibited no standard of proficiency at all. The need of a stringent, or at least effective, entrance examination has been urged for years past from various quarters, and by almost all our most prominent educationalists; and the late Commission, though they did not consider that the evidence justified them. in prounouncing unreservedly in favour of an exclusive entrance examination, recommended a practical equivalent in the shape of a First Examination as a necessary preliminary to all degrees. There are, without doubt, as we shall see, difficulties in the way of instituting an entrance examination that shall at once be really effective in raising the whole standard of university work, and at the same time not impose too sharp and sudden a strain upon the school-system of the country; but these difficulties can and should be faced. The main duty which the university owes to the nation is to maintain the highest possible standard of education. It is for this purpose that it is assisted by public funds, and invested with the privileges which are essential to enable it to perform this duty. But the duty ought to be performed; and no amount of extension of the higher education on what is called a wide and popular basis will make up for a dereliction in what is essentially and peculi |