houses 4,262, of refreshment houses with wine licences 2,115; the total number of licences granted being 13,454. In the prosaic but not less important work of providing the public with luncheon or dinner, the progress of half a century has effected but little improvement, and the rough but good and plentiful coffee-room fare of the past was far preferable to the more pretentious and costly catering of the modern dining room. We have in this matter very much to learn from our neighbours across the water, and the work which, at last, the Coffee Tavern and Refreshment Room Companies are doing for the poorer classes in London, needs to be accomplished for every section of society. There has, it is true, been a noticeable increase in the number of foreign cafés opened in the western thoroughfares of late years, but the refreshment of the people is a matter which still waits for enterprise. Partly growing out of the public needs in this direction has been the extension of the club system at the west end of the town, until Pall Mall and St. James's Street are almost filled with club-houses, in all of which, although the ostensible bond of union may be the political, professional, or social agreement of the members, no insignificant element in the life of the institutions is furnished by the chef below or above stairs. The number of clubs of a really high standard is very large, and the latest addition to the list is a club for ladies. For the working man the club has completely taken the place of the Mechanics' Institute, and the central Working Men's Club and Institute Union in London has accomplished much useful work in promoting the formation of such institutions. This system which has been developed within the last twenty-five years, has led, in some cases, to the establishment of educational classes, both technical and general, and a movement of a more extended character for the promotion of technical education is receiving considerable support from the City Companies.

Thus, in all its varied departments of life and labour, the great city is moving on, and if it cannot in architectural beauties be said to be the first city in the world, it is at any rate in the forefront as far as its material and intellectual progress is concerned.

CHARLES MACKESON.

138

THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD.

To be well abused is almost a condition of existence for any public body elected by popular suffrage, but it has seldom fallen to the lot of any corporation, civil or ecclesiastical, to be more freely criticised than the School Board for London. When the Board was first elected, nine years ago, it was obviously entering on a new department of public work, for although in the capacity of school managers and committees laymen had occasionally assisted in the direction and maintenance of what are now, for the sake of distinction, termed Voluntary Schools, they had always felt that the parochial incumbents were the persons really responsible, and that the functions of the laity or unbeneficed clergy, in regard to educational matters, was rather to suggest than to control. When, however, the School Board arose at the bidding of Mr. Forster, its true character became apparent ; it was to be a body of the Board of Guardians type, but on a far larger scale, able by Act of Parliament to demand from the vestries the funds necessary to carry on its work, but responsible to no one, except in a limited sense to the auditor of the accounts, and in a more limited sense still to the Committee of Privy Council on Education. Established on such a basis, the future of the Board was practically settled before its birth. It is so natural, in every elective body, for the various conceptions formed by the members as to the best means of fulfilling its functions to develop into two or more distinct lines of thought and action-leading, in political life, to the creation of a Ministry and an Opposition—that there was little matter for surprise in the appearance of a strong division of opinion very early in the history of the Board, and although its first chairman, Lord Lawrence, did not, perhaps, take such a decided line as its present head, Sir Charles Reed, there soon arose within the Board a marked disagreement between the advocates of what has since been termed "the Board's policy," on the one side, and the opponents of that policy on the other. At first it seemed probable that the members of the Board would, in the main, differ upon what was termed "the Religious Question," and in this belief strenuous efforts were made by the churchmen, and especially by the clergy of the metropolitan parishes, to return candidates who were not merely pledged to support religious teaching as an element in the School Board's syllabus, in every

one of its schools, but who also undertook to protect, as far as might be possible, the existing voluntary and denominational schools from any needless and, as they held, unfair competition on the part of the School Board. This was the fundamental principle on which the "church candidates," as they were termed, were elected to the first two Boards in 1870 and 1873, but by the time the third election arrived, in 1876 a distinct change had come over the feeling of the church portion of the constituency, and that change has now become intensified into a conviction that a strict adherence to their original platform would be a mistake, and that the future ground of appeal to the ratepayers must be economic rather than religious. In this way the two parties on the Board have gradually ranged themselves in distinct classes: those who adopt the views of Sir Charles Reed and the majority of his colleagues in favour of erecting schools and supplying teaching power to the utmost limits required or permitted under the Acts; and those who, with Mr. Arthur Mills, M.P., Mr. Evan Daniel, and others, who were, for the most part, originally returned as "church candidates," now stand forward as the advocates of reduced expenditure and of a more gradual supply of the educational needs of the great city. Thus it has come to pass that the Board is as distinctly divided as the House of Commons, and, as its division lists prove, the points raised— sometimes crucial, sometimes of minor importance-generally serve to bring out what is, if not a strong antagonism, at least a very wide difference of opinion.

To the Board which has thus grown up and has become, next to the Corporation and the Metropolitan Board of Works, the most important institution in the metropolis, both the sexes, nearly all professions, and almost all sections of society, have contributed members. Even on the first Board the representation of women was secured by the election of Mrs. Garrett Anderson and Miss Emily Davies, while on the Board which is, as we write, entering on the last month of its triennial life, the number of ladies has been doubled, and consists of Mrs. Fenwick Miller, Mrs. Surr, Miss Helen Taylor, and Mrs. Westlake. Among the members of the legislature who have served on the Board during its nine years' existence, in addition to Lord Lawrence, its first chairman, have been Viscount Sandon, Viscount Mahon, the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, Mr. Samuel Morley, Mr. Arthur Mills, Mr. Alderman Cotton, Lord Francis Harvey, Mr. W. McCullagh Torrens, while among past members

of Parliament we may name Sir Charles Reed and Mr. Tom Collins. Some other well-known public men, Mr. Francis Peek, Mr. Richard Forster, Sir John Bennett, Sir E. H. Currie, Mr. S. Kemp-Welch, the Hon. Lyulph Stanley, the Hon. George Brodrick, Sir Francis Lycett, Mr. John Macgregor, the late Sir Thomas Tilson, have been on the roll, and in addition to those whose qualifications are general rather than particular, the list includes, among men of science, Professor Huxley, Professor Gladstone; among literary men, Mr. Hepworth Dixon; among publishers, Mr. Watson, of the firm of Messrs. Nisbet and Co., and Mr. C. E. Mudie, of" Mudie's Library;" among practical educationists, Mr. Heller and Mr. Morgan, both formerly national schoolmasters; Mr. H. G. Heald, formerly Secretary of the Church of England Sunday School Institute; and the late Mr. G. Tabrum, of the Public Record Office, who had for many years devoted his leisure hours to the promotion of youths' institutes and ragged schools in the north of London, and owed his return for the Finsbury division to his popularity acquired in this field of voluntary effect. The Board has had many eminent clergymen of the Church of England and ministers of the Nonconformist bodies in its ranks, including the present Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Thorold (then Vicar of St. Pancras); Canon Gregory, of St. Paul's Cathedral; Canon Barry, Principal of King's College; Canon Cromwell, Principal of St. Mark's College, Chelsea; the Rev. Evan Daniel, Principal of Battersea College; Dr. Irons; the Rev. J. J. Coxhead, Vicar of St. John's, Fitzroy Square; Dr. J. F. Maguire, Rector of St. George's, Southwark; the Rev. Joseph Bardsley, Vicar of Finchley (then of Stepney); Canon Money, of Deptford; Prebendary William Rogers, Rector of Bishopsgate; the Rev. William Rogers (vice-chairman), Vicar of St. Thomas's, Charterhouse; the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, Vicar of Christ Church, Marylebone: Canon Miller, Vicar of Greenwich. The Protestant dissenting bodies have sent up some of their foremost men, among whom we may mention Dr. Rigg, President of the Wesleyan Training College, at Westminster; Dr. Joseph Angus, Principal of the Baptist College, Regent's Park; the Rev. J. Allanson Picton; the Rev. Benjamin Waugh, and the Rev. Mark Wilks; and the Roman Catholics have been represented by the Rev. Angelo Lucas, and several lay members of their communion. The working men candidates, as they have been termed, have included Mr. Lucraft and Mr. Potter.

A board which can boast of such a thoroughly representative

character must, it is obvious, have very strong claims to public confidence, and it is probably owing to the floating consciousness of the strength of its personnel, which has formed a part of the very atmosphere in which each successive Board has worked that its majority has never hesitated to take steps which must inevitably bring it into collision, not merely with a considerable section of the ratepayers, but with the authorities at the Education Office. The electing body consists of all persons rated for the relief of the poor in the metropolis, and as this embraces a constituency in which the working classes and lower middle classes, who benefit directly from the high class education supplied by the Board at comparatively low fees, preponderate, it is, as far as can be estimated, very improbable that any great change will take place in the balance of power on the Board, which has hitherto been largely in the hands of members who favour the Board's policy. Wherever a distinct issue has been raised, either on religious or economic grounds, the result of the voting has thus been a foregone conclusion, although on such matters as the costly furnishing of the School Ship, which in itself formed an expensive addition to the Board's machinery, and the maintenance of the Truant School on the silent system, which in its working appears to have involved harshness, if not actual cruelty on the part of the officials, the divisions have shown a tendency to forget party.

The change in the personnel of the Board has already been very considerable; the elections of 1876 resulting in the return of only twenty-eight of the members of the first Board, and twenty-two new members, while three of the old members, were as a matter of fact newly elected, as they were not returned in 1873. The tendency of the elections has scarcely been in an upward direction as far as the eminence of the candidates returned has been concerned; the absence from the list of such men as Lord Lawrence, Lord Sandon, Bishop Thorold, Mr. W. H. Smith, M.P., Mr. Torrens, M.P., Canon Barry, Canon Miller, Mr. John Macgregor, Professor Huxley, the Rev. W. Rogers, Dr. Rigg, and Mr. Llewellyn Davies, having scarcely been compensated for. That such a contingency was inevitable was foreseen from the first by those who realised what the work demanded from the members of the Educational Parliament would be ; for, apart from the attendance at the full meeting of the Board, no member can be said to discharge his duties efficiently who does not serve on the central committees, and perform those