The second part of Professor Williamson's discourse was an elaborate
proposal for providing gratuitously a year's more educa- tion for those pupils who have used best the year they have already had, from the children of the primary schools to students trained to original investigation at the Universities. This idea is not new, and is already more or less pursued, so far as the scholarships tenable at secondary schools for the most promising scholars of primary schools, and those tenable at the Universities for the most promising pupils of the secondary schools,
carry it out. It is obvious, however, that Professor Williamson contemplated a far larger State expenditure on this process of the gradual elimination of the non-scientific human atoms, and the complete evolution of the scientific atoms, than any politician has hitherto ventured to consider. He con- fidently trusted that the time was near when the education vote should be by far the large.it item in the Budget, and in an eloquent peroration anticipated the time when all that should remain of England would be the love of truth and the methods of culture which its educational system had handed down to future ages. The Vice-President of the Council (Mr. Forster), who proposed the vote of thanks, was certainly justified in hinting,— so at least we understand what he skid,—that the kind of chemical experiment which of all others it is most dangerous to try, is any very new one on the combining power of those peculiarly restive atoms endowed.vrith so much more of elective self-will than of elective affinity,—political Englishmen.
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