The annual meeting of the Society for the Extension of
University Teaching was held this day week at Goldsmiths' Hall, Mr. Goschen, the President, in the chair, when the Pre- sident congratulated the Society on its rapidly increasing success. In eight years, for example, between 1885 and 1893, the Society had extended its operations, so that, instead of having twenty-five separate centres, it has now fifty-nine ; while the number of its students has increased from 3,662 to 13,374. The difficulty has been to prevent the teaching from degenerating into popular lectures, though Mr. Goschen thinks that that tendency has now been firmly resisted and fairly vanquished; but he still sees room for great improvement in the continuousness of the students' studies. Mr. Welldon, the Head-Master of Harrow, who delivered an interesting address, was very anxious that every student should take up and pursue more than one subject, so as not to sink into specialism. He wanted to save students from falling into those narrow grooves into which even the great naturalist, Darwin, bad confessedly fallen, and into which he also thought that Dr. Pusey, the theologian, in whose just published " Life " there is hardly an allusion to the sudden growth of natural science during his day, had also fallen. In his zeal for breadth of culture, Mr. Welldon also deprecated very strongly the magnitude of the modern biographies of notable men. He hoped Mr. Gosohen might leave behind him instructions that whenever his " Life " is written, it should be written in one volume, in order not to exhaust the patience of University Extension students. That may be, perhaps, the best sacrifice which great men could make for the good of their fellow- citizens. But as for small men, should it not be ear]y impressed upon them to insist sedulously on what Carlyle called " No- biography and silence " ? Nine out of every ten modern bio- graphies are superfluous ; and the tenth is more or lees lost amongst the nine superfluous ones.
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