Mr. Gladstone in his speech dwelt on history as the
most humanising of studies, and on the study of natural objects as the most refreshing, especially for a people shut up in towns, who have, without such studies, no sufficient stimulus to learn how beautiful Nature is, and how much refinement and enjoyment the study of Nature is capable of yielding. He also made a very ingenious suggestion that it would be a good time for Notting- ham to screw some help for its educational scheme out of the London Companies, since a proposal had been made that the London Companies should pay for the Board Schools of London out of their surplus revenue,—a proposal which had filled them with horror, and which would be likely to make them look with much favour on beneficent objects of a popular and creditable kind, involving a very moderate leakage of revenue as compared with so frightful a proposal for municipal phlebotomy as this.
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