Lord Derby made one of his sensible speeches on Monday
at Ormskirk, while giving prizes in the Grammar-School there, and said he thought the Act of 1870 had done most useful work, reducing the totally ignorant class to an inappreciable amount, and rather deprecated "sudden spurts of educational energy." He wanted more attention paid to middle-class education, the poor and the rich having each got working systems of their own, and the latter one, though cer- tainly improvable, being highly popular with those who use it,—an unusual fact in education. He told the lads that life would be a fight for them, the world not being at all a good world for the incompetent or the weak, and that training was the best help in a struggle in which none succeed but those who persevere, and who are " not impatient of the dull and tedious," —a most fruitful remark. He commended the lads who had won prizes ; but with his characteristic realism, addressed himself principally to the majority who had not, and whom he bade remember that the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Anthony Trollope were both of them in early life pronounced failures. It was an excellent speech, and we wish it had been extended by a distinct expression of opinion on the causes of success in life. Brilliancy often fails, but then stupidity is not much help.
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