5 MARCH 1887, Page 3

Mr. John Morley delivered an address on the study of

litera- ture to the students of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, last Saturday, in the Egyptian Hall of the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor being in the chair. He began by depreciating his own capacity to speak on such a subject, on the ground that he had strayed " from literature into politics," and that as politics are a field where "action is one long second- best," and where "the choice constantly lies between two blunders," he was not sure that he was the beet man for the task. Mr. Morley was very keen against the notion that culture would in any way interfere with the effective performance of the rough work of the world ; indeed, he held that the " Periclean ideas of beauty and simplicity " could be brought within the reach of the drudges of the world, and that the drudgery would be all the less of drudgery as a consequence.