when the energies, physical and intellectual, wake into new life, and impel the youth in new directions.  Everyone has been young, but somehow we forget that sweet spring season.  Let us try to remember, in the interests of the uncared-for youths and girls, the time of glorious dreaming, when the boy became a man, and stood upon some peak in Darien to gaze upon the purple isles of life in the great ocean beyond, peopled by men who were as heroes and by women who were as goddesses.  Our own dreaming was glorified, to be sure, with memories of things we had read; yet, as we dreamed, so, but without the colour lent to our visions, these sallow-faced lads, with the long and ugly coats and the round-topped hats, are dreaming now.  For want of our help their dreams become nightmares, and in their brains are born devils of every evil passion.  And, for the girls, although not all can become so bad as those foul-mouthed young Bacchantes and raging Maenads of Hamstead Heath, it would seem as if nothing could be left to them, after the education of the gutter—­nothing at all—­of the things which we associate with holy and gracious womanhood.

Truly, from the moral as well as the educational point of view, here is a great evil disclosed.  There is, however, another aspect of the question, which must not be forgotten.  If we are to hold our place at the head of the industrial countries of the world, our workmen must have technical education.  But this can only be received by those who possess already a certain amount of knowledge, and that a good deal beyond the grasp of a child of thirteen years.  How, then, can it be made to reach those who have lost the whole of what once they knew?

These facts are, I believe, beyond any dispute or doubt.  They have only to be stated in order to be appreciated.  They affect not London only, but every great town.  The working men themselves have recognised the gravity of the situation, and are anxious to provide some remedy.  At Nottingham an address, signed on behalf of the School Board and the Nottingham Trades Council, has been addressed to the employers of labour, entreating them to assist in the establishment and maintenance of remedial measures.  At the meeting of the Trades Unions’ representatives held in London last year, two resolutions on the subject were passed; and the School Boards of London, Glasgow, and Nottingham are all willing to lend their schools for evening use.  For there is but one thing possible or practical—­the evening school, In Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, children are by law compelled to attend ‘continuation’ schools until the age of sixteen.  In some places the zeal of the people for education outstrips even the Government regulations.  At the town of Chemnitz, in Saxony, for example, with a population of 92,000 inhabitants, the Workmen’s Union have started a Continuation school with a far more comprehensive system of subjects and classes than that provided by