The committee did excellent work in systematizing important matters and leaving minor arrangements to the local managers; in apportioning essential and discretionary subjects, and—­what was of special interest to its chairman—­the teaching of elementary geography and elementary social economy, and in particular the systematized object-lessons, embracing a course of elementary construction in physical science, and serving as an introduction to the courses for the examinations under the Science and Art Department.  Science, as he declared, was assuming such a position alike in practical life and in thought that any one totally ignorant of it would be at a disadvantage in both spheres.  Moreover, the proposed technical schools—­for applied science, that is—­must suffer if they had to deal with pupils who had no preliminary grounding in the principles of physical science.  His early advocacy of music and drawing, not to produce artists, but to develop personality, also bore some fruit.  The man of science, too, was found defending Latin as a discretionary subject, alternatively with a modern language.  Latin was the gate to many things, and, apart from the question of overloading the curriculum, there was great danger if educational possibilities were not thrown open to all without restriction.  There is no more frightful “sitting on the safety valve” than in denying men of ability the means of rising to the positions for which their talents and industry might qualify them.

As for the compulsory element in education and the justification for levying rates and taxes for what objectors called “educating other people’s children,” his answer was:  “Every ignorant person tends to become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the liberty of, his fellows, and an obstacle to their success.  Under such circumstances an education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for purposes of defence.”

In all this it was his attitude towards the child which deeply impressed his colleagues in whom child-sympathy was strongest.  As the Rev. Benjamin Waugh put it, he was on the Board to establish schools for the children.  He wanted to turn them into sound men and women, and resented the idea that schools were to train either congregations for churches or hands for factories.  “What he sought to do for the child was for the child’s sake, that it might live a fuller, truer, worthier life.”

After fifteen months of service on the School Board superadded to the heavy strain of his ordinary work, his health broke down utterly, and he resigned.  But after his retirement his successors found that their duty was “to put into practice the scheme of instruction which Huxley was mainly instrumental in settling.  We were thus able indirectly to improve both the means and methods of teaching....  The most important developments and additions have been in the direction of educating the hand and eye....  Thus the impulse given by Huxley in the first months of the Board’s existence has been carried forward by others.”  So wrote Dr. J. H. Gladstone in 1896.  The tide of education has swelled since then and is still swelling, but its main direction is the same.