The University Extension Movement was an attempt to answer these questions in a practical fashion, and my friend does full justice to the spirit which initiated that movement, and to the men—­such as the late Lord Grey—­who led it.  But I suppose he speaks from experience when he says:  “University Extension, as it is, will never become established in working-class villages.  Forty-five to fifty pounds is too big a sum to be raised in three months, and is also considered too much to be paid for a man coming to lecture once a week for twelve weeks, and then disappear for ever like a comet.”  My friend uses an astronomical figure, I a geographical one; but we mean the same thing.  The idea is to establish Oases—­“fertile spots in the midst of deserts”—­permanent centres of light and culture in manufacturing districts.  “The Universities teach and train ministers of religion, and they go and live in their parishes among their flocks all the year round.  Why not send lecturers and teachers of secular subjects in the same way?  A system something similar to the Wesleyan or Primitive Methodists’ ministerial system would answer the purpose.  The country might be divided into circuits of four or five centres each, and a University man stationed in each circuit, to organize Students’ Associations, give lectures, hold classes, and superintend scientific experiments, as the case may be.”

This is a good illustration.  The Church professes to place in each parish an official teacher of religion and morality, and most of the Nonconformist communities do the same.  To place an official teacher of culture (in its widest sense) in every parish is perhaps a task beyond our national powers as at present developed; but to place one in every industrial district is not conceivable only, but, I believe, practicable.  The lecturer who comes from Oxford or Cambridge, delivers his course, and departs, has no doubt his uses.  He is like the “Hot Gospeller” of an earlier age, or the “Missioner” of to-day.  He delivers an awakening message, and many are the better for it; but if culture is to get hold of the average lads and young men of an industrial district, its exponent must be more like the resident minister, the endowed and established priest.  That he should live among the people whom he is to instruct, know them personally, understand their ways of thinking and speaking, is at least as important as that he should be a competent historian or mathematician or man of letters.  If the State, or voluntary effort, or a combination of the two, could secure the permanent presence of such a teacher in every district where men work hard, and yet have leisure enough to cultivate their intellects, a yawning gap in our educational system would be filled.