It was a very voluminous document.  The Committee had met every week, and, in the words of Huxley,] “what it had endeavoured to do, was to obtain some order and system and uniformity in important matters, whilst in comparatively unimportant matters they thought some play should be given for the activity of the bodies of men into whose hands the management of the various schools should be placed.” [The recommendations were considered on June 21 and July 12, and passed without any material alterations or additions.  They were very much the same as existed in the best elementary schools of the period.  Huxley’s chief interest, it may be surmised, was in the subjects of instruction.  It was passed that, in infants’ schools there should be the Bible, reading, writing, arithmetic, object lessons of a simple character, with some such exercise of the hands and eyes as is given in the Kindergarten system, music, and drill.  In junior and senior schools the subjects of instruction were divided into two classes, essential and discretionary, the essentials being the Bible, and the principles of religion and morality, reading, writing, and arithmetic, English grammar and composition, elementary geography, and elementary social economy, history of England, the principles of book-keeping in senior schools, with mensuration in senior boys’ schools.  All through the six years there were to be systematised object lessons, embracing a course of elementary instruction in physical science, and serving as an introduction to the science examinations conducted by the Science and Art department.  An analogous course of instruction was adopted for elementary evening schools.  In moving] “that the formation of science and art classes in connection with public elementary schools be encouraged and facilitated,” [Huxley contended strongly for it, saying,] “The country could not possibly commit a greater error than in establishing schools in which the direct applications of science and art were taught before those who entered the classes were grounded in the principles of physical science.” [In advocating object lessons he said,] “The position that science was now assuming, not only in relation to practical life, but to thought, was such that those who remained entirely ignorant of even its elementary facts were in a wholly unfair position as regarded the world of thought and the world of practical life.” [It was, moreover,] “the only real foundation for technical education.”

[Other points in which he was specially concerned were, that the universal teaching of drawing was accepted, against an amendment excluding girls; that domestic economy was made a discretionary substitute for needlework and cutting-out; while he spoke in defence of Latin as a discretionary subject, alternatively with a modern language.  It was true that he would not have proposed it in the first instance, not because a little Latin is a bad thing, but for fear of] “overloading the boat.” [But, on the other hand, there was