Mr. Gladstone has made two educational speeches within a week,—one
at Chester on Thursday week, on laying the corner- stone of the New King's School there ; and one at Hawarden, on Tuesday last, on occasion of an effort to place the Hawarden Literary Institute on a more satisfactory basis. In the former speech, Mr. Gladstone, after referring to the old prediction that the Railway system would make Chester a mere heap of ruins, and asserting that so far from its having been fulfilled, "there was not a town from one end of the country to the other in which the spirit of youthful life beat more freely and vigorously than it did in Chester," went on to point out that while the wages of manual labour are rising, the wages of educated labour, at least of the commoner kinds, are rather tending to fall, under the influence of the competition of a new host of candidates. Hence, he insisted, there could not be a more important crisis for middle-class education. Unless each boy tried to find out his own best capacities and to cultivate them well, the middle-class, instead of keeping its relative position in the race, would lose ground. Middle-class education would have much to do to hold its-own, and it would not be done without the co-operation of the taught with the teachers. Yes, but is there not some danger of stimulating boys too much, and forgetting the value of a comparatively fallow-time in boyhood? No doubt the majority of boys have a healthy incapacity for over- earnestness, but is not the minority, who are quite capable of it, becoming larger and larger every day ?
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