The Bishop of London's address at the centenary of the
Liverpool Athena3um delivered on Monday contained several good things. They talked nowadays, said the Bishop, a great deal about education and thought about it very little. They were bringing up a generation in the supposition that all the child had to do was to sit still like a pitcher under a pump while an expert hand poured in the proper amount of material for it to hold." The only education that anybody really obtained was that which he gave him- self. "The idea prevailing at the beginning of the century was that men should read a good book, master its contents, and pursue for themselves the lines of thought it suggested, and talk it over and make its ideas the subject of discussion among themselves. No system could surely be better." We entirely agree. In the last sentence, indeed, is contained the chief advantage of University education. The social con- ditions of a University make it easy for a number of young minds, set alight by the perusal of some great book, to pass on the divine fire. It is from this impact of young mind on Young mind, as Bagehot called it, and not from lectures and examinations, that men get what is most worth getting at Oxford and Cambridge. With the Bishop's somewhat con- ventional denunciation of the man who reads largely and
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