This day week was Speech Day at Rugby, and the
large company which assembled there was much edified by the recent additions to the School, the handsome reading-room, the spacious swimming-bath and gymnasium, and the very useful workshops, where the lads with a gift for carpentering can learn both that admirable art and also the use of the lathe, and where many good specimens of skill of this kind are to be seen. Dr. Jex Blake, the head master, referred to these additions to the school in his speech, observing that he hoped that these provisions for various tastes might not weaken the concentrativeness of Rugby boys, but rather stimulate it. They were intended, he said, to supply useful antidotes to those lounging and loafing tendencies which so often weaken character by wasting boys' leisure hours, not to interfere with the active work and study. Dr. Jex Blake was evidently very anxious not to lessen the reputation of Rugby for turning out earnest men, and took the opportunity pf expressing his satisfaction at the presence of an old Rugbeian in whom they felt great pride, Mr. Goschen, a statesman who, he said, having performed almost the labours of Hercules at Constantinople, might have some reason to fear that he would be sent to Egypt to cleanse the Augean stable there. But here, as we think, Dr. Jex Blake was in error. Mr. Goschen does all the work he under- takes well. Unfortunately, however, he has already been in Egypt on behalf of the Foreign Bondholders, and that is scarcely the capacity which would best fit him to return to Egypt, with that Rugbeian earnestness of his, on behalf of those larger interests of Egypt and of Europe, which we believe to be often inconsistent with, if not absolutely opposed to, the interests of the Foreign Bondholders.
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