Newcastle, a grimy sort of place, but with much enthusiasm
for instruction, is welcoming the Cambridge University Erten- sion Lectures with much heartiness ; and Mr. John Morley made on Thursday a bright speech on the subject. He was particularly anxious that teachers in elementary schools should enjoy the "blessing" of University education, for "they will take an increasingly important place in the body politic," and there is in the system under which they are now trained, " a certain tendency to the mechanical." That is true, and it is true also that larger education will care both that tendency, and the other tendency of such teachers,—the tendency to conceit. Mr. Morley expected that science would be preferred to literature, for that was the drift of the age ; but for himself, he thought literature the more valuable subject of study, because "it furnishes the ideas which govern character and conduct," and it is upon conduct and character that the future of nations depends. He specially instanced the study of logic as moat important, and would teach it through the study of the principles of evidence, for which he thought the workmen of the North displayed a natural aptitude. He ended with a warm eulogium on the Universities, which, coming as it does from one of the most advanced Radicals in England, it is pleasant to read. Time was when the Universities were dis- trusted even by Liberals, and when the Radicals at heart believed, with old Dr. Hinton, that " God had no need of human knowledge."
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