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A. L. LILLEY, M.A.
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LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
MA.DDOX STREET, BOND ST.
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SIR JOSHUA FITCH
Hn Hccount of bis %tfe arto Morfe
BY
A. L. LILLEY, M.A.
VICAR OF ST. MARY'S, PADDINGTON GREEN
LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W. I 906
[A II rights reserved]
PREFACE
WHEN, at Lady Fitch's request, I undertook the task of preparing a brief memoir of her husband, I knew well the difficulties that stood in the way of its successful accomplishment. I cannot hope that I have overcome those diffi- culties, but at least I have attempted to keep them in mind throughout. The plan of this brief sketch of a strenuous character and a laborious life is the result of that attempt. I have tried to make a too little considered, but highly important, fragment of our national history tell the story of a man who was himself a chief part of it.
It is to Sir Joshua Fitch himself that I owe it if I have at all succeeded in conveying what he was and what he did. Though I had long known him through his writings, it was only during the last three years of his life that I knew him personally. During those years we met frequently, and I learned to know and to value his controlled enthusiasm, his moderating temper, his shrewd and penetrating judgment. I have not read for the purposes of this memoir a single line of a report or an article written by him without feeling in it and through it the spirit of the man I knew and honoured.
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vi PREFACE
My most liberal thanks are due to Lady Fitch and Miss Pickton for their continuous help at every stage of the work. To all whose ' appreciations ' of Sir Joshua's work appear in the text, and, in addition, to Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin ; to Sir Henry Craik ; to Mr. M. E. Sadler ; to Mr. Oscar Browning ; to Canon Bell, late Headmaster of Marlborough ; to Professor Hales ; to the Bishop of Exeter ; to the Bishop of Ripon ; to Bishop Welldon ; to the Dean of Ripon ; to Dr. Paton, of Nottingham ; to Mr. Madjarkar, C.S.I. ; to Dr. Edwin Abbott ; to Mr. Arthur Milman ; to Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves ; to Mr. Henderson ; to Mr. Wix ; to Dr. Wormell ; to Mr. Baptiste Scoones ; to Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace ; to Mr. Courthope Bowen ; to Mr. Marvin ; to the late Rev. C. Du Port ; to Miss Manley ; to Miss McKee ; to the Rev. J. P. Faunthorpe ; to Prebendary Hobson ; to Mr. H. Garrod ; to M. Esclangon ; to Mr. Colvill ; to Miss Lohse ; to the Rev, J. Rice Byrne ; to Sir William Bousfield ; to Mr. Murch ; to Dr. Rigg, of the Wesley an Training College ; to Mr. S. R. Fuller ; to Mr. Hodgson Pratt ; to Miss Ridley ; to Mr. Currey ; to Mr. Dugard ; to Mr. E. D. J. Wilson ; to Mr. Walter Baily ; to Dr. Sophie Bryant ; to Mr. H. W. Simpkinson, C.B. ; to Dr. Kimmins ; to Mr. C. Broughton ; and to Mrs. Gillman, I am indebted for most valued aid.
A. L. LILLE Y. April, 1906.
CONTENTS
CUA PTEK PAGE
I. EARLY LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS - 1
II. HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS - 22
III. COMMISSIONS AND INQUIRIES - 66
IV. UNIVERSITY PROBLEMS - -100
v. WOMEN'S EDUCATION - 129
VI. A 'MERCHANT OF LIGHT' - - 163
VII. OTHER DOINGS AND INTERESTS - - 194
VIII. THE REST OF A WORKER - - 224
BIBLIOGRAPHY 256
INDEX - - .... 259
PORTRAIT OF SIR JOSHUA FITCH
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SIR JOSHUA FITCH
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS
JOSHUA GIRLING FITCH was born in Southwark in the year 1824. His father and mother were both Colchester people who had come to London and settled down in Southwark shortly after their marriage in 1821. The mother especially seems to have inherited in a remarkable degree the practical gifts of character and the spirit of sober religious mysticism which have been almost the customary heritage of members of the East Anglian stock. Her distinguished son, early separated from his family by the engrossing claims of a vocation unfamiliar to the simple interests of the Southwark household, always retained the most grateful memory of his mother's intelligent sympathy with, and wise encouragement of, those arduous intellectual ambitions which had pledged him to a path increasingly remote from her own. She was deeply religious, had a keen and
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masculine intelligence, and gave habitual proof of that native wisdom which can meet the necessary sacrifices of life with an even mind and a sunny heart. This, at least, is the picture which her son retained of her into his latest years. His father he remembered chiefly as a man of immense energy and capacity for work, impatient of the least evidence of indolence in his children. ' Don't let the grass grow under your feet/ was an admo- nition so often heard from him that in after-years it was always associated for his children with the memory of his eager, active spirit.
Joshua was the second child of a family of seven. The eldest son, Thomas, born in 1822, became a convert to the Roman Catholic Church while quite a young man, was ordained as a member of the religious house of Notre Dame de France, and still survives at the age of eighty- four. William, the third son, born in 1826, was, until not long before his death in 1892, head- master of an Endowed School at Hitchin, in Hert- fordshire. It is evident that the interests of the family were naturally directed towards the things of the mind and the soul. It is not wonderful if for such boys the life of school was entered upon as an avenue prolonging itself into a future which would be only its extension and enlargement. Though the family was poor, the boys were sent early to a very good private day-school near their
EARLY LIFE 3
home, of which a Mr. Woodman was master. Joshua soon displayed that aptitude for and de- light in teaching which remained his chief charac- teristic throughout life. There never, perhaps, was a life in which there was less of the accidental ; and certainly the essence of the man was that he was a teacher. . It was the impulse of nature, therefore, which combined with the necessity of choosing a career when he became assistant master at the Borough Road School.
It is difficult to get a clear picture of the life of the boy at this time, emerging as he was into a manhood which must already have been for him full of intellectual possibilities. Fitch was one of those men who could not easily talk about him- self, or allow his early life to be an object of sentimental curiosity even for those who by the closest ties of life had some right to make it such. Yet certain memories of that time would stray occasionally, as if by accident, into his conver- sation with those who were dearest to him and with whom so many long years of his life were spent, and have been by them affectionately pieced together so as to form a consistent and life-like impression of the boy who was father to the man so well known in the world of affairs. The picture thus formed is one of simplicity of life, intense and unremitting energy, a love of work which enabled him to find the only relief he
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needed from the strain of incessant labour in its variety, a kind of passion for usefulness, and an interest in all that had to do with religion. He had an iron constitution, a fact which enabled him throughout life to make his plans with confi- dence, and to execute them with certainty. He was hardly ever throughout a long official life compelled by illness to fail of an engagement which he had made or which had been made for him. This no doubt helped him in a special degree in those early years of struggle, or, rather, of patient, steady, sustained effort, for struggle was a word which was wholly inapplicable to any phase of Fitch's life or to anything which he did. He had from the beginning that mastery of him- self which made him a natural economist of every gift he possessed and every opportunity which he found. There has seldom been a life in which there was less waste than his. Most men have to resist and painfully to overcome the tendency to waste — waste of power, time, and opportunity. They have powers which they do not discover at all or discover late. There are opportunities which they cannot see, or see through such a refracting lens of defective judgment that they cannot seize them. Fitch was by a happy gift of nature saved from all these difficulties ; and the gift of nature he discovered so early and used so reverently that he converted it into a deft and
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almost instinctive art. It is this that explains the insatiable energy of that early period in which there went on together hard and already skilful work as a teacher, personal study for the special University course (he was preparing to matriculate in the London University), omnivorous general reading, especially among the English classics, work as a Sunday-school teacher to which he was devoted, and even practical social work among the poor of his native district. Here were all the absorbing interests of his later life in germ. The experience out of which grew that remarkable essay, ' The Sunday - School of the Future/ published in ' Educational Aims and Methods/ he had already begun to gather while he was yet an assistant master in a school in Southwark. The interest which made him for years one of the most assiduous champions and the wisest exponents of charity organization was drawn from those far-off days.
His simple and profound reverence for the things that are excellent, which made his religion so sane and manly, so much a part of himself, was of the same early growth. Brought up in a home marked by a deep and practical evangelical piety, he seems to have been in his years of early manhood for some time a High Churchman. It is one proof the more that the influence of great movements, intellectual and
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spiritual, tells principally and tells largely upon young men of from twenty to twenty-five. We think of the early Tractarian Movement probably as confined mainly in its effect to the clergy and the more thoughtful and earnest Oxford men of the forties. But it told, no doubt, far beyond the bounds of the University, wherever mind and spirit were alert and open to the stirrings of a new expression of the religious life. The move- ment did not make a lasting impression upon Fitch. No one knowing him in later years could have suspected that its breath had, however faintly, stirred the surface of his life. His religion was of that kind which withdraws in- stinctively from all expression save the simplest and most necessary. Yet there were elements in the earlier phases of Tractarianism which appealed to him. Its earnest devotional spirit, the ordered mysticism of personal character which it tended to produce, its reverence for the past, even such little things as the careful and dignified use of language which it fostered, and its popularization of the Latin of the Vulgate — these were things which in the varying measure of their importance he valued highly. He was a diligent and critical collector of old Latin and classical English hymns ; he read his Greek Testa- ment daily (the writer of this memoir possesses one in miniature type which he used from the
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year 1849 till the day of his death); he was a loving student (and not merely a student) of the masterpieces of devotional literature ; and he would insert in his delicate handwriting in the fly-leaves of his favourite books some old Latin phrase as delicate in sound and meaning. In many ways Fitch's was a spirit which had a not remote kinship with Keble's ; at least, they met in a common quality of their religion — its delicate strength.
It was this life of varied and eager interests which the young student had already made for himself while labouring to acquire a liberal learn- ing in the intervals left him by the arduous work of teaching. After acting for some time as assistant at the Borough Road School, he was appointed to the headmastership of a school at Kingsland. There he continued his reading in the early mornings and deep into the night. But he never allowed the claims of study to encroach upon his interest in the work of the profession which he had made his own. Already he was mastering the principles and perfecting the methods of education. How to teach seemed to him already the most important of practical studies, and how to teach meant how to make interesting the thing taught, or, which is the same thing, how to evoke the pupil's interest in the thing learned. It was because he saw
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this necessity so clearly that he took from the first so vivid an interest in the teaching of read- ing. He felt that half the work of education had been completed when a child had been taught to feel the charm of ordered words, and to that end he laid the greatest stress upon clearness and balance in reading. But this devotion to his life-work necessarily delayed the progress of his University studies. It was not till 1850 that he took his Bachelor's degree, and two years later he graduated as Master of Arts.
In 1852 Fitch was appointed tutor at the Training College of the British and Foreign School Society in the Borough Road. We have already seen him engaged as assistant master in the model school out of which the college grew. There, indeed, he seems to have taught occasionally since 1838, when he was only fourteen. The mastership of the school was at that time in the hands of a remarkable man, John Thomas Cross- ley, one of Lancaster's pupils at Tooting. When Crossley, who had retired from active work in 1851, died in 1889, Fitch described him in the Times as one ' who possessed much of Lancaster's fine enthusiasm and teaching power, with more stability of character and greater intellectual gifts.' And he added : * He had a remarkable genius for organization and for securing the loyalty and hearty co-operation of the more
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promising of his scholars, and the large school in the Borough Road was in his hands a striking example of what the monitorial method was capable of at its best/ Crossley's influence was evidently one of the most efficient in fostering and directing the interests and enthusiasm of the young student. It was fitting, therefore, that one who traced his educational ancestry through Crossley and Lancaster should begin his work for English education as a member of the teaching staff of the original and central school of the whole Lancasterian system.
Joshua Fitch was very soon appointed Vice- Principal of the college, and in 1856 he was chosen to succeed Dr. Cornwell as Principal. For seven years he remained at the head of this institution, controlling and developing the educational resources which a half-century's application of Lancaster's system had amassed. Fitch was one of those exceptional men of a character so equable as to be unaffected by the particular kind of duty entrusted to them so long as they feel themselves equal to its performance. Throughout a long life devoted to education he was called upon to undertake at some time or other almost every kind of duty which the cause of education can impose. But he showed no preferences. Every call which the great cause made upon him was for the moment supreme in
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his interests, and obtained from him a complete devotion. Yet it may be doubted whether there was any form of his many-sided work which he so thoroughly enjoyed as the specific work of teaching. Hence it was that those probationary years at Borough Road were among the most fruitful and influential of his whole career. The direction of a large and important training college made a call upon both those contrasted qualities which he possessed in almost equal measure — enthusiasm and patience. There was in him a liberal and almost passionate devotion to the business of education which he had the gift of readily communicating to others. And at the same time he had the practical instinct which speedily detects the principles of method, and the patience which is needed to elaborate them into an effective system. There are men who can teach themselves, though they have no power of systematizing for the benefit of others the method which has made their own teaching successful. There are others who have a natural facility in analyzing and formulating the principles of successful teaching, and yet have themselves no capacity of applying them. But Fitch was a happy combination of these two different sets of qualities. A born teacher himself, he was, per- haps, most successful in teaching others how to teach. The character of his work at the Borough
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Road may be best described in the words of one of his pupils there, the present Vice -Principal of Isleworth College, Mr. W. Barkby :
'When I entered Borough Road College as a student, its Principal was Sir Joshua, then Mr. Fitch, and I had the great advantage of being under his tuition for two years, and a junior member of his staff for the next three years. The Principal in those days was non-resident, and his duties were almost limited to the direction of the studies and professional training of the students. For this work Sir Joshua was singu- larly gifted. Himself a brilliant and sympathetic teacher, he had a remarkable insight into the character and needs of those whom he had to train as schoolmasters. His lectures on method were a revelation to us, and under his guidance we saw our life's work in a new light. He not only set before us the principles of the art of teaching in lectures on school management, but every lecture he gave us on any subject was also a lesson on method. Sir Joshua's gifts of lucid expression are well known to all students of education, but in the close intimacy of the class- room, where we were encouraged to bring up questions and difficulties, these gifts had special opportunities. Most pupil-teachers at that time had received a somewhat narrow education, and it was an immense help to them to come under
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the influence of a man of varied reading and wide sympathies. He strove to cultivate in us a love of literature, and I remember with especial pleasure the weekly hour set apart on Friday after- noons, when he read to us his favourite passages from famous books. He had a beautiful voice, and his keen appreciation of literary style made his readings most attractive. He brought home to us more particularly the literary beauty of the Bible, and the readings from it were selected so as to leave behind them valuable though un- formulated religious lessons.
* On rare occasions I saw Sir Joshua teach a class of children, always a delightful exercise to him. He had a remarkable power of winning their confidence, attracting their interest, and holding their attention, and extraordinary skill in drawing out their intelligence by questions.
' The influence which Sir Joshua Fitch exercised upon education in England by his official work in the Education Department, and by his public speeches and writings, great as it was, is not comparable to the abiding force and value of his direct instruction and example to teachers of all grades, and more especially to those who enjoyed the first-fruits of his thoughts on education in the colleges of the British and Foreign School Society/
But these years of his |)rincipalship were full
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of other than professional interests. In 1856 Mr. Fitch married Emma, daughter of Mr. Joseph Barber Wilks, who held an important position in the service of the Honourable East India Com- pany. The connection with the Company was hereditary in the family, for Mr. Wilks's father and grandfather had preceded him in its service. His only brother, the Rev. S. C. Wilks, was for many years Rector of Nursling, near Southamp- ton, and had, while still a curate at Exeter, been appointed to the editorship of the Christian Obser- ver by Zachary Macaulay, a post which he occu- pied for forty years. Shortly after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Fitch went to live in a house at Denmark Hill, a neighbourhood full of the rural charm which at that period distinguished the southern outskirts of London. Here they entered upon that life of varied interests and ideal happi- ness which they so completely shared with one another for nearly half a century. Never were partners in the married life more necessary or more sufficient to each other. All who knew them felt the peculiar charm of their home, the charm of a sunny cheerfulness, of a refined simpli- city of life, of a happy social instinct which naturally drew fit friends about them, and of a vivid interest in all serious public affairs. Wher- ever they went they became the centre of a thoughtful and earnest circle of friends. They
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were denied the blessing of children, though both of them loved children, and had the childlike freshness of nature which immediately wins their confidence. But after they settled at York, in 1863, they adopted the younger daughter of Mrs. Pickton, Mrs. Fitch's sister, and the child grew up to fill the vacant place in the home. There was a generous and abundant humanity about both of them which pervaded their home-life, and made its social duties as great a pleasure to themselves as to their friends. They had neither of them time or interest to waste in anything that savoured of mere social convention or display. But they had always time to spend, and they always thought it well spent, in enlarg- ing and cultivating their acquaintance among all sorts of people to whom they were attracted by the seriousness of their interests, or the originality or simplicity of their character. With a natural hospitality of heart they drew such people about them, or were instinctively drawn to the places where they were to be found.
In this, as in everything else, Fitch was marked by that economy of force which was the most consistent note of his character. His social duties were fulfilled with the same punctilious thorough- ness which he carried into the discharge of official duty. But though the sense of duty was appar- ent in all that he did, it was everywhere trans-
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formed into a frank and satisfying pleasure. His whole life was an echo of the spirit of his favourite Wordsworth's address to Duty :
* Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face.'
Already in these years at Denmark Hill Fitch's instinct for friendship was finding abundant room to express itself. He seemed to know at once the people for whom he would care, and this selective habit grew in him with the passing of the years. But age brought no closing of the heart, as it does to most men. To the end he had an eye for new friends. Something which appealed to him in look or voice would lead to a friendship to which he was ready to devote, as a mere matter of course, the best of himself. He always hurried back on his wife's 'at home' days, so that he might not miss any one of their friends. If some unavoidable business engagement had made him late, he would eagerly inquire who had been there, and what they had had to say of interest. It seemed to him a positive loss that he should miss the sight of a friendly face, or the news of the things which his friends had been doing or thinking. And it was not merely his intellectual or social equals that interested him. He grew to know every familiar figure on his walks to and from
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his district in Lambeth or, in later years, his club — shoeblacks, newspaper boys, and their like. He knew their history, probably more of it than they told him or could tell him, for he was a skilled reader of character, the secret foundation and source of all personal histories. He delighted in the busy life of the streets. He would hang for a moment, in his busy passage to and fro, on the skirts of crowds, attracted by their childish but truly human curiosity, impressed by their careless, cheerful good-nature, assessing probably, with his quick instinct, the moral force and the moral risks of these chance aggregates of humanity.
The streets had, of course, other delights for him as well. The leisure of his homeward way made the opportunity for that visit to the book- stall, which, in his orderly life, took its due place as one of its minor pleasures. Yet, man of books and master of books as he was, it was men that attracted him most. 'Life is so interesting/ he would say as he revived some memory of the streets, or carefully recalled some chance observa- tion of his homeward walk. And it was an interpretation of himself. Much as he loved nature, he loved men more. The part of his holiday that he enjoyed most was some early- morning hour in the market or the church of some foreign town, where men were happy in
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their business of unrestrained garrulous bargain- ing, or silent for a moment in the presence of an eternal mystery. He could extract the secret of such situations and such moments. They were an occasion of simple, unaffected pleasure to him at the moment, a field for reflection and a source of inspiration in the retrospect.
It was this interest in everything human, and the rich stores of observation and knowledge which he gradually amassed by its means, that gave character to his consistent devotion to all social questions. Like all successful workers in that field, he was always a learner, never a doctrinaire. This kind of work occupied so much of his attention, and formed so large a part of the best effort of his life, that it will be necessary, at a later stage, to appraise it more fully. But it may be said here that he had a healthy distrust of all attempts at social reform which were not founded on accurate and first-hand knowledge, and applied by means of personal service. To him the social question was supremely a moral question. It was not that he did not believe in legislation, but that he thoroughly understood the limits of its action and effect. He saw with his wise insight into fact that outward change is useless if it moves faster than inward power or inclination to use it. He felt the stupidity of much of the discussion as to the precedence of
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moral or material change. He realized that in life they are so related that they must both appear together. But he knew that the vital precedence lay with the vital factor in the com- plex changes which make up what we call social reform, and that the vital factor is always the moral will and need, of which the mechanical change is but the concomitant expression. So it was that he regarded the whole social question from the point of view of education in its widest sense — as indeed a part of the larger question of a true national education. All determinist theories of society, in whatever dress they appeared — scientific or religious — were utterly repugnant to him. The society was a sum, or, more accurately, a fellowship, of living wills, and the character of the fellowship must, in the last resort, be deter- mined by the character of the individuals. He believed, also, of course, that it was the privilege and the duty of the more morally developed elements of the fellowship to affect the less de- veloped units. That, indeed, in the full measure of its possibility, was the scope and the definition of a true education. And he had a firm, unflinching faith in the educability of his fellow-men, just as he had a consistent sense of the duty laid upon the more favoured to exhaust every means of educating the less. Among these means he
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placed the highest value, in every sphere of service, upon personal influence. It is character- istic of him that, while absorbed in the duties of his principalship at the Training College, he found time to be an almoner to the Society for the Relief of Distress, and no doubt thought it not the least important part of his educational work.
It was part of his conception of life as service that he was always ready to efface himself when- ever there was question only of his personal claims. In all matters of public concern — indeed, wherever he was acting as a public servant — he was capable of a self-assertion which was proof against all considerations of private friendship. Rather, such self-assertion was habitual with him. No one was ever more scrupulously just in all his decisions on public affairs entrusted to him. He was often consulted by public men as to the choice of fit candidates for positions in the educa- tional world, both at home and in the colonies. But no trace of favouritism ever intruded into any selection he made. He could bring the full measure of an absolutely impartial judgment to bear upon all such decisions. Some of his friends may occasionally have thought him almost pedan- tically conscientious when they found that he was not to be influenced in their favour. But he had
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the gift of making even those who thought they were suffering from his excessive sense of justice feel its reality. At any rate, he went his way in all such matters with a gentle directness which nothing could turn to the right hand or to the left. It was for the same reason that he disliked giving testimonials. He feared lest, in the con- ventional politeness which usually stud such documents, he might seem to say too much or hint too little.
But if those who knew him felt a firmness in all such dealings of his, which began by irri- tating and usually ended by convincing them of its justice, they knew also that in his habitual estimate of himself there was a quite undue modesty. There was indeed in him none of that self-depreciation which is only another form of vanity. But there was a quite sincere modesty about the interest to others of his private doings and feelings. He never, for instance, could be induced to keep a diary, and his letters, though always marked by an old-fashioned politeness, were strictly confined to the matter in hand. He exhausted all his feeling in work and service of every kind, and he would perhaps have been a little ashamed if he had left any of it over for the purposes of mere expression. He regarded the keeping of a diary as an unnecessary and
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dangerous tribute to the vanity of a sentimental revel in one's intimate moods of feeling. In his view, all such things ought to be too sacred to one's self, and to others too unimportant, to need chronicling. It was a grave defect in him from the point of view of a biographer.
CHAPTER II
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS
IT was in the year 1863 that Joshua Fitch's long connection with the Borough Road Training College came to an end. Lord Granville, who was then President of the Council, had heard of Mr. Fitch, it was said through Mr. Matthew Arnold, at that time himself an inspector of schools. There was a dramatic fitness about the fact that Joshua Fitch thus owed his advance- ment into the wider sphere of influence upon the fortunes of English education to the great writer whose genius he so highly appreciated. Matthew Arnold himself probably never did a better service to the cause of English education than in thus calling attention to the work of the man who was afterwards to appraise so justly his own educa- tional work. Lord Granville paid a visit to the Borough Road, was much impressed by the teach- ing power of the Principal and the inspiring influence which he exercised over his students, and soon after offered him the post of Inspector
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HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 23
of Schools. Mr. Fitch accepted the offer, and in the same year removed to York to undertake his new duties.
With a view to appreciate more correctly the nature and scope of the opportunities which thus opened out before one of the master- builders of the existing edifice of English educa- tion, it may be well here to take a cursory glance at the state of education in England at that time. It is seldom, amid the con- tending claims of contemporary interests, that we are able to determine with exactness the characteristic work of our own times. But suc- ceeding generations will probably remember the latter half of the nineteenth century as the period of organized national education. In many European countries, indeed, — notably in Prussia and in Scotland — that work had long since been undertaken and carried through to a certain degree of completeness. But in some of the leading countries of Europe — in France and in England, for instance — the middle of the nine- teenth century still found the provision for popular education formless and inadequate, while the close of the century in both countries saw the lines of a complete national system laid down and considerable results already achieved. Only the ease with which we grow accustomed to changes the most momentous, and the very
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natural anxiety for still greater results where expectation has been keenly aroused, prevent us from seeing that since 1870 England has experienced a quiet social revolution.
Yet it is true that in these days of State and local control of education we ought all of us to see, even if we do not, the beneficent changes that are being wrought under our eyes, and if not by our own exertions, at least with our own assent. But for nearly forty years before 1870 the educational revolution of that year was being quietly and secretly prepared. The Act of 1870 would not have been possible if the hands of the Legislature had not been forced by the long and silent work of a Government Department. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the English nation, accustomed to open popular discussion and fierce Parliamentary conflicts over every reform, than the quiet way in which its educational revolution was effected. And the thoroughness of the preparation for educational change is all the more remarkable when we remember that the subject was one on which popular opinion was so hotly divided that it was impossible to secure any decision upon it in the Parliamentary arena. In this state of popular ferment upon the question, one of those devices of government which are still possible in a democracy with an oligarchical past was happily
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resorted to. The English Parliament will often readily assent to a grant from the national purse for the accomplishment of a work whose limits and scope it shrinks from defining by statutory Act. It was in this way that the English State first interfered in the matter of national educa- tion. In 1832 the first educational grant was passed, and this grant, annually renewed, was left to be administered by the Treasury till 1839. In that year, by an Order in Council, a special Committee of the Privy Council was formed to administer the annual educational grant. Thus an English Education Department came into being, its existence, no doubt, hardly suspected by the great mass of the nation, and tolerated by those who were brought into official relation with it principally because of its distributing power. For thirty years, in face of an exceedingly sensitive public opinion and of the most conflicting public interests, it kept gradually extending its powers with an infinite patience and tact. The relatively ambitious programme with which the members of the original Committee of Council set themselves to their work had to be abandoned. The work of the inspectors whom they appointed had perforce to be confined to reporting in the most general terms upon the state of education. It was not yet possible to entrust them with the task of testing it in detail, or of directing it into better
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methods. But the bait of increasing grants at last began to work, and already before the sixties the masters of the principal portion of the educa- tional machinery of the nation — the National Society and the British and Foreign Schools Society — were accepting more or less willingly the new conditions of Government inspection and control of the work in which they were engaged.
In 1861 the publication by Mr. Lowe of the Revised Code made still more stringent and effective the control by the Government of the work of education. For the future Government aid to the work of the voluntary educational societies was to depend not only upon the suitability of the buildings, the qualification of the teachers, and the school attendance of chil- dren, but also upon the results of individual examination of their work. The function of the inspector had assumed a prerogative importance in the work of the Education Department. The sifting of educational results which fell to the lot of this body of men was now so thorough and so universal as to make it impossible longer to resist the conclusion that the existing system was entirely inadequate to national needs. It was the working of the Revised Code over a period of nearly ten years which demonstrated the bankruptcy of the merely voluntary method, and
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 27
necessitated the legislation of 1870. The en- largement of State control over the old system to the utmost limit which was possible had only succeeded in proving that no control could suffice to make that system satisfactory.
It was just two years after the issue of the Revised Code that Mr. Fitch was appointed an Inspector of Schools. The district entrusted to his charge consisted of the county of York, with the exception of certain portions of the north and west. In his first General Report to the Depart- ment, Fitch, with his usual sense of the importance to any work of an accurate estimate of the social circumstances which determined it, thus describes the field in which he had been set to labour : ' The district is populous and curiously diversified. There is no county in England which exhibits social and industrial life under such varied con- ditions as are to be seen in Yorkshire. It is at once the seat of several thriving manufactures and the home of a large agricultural population. It contains maritime ports, watering-places, and teeming mines of coal and iron. There are in one part of it large towns and villages of recent growth, filled with evidences of modern energy and science ; and in another, solemn ecclesiastical cities and sleepy market towns.' It was with perfect justice, therefore, that he was able to add : ' In this district I have had the advantage of observing
28 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
the operation of your Lordships' measures from several very different points of view.' No one had ever a more generous or less pedantic view of his special work than Fitch. He had the power of throwing into it all the largest and most un- selfish hopes, purposes, ambitions which corre- sponded to his own exalted view of life. The whole spiritual content of the man was run into it lavishly as into a mould, which was adequate, or must be made adequate, to the reception of this rich deposit. It was the prime secret of his value to the cause of English education. The man was never cramped by the procrustean limitations of the work. The work was always enlarged to the full spiritual proportions of the man.
And with this power of complete self-expendi- ture there went the most judicious perception of the nature of a true educational ideal. He had the very rare gift of perceiving what had to be done in detail and in gross with equal clearness and justice. He saw the needs of national educa- tion as a whole, and yet he saw equally the special needs and opportunity of each locality and of each social group. He could appraise at their right value and with a sure instinct of their natural limits the importance of a common State direction and of local and voluntary effort. His career was a kind of mediation, sometimes con-
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 29
scious and strenuous, often only unconscious and temperamental, between these two factors of a successful system. It might be more true to say that it was a sustained endeavour to adapt the one to the other. He was probably entirely in accord with Matthew Arnold when he advocated a larger measure of State action in England in the matter of education, and equally in accord with him when he claimed that in England there was little danger of that action being able to evade a due measure of popular control. But more, probably, than Arnold he saw the possi- bility and the consequent duty of gradually educating and using to the full the local interest in and responsibility for the work of education which is undoubtedly felt in this country ; and he had the requisite patience and the requisite sympathy and knowledge of detail to labour for the reconciliation of the conflicting views by which this local interest is always hampered, and has been sometimes nullified, among us.
It was this largeness of view, combined with the intellectual humility which enabled him to throw himself completely into the detailed requirements of the work in hand, that made Fitch from the first an ideal inspector, and opened up to him afterwards so many and great opportunities of influencing education in England as a whole. But it would be impossible to indicate more aptly
30 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
the ideal with which Fitch set himself to his new work than in words which he himself has used to describe the nature and opportunities of the inspector's calling.
* Every official post in the world has in it possibilities which are not easily visible to the outside critic, and which cannot be measured by the merely technical requirements laid down by authority. And this is true in a very special sense of such an office as Inspector of Schools, when the holder of the office likes and enjoys his work, and seeks ampliare jurisdictionem, and to turn to the most beneficial use the means at his command and the authority which his office gives. His first duty, of course, is to verify the con- ditions on which public aid is offered to schools, and to assure the Department that the nation is obtaining a good equivalent for its outlay. But this is not the whole. He is called upon to visit from day to day schools of very different types, to observe carefully the merits and demerits of each, to recognise with impartiality very various forms of good work, to place himself in sympathy with teachers and their difficulties, to convey to each of them kindly suggestions as to methods of discipline and instruction he has observed else- where, and to leave behind him at every school he inspects some stimulus to improvement, some useful counsel to managers, and some encourage-
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 31
merit to teachers and children to do their best. There are few posts in the public service which offer larger scope for the beneficial exercise of intellectual and moral power, or which bring the holder into personal and influential relations with a larger number of people. It will be an un- fortunate day for the Civil Service if ever the time comes when an office of this kind is regarded as one of inferior rank, or is thought unworthy of men of high scholarship and intellectual gifts. To hundreds of schools in remote and apathetic districts the annual visit of an experienced public officer, conversant with educational work, and charged with the duty of ascertaining how far the ideal formed at headquarters and under the authority of Parliament has been fulfilled, is an event of no small importance. And it matters much to the civilization of the whole district whether this duty is entrusted to pedants and detectives who confine their attention to the routine of examination, or to men whose own attainments command respect, and who are quali- fied by insight, enthusiasm, and breadth of sym- pathy to advise local authorities, and to form a just judgment both of the work of a school and of the spirit in which the work is done. He whose own thoughts and tastes move habitually on the higher plane is the best qualified to see in true perspective the business of the lower plane, and
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to recognise the real meaning and value of the humblest detail.'*
Truly Fitch knew how to exalt his office. He exalted it by thirty years of intelligent and strenuous labour, and it is the experience gained in this labour which speaks in the words I have just quoted. His ideal of the inspector's duty here set forth was the result of a long service felt, as it were, in perspective, but it was already his, at least in its general outline, when he first set himself to his work. That work consisted in the inspection and examination of the British and other Protestant schools not connected with the Church of England which were to be found in his district. In those days the denominational line in matters of education was so clearly drawn that there was a different inspectorial staff for the Church schools and for the schools belonging to other denominations. The division dated from the first appointment of Government Inspectors by the newly-created Education Department in 1840. In that year what came to be known as the Concordat with the Church was established, by which the sanction of the Primate was required in the appointment of inspectors for Church schools. In the same way the right of veto over the appointment of the lay inspectors assigned to its schools was granted to the British and Foreign * * Thomas and Matthew Arnold,' p. 168.
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Schools Society. The arrangement tended to foster all the disadvantages of the traditional system, or, rather, want of system. But it was forced upon the Government by the existing state of affairs. The schools of the nation had, in almost all cases, been founded by religious bodies with a distinctly religious purpose, and so long as the testing of religious instruction was one of the foremost duties of the inspector, it is impossible to see how any other method could have been imposed or accepted. We are apt to forget that it was originally a universal condition of the pay- ment of a Government grant that, in every school which received it, the reading of the Bible at least should be a part of the regular instruction. By the time, however, that Fitch was appointed it was no longer part of the lay inspector's duty to test the religious instruction in non- Church schools. The original necessity which had im- posed upon the Government the appointment of a twofold inspectorate was already beginning to relax, and the disadvantages inherent in it were daily becoming more manifest. Fitch, while loyally accepting the conditions of his task, did not fail to record his sense of the inconveniences of the system. In his last report on the schools of his northern district, drawn up on the eve of the Act of 1870, he pointed out its disastrous effect upon the attitude of the teachers in the
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different kinds of schools towards one another, and therefore upon educational efficiency. Speak- ing with his usual enthusiasm of the educational value of teachers' associations, he expresses his regret that these associations are condemned to assume a sectional character, and proceeds to assign the reasons :
' The value of such meetings/ he says, * is greatly diminished by the fact that the associa- tion is sectional, and only includes a small part of the elementary teachers of the district. I have long felt, and often expressed, the desire that the teachers of the Church of England schools should unite with others to form strong local associations for mutual help in the duties of their profession. When it is considered that their training, their duties, and their interests are absolutely identical with those of other certificated teachers, except in regard to the single subject of the Church Cate- chism, it is much to be desired that this should be done. Hitherto, however, the formation of a united association has proved impracticable, chiefly, as I am informed, because the masters of Church schools fear that in joining it they would offend the clergy and school managers. Another reason has also influenced them. The present system of sectional inspection undoubtedly tends to keep the various classes of teachers apart. When a Church schoolmaster finds that his school
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 35
is visited by a special officer, and is compared, not with the neighbouring schools, but with other Church schools at a distance, he is naturally led to think that the Government has some motive for regarding him as one of a separate class. It is no part of my duty to discuss the propriety of regulations which have long been sanctioned, doubtless for important reasons, by your Lord- ships. But I may be permitted to refer to the actual working of denominational inspection as it is visible here. The Nonconformist is irritated by an arrangement which brings the whole power and prestige of a Government officer to bear on the inculcation of Anglican theology, and gives no corresponding help to religious teaching of any other kind. The politician is struck with the inconvenience of a system which forbids any one of those officers to take cognizance of the needs of a district, or of its educational provision as a whole. The economist wonders at its extrava- gance. But it is the inspector of schools who knows best how much of his time and strength it wastes, how powerless it makes him to institute a fair comparison between two rival schools, and to bring them into friendly relations, and, above all, how it alienates the teachers, and prevents the growth of a proper esprit de corps, or of useful professional associations in the various districts.' But Fitch could speak his mind about the
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defects of a system with all the more authority that he was willing to work it, and was working it, with the desire and the power to extract from it the full measure of its usefulness. The three reports upon his work in the Yorkshire district which he submitted to the Lords of the Council form in themselves a complete account of the condition of education under the old system, and a judicious estimate of its possibilities, and, at the same time, point with conclusive force, alike by their reserve and their insistence, the necessity of change. There is not a single element of hope which is not placed in bold relief and wisely en- couraged. Throughout there runs the note of anxiety — a confident anxiety — to turn to more fruitful account every factor of an existing situa- tion. They are of the highest value as documents upon the state of education in England a genera- tion ago. But they are of especial value for our present purpose, because they reveal the character of their author where it was always most fully expressed — in his work. And they are not only worth reading, but they can be read with ease and even pleasure, for Fitch had the literary instinct. Whatever he wrote, he wrote with a certain distinction. He had only to treat the most commonplace subject, and it ceased to be commonplace. Style is not merely an original aesthetic instinct in the use of language : it is
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also a moral product, the result of a rigorous discipline. And this element in Fitch's style is particularly noticeable. He used language as a sacred trust, and this conscientious respect for it had given him a perfect adequacy and correctness of expression. Most men who think clearly write well ; but with Fitch there was added a something of grace and ease which gave all he wrote a liter- ary flavour. It is hardly the quality which one expects in an official report, but it did not desert Fitch even there. What is usually wanting in such documents is the gradation of tone, the delicate sense of touch upon the instrument which indicates without effort the degrees of value in judgment or criticism. Fitch knew how, by a quiet humour, to hint effectually where the limits of his right of official interference would have made a serious and detailed criticism seem pon- derous and clumsy, and would have deprived it, besides, of all chance of effect. How pleasantly, for instance, he handled the ineptitude of those teachers and managers who thought to meet the suggestions of the Revised Code as to the need of greater consideration of the capacities of children by introducing a set of silly and pointless reading- books ! ' I hope,' he says, ' teachers will find that there is a golden mean equally remote from Goody Two Shoes and from those appalling essays on the graminivorous quadrupeds and the
38 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
monocotyledonous plants, which have so long bewildered the little readers of the Irish books/ Or, again, he would report with a quizzical air of resignation the kind of success which had attended his efforts to increase the voluntary subscriptions to the work of the schools. One wonders what the managers of the school at Mosley thought of the following appreciation of their ingenious at- tempt to meet their Inspector's suggestions, if they ever read his report. * I had remarked last year on the absence of subscriptions, or of any evidence of local interest ; and this year I found, under the head " Voluntary Contributions," the sum of £35 4s., balanced, however, by a new item on the other side, in which the rent of the room was also set down as £35 4s. It was explained to me that the managers had thought it better to credit themselves with this contribution to the school, although the transaction was wholly imaginary, no money having been given or re- ceived.'
But the chief value of Fitch's reports is that they exhibit in clear and bold relief his view of education, and his appreciation of the means which could be counted on for procuring it for the nation. These features recur continually from the first report on his Yorkshire district to the last which, more than twenty years later, he published from his experience in East Lambeth,
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 39
and in themselves suggest an adequate view of the aims which had directed his work during all those years. Every work of art consists of the repetition and various elaboration of some leit- motif. The consistent direction of a life's energy is such a work of art, and nothing in its record satisfies us so much as the perpetual discovery, under different forms, of its guiding ideas. In Fitch's case there is no difficulty in discovering them. He was always preaching the doctrine that it is the purpose of a true education to make men, and its test that it has made them. How- ever trite or hackneyed this may appear as the mere statement of an ideal, it was to Fitch the object of all his practical labour, the end to which he sought to accommodate all the means at the disposal of an English educator. He continually insisted on the distinction which must be made, and which ought always to be present to the mind of a good teacher, between the attainment of this true education and success in satisfying the standards fixed by the State for testing the educational instrument. He never wearied of reminding the teacher that the State could do no more than encourage the provision of the neces- sary machinery and test its due working, but that with himself lay its skilful adaptation to vital ends. Above all, he sought to impress upon him that, though there was a greater and less degree
40 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
of perfection in mechanical means, any means- even the most primitive — might be turned to fruitful account by the man who kept in view the true end of education, and no means, however perfect, could be of real avail to the man who lost sight of that end, or had never seen it at all. We do not need, he would say, ' a multiplication of subjects so much as the more skilful treatment of such subjects as we have, more concentration of force, a clearer perception of the difference between the training which has a visible and immediate bearing on the means of getting a living and that training which looks further ahead and seeks to show the scholar how to live.' And he put his ideal in the most concrete form that it was possible to give it. ' In all places of education alike,' he said to the members of the Teachers' Guild at Birmingham in 1895, 'from the humblest ragged school to the University, we need to keep in mind that character is no less important than knowledge ; that the habit of veracity and the love of truth for its own sake are more valuable treasures to a man than any number of truths formulated and accepted on authority ; and that any scheme of education which does not enlist the sympathies of the learner, and encourage in him spontaneous effort and aspiration, is self-condemned and doomed to failure. Our teaching is naught if it does not
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open out in the learner's soul new windows through which the light of heaven and of truth may enter in, and out of which he may look with clearer vision on the richness of the world, whether of nature or of books/
It was to such a conception of the work which the teacher was called upon to accomplish that Fitch sought to give effect in his own work as inspector. In all sorts of ways he aimed at im- pressing upon teachers that what he was looking for in their schools was the amount of individual intelligence which had been evoked in them, that his sole test of the successful teaching of any subject was the extent to which it could be shown to have awakened the intellectual curiosity and widened the intellectual interests of the children. No amount of trouble seemed to him wasted if only he could urge home this truth with a little more certainty. The devices which he adopted to secure it were of the simplest. He always, for instance, laid special stress upon the reading of a school as the subject which most surely tested its general intelligence. We find him reporting from East Lambeth in 1882: * Since I have had the advantage of additional help I have felt freer to make occasional changes in the division of our duties, and I have, among other things, often taken the reading examination of the higher classes into my own hands. Here, I have sup-
42 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
posed, is to be found the crown and final resultant of all the intellectual influences which are at work in the school. If the children have been taught to think, to feel, and to enjoy, as well as to know, it is in the reading of the highest class that such culture will reveal itself.' Inspection of this kind must have been a bracing discipline in schools where a mechanical uniformity of ' knowledge ' might very well have become the ideal of the teacher. It forced the teacher to feel that it was not sufficient for him to be the capable slave of a routine system, that it was, on the contrary, necessary for him, by the individuality and thoroughness of his own intelligence, to be the competent master of the means which that sys- tem placed at his disposal.
In the same way it was natural that Fitch should attach the greatest importance to the religious teaching of the children. Here again he cared little for the mechanical means which might be employed — teaching of dogmatic formu- laries, directly moral teaching, or the like. Living in the midst of excited public controversies, he sat loose to the opinions of zealots on either side, not through contemptuous indifference to their arguments, not from any temptation to seek feeble compromises, but exactly because he saw so clearly the determining factor in the question at issue. Here again — here more than anywhere
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 43
else — he saw the fundamental importance of the living instrument. With any and every equip- ment of mere means, the teacher of high charac- ter and religious feeling would impress upon his pupils something of his own sense of the meaning and value of life. With whatever means, the teacher who did not possess these qualities must fail in this particular, the highest, part of his task. He saw, indeed, clearly enough the value, to the end of producing such teachers, of the original connection of the English elementary school with the different religious societies of the nation. It was a natural consequence of the closeness of that connection that, for the most part, the national teachers were men of sincere and earnest religious feeling. And, after 1870, there is more than one hint in Fitch's reports that he was sensible of a certain loss in this regard under the new order of things. Yet it was not the abandonment of the teaching of some form of confessional creed or catechism that he regretted. It was the possibility that a certain atmosphere might be lost to the schools which, under the old system, had been their outstanding merit. Although, even before 1870, he was precluded by his official instructions from examining the religious teaching of the schools entrusted to his inspection, he did not fail to report on what he could observe of the religious element in their life as especially
44 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
worthy of the consideration of the Department. Here, for instance, is a tribute to the Wesleyan schools of his Yorkshire district which is well worth quoting :
' And if the Wesleyan Methodists continue to gain, as they unquestionably have gained, in- creased local religious influence by means of their day-schools, it ought to be remembered that they have gained it rather by the care they have taken in selecting religious teachers, by the close identi- fication of school, chapel, and Sunday-school, by hymns and simple acts of worship, by frequent social and religious meetings, and by a sort of atmosphere of Methodism with which the thought- ful boy finds himself encompassed, than by any formal dogmatic teaching, by any restraint on the liberty of the parent, or by any of those usages against which a conscience clause is designed to guard. It is too commonly assumed by public speakers and writers who know little of the interior of a school that every place of primary instruction must either be distinctly sectarian, and teach a special creed, or be absolutely secular and non-religious ; but I take leave to testify that the schools which fall under my inspection are neither the one nor the other. They are, almost without exception, essentially Christian schools, in which the Scriptures are read and accepted as the rule of life, but in which no attempt is made to dogma-
HIS WORK AS INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 45
tize or to fix the conviction of young children on those points on which Christian people differ from each other.'
The ' Methodist atmosphere ' had been achieved by the ' care taken in selecting religious teachers.' It was Fitch's opinion that no sectional religious atmosphere, and, above all, no simply religious atmosphere, could be gained in any other way. The conditions of the appointment of teachers have, of course, wholly changed since the day on which Fitch wrote these words, but on this point probably most people will agree with him still.
In his anxiety to procure a genuine education for the children, Fitch always aimed at the simplification and unity of their studies. Nothing irritated him so much as the occasional tendency of teachers, when the new Code had enlarged the school curriculum, to treat each fresh subject in its crude separateness from others, to use it as a vehicle for so much isolated and portentous ' cram.' He did much to inspire even the best of his teachers with the sense of a true method in this regard, and to impart it to the worst. He laid his finger unerringly on every instance of pretence, of ambitious absurdity, of all kinds of false and unreal knowledge, and gently but firmly exposed it to the gaze of teachers, who were, for the most part, willing to learn from him. He did much in this way to bridge the gap between the
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poverty of the children's conversational vocabu- lary and the, for them, unmeaning wealth of literary language, and thus to mediate between their ideas and the ideas which they found in books. It was an aim which he always kept before him, and in which he laboured to make the teacher share. He found this crudity of concep- tion on the part of the child and the crudity of instruction which ministered to it pervading even those subjects which had been most carefully selected with a view to the peculiar social needs of the children. He reports, for instance, on the teaching of domestic economy in East Lambeth. 1 There is a little pathos and a slight soupgon of absurdity in the written answers of poor little girls who come from the dingy and squalid alleys of Lock's Fields, and who tell me in their papers that a dwelling-house should be built on rising ground, with a southern aspect, and on a sandy soil/
It was equally in the interests of the simple, straightforward ideal of a sound education that, though himself a reformer both by native instinct and deliberate purpose, he resisted the whole army of educational ' cranks,' of those who urged their pet specific for the cure of all educational ills. No one was more ready than he to try or to see tried every suggestion which contained the promise of improvement in method or of a more
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complete success in the general aim of education. But he had continually to be on the watch against the dangers and absurdities threatened by the indiscriminating zeal of this class of persons, so numerous in the field of education. He had to reprove, for instance, the waste of time and the mere mechanical futility which often attended the unintelligent application of the Kindergarten method. He found that a method intended to develop intelligence along natural lines was often used in such a way as to cramp intelligence or to dam it up artificially. Or, again, he had to remind those who advocated in season and out of season (usually the latter) the necessity of coming down to the children's level that there was a still greater danger in eliminating the necessary stimulus of intellectual toil ; that every intellectual gain that was real must be a conquest, and endure all the trouble- some but heartening incidents of victory ; that the teacher, in short, must always keep a little in advance of the child's intelligence, or he will not be able to teach at all. And, most of all, he fought with all the weapons of his clear intelli- gence and gentle humour the devotees of physical training when they went so far as to claim that the children were subjected to undue pressure in the school, and that one-half the existing school-day was all that a child could endure
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without injury to health. His reply to the whole army of ' half-timers ' was effective as coming from such an experience as his : ' The school-life appears to me — whether I judge of it on the day of inspection or on chance visits — to be wholly free from burdensome or unwholesome restraint. Sanitary enthusiasts are sometimes found claim- ing that one half the school- day should be given to learning and the other to physical exercises. They assume that children are never being physi- cally trained unless somebody is training them ; and they take no account of the hours which the schoolboy already has for play, or of the ample use which, under the kindly but unconscious teaching of Nature, he makes of his opportunities.'
Fitch was certainly neither blind to the value of the objects aimed at by the enthusiastic specialist nor ungrateful for the reforms which were often due to his efforts. But he desired to find room for such reforms in a great and growing system which had to take account of the total human capacity, and accommodate itself to peculiar social needs and conditions. It was his consistent aim in the matter of education to remind his countrymen of what laws and regulations could do — what were the natural limits of their operation, and on what vital condition their fruitful activity de- pended. He had realized the full force of those words of Burke, which he was fond of quoting :
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' Nations are not primarily ruled by laws. What- ever original energy may be supposed either in force or regulation, the operation of both is, in truth, merely instrumental.'
Such, then, was the ideal of education which Fitch had formed for himself, and to which in all his official and unofficial activity he sought to give effect. But almost as important an element in his success was his clear view of the nature of the means by which in England it had to be turned into practice. He once happily described ' the real forces on which the growth of the national intelligence must mainly depend ' as ' the quick- ened conscience and higher aims of local authori- ties ; the desire of successive generations of parents to secure for their children training a little better than they have themselves received ; and the steady increase in the number, already large, of teachers not only possessed of technical qualifications, but mentally cultivated, fond of their work, and filled with aspiration and enthusiasm.'
The cardinal importance to the cause of educa- tion which he attached to the character of the teacher has already become apparent. But the attention which he paid to the subject demands for it a measure of special reference, however brief. He never failed to acknowledge with all the generosity of his nature the devotion
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and skill of the teachers as a class, but he was also unsparing in his efforts to expose such detailed weakness in their methods as he occa- sionally met with, and to point out the more general conditions on which their complete suc- cess must depend. As an additional example of the kind of failure which he too often found attending the mechanical teaching of certain subjects — some have already been given — the specific subject introduced by the New Code under the somewhat ambitious title of ' English Literature ' may be cited. Here was a subject which was so entirely after his own heart as a means of evoking taste and intelligence among the children that his disappointment at the actual results was no doubt the more bitter in proportion to the hopes which he had formed from its adop- tion as an optional part of the school work. He found the actual use which was made of it so unintelligent that he roundly denounced it as, in his opinion, ' one of the most unfruitful parts of the school work.' What particularly annoyed him in such cases was the appearance of the choice of a subject by the teachers, not for its intrinsic value as a means of education, but because it was one on which the Government grant might be most easily secured. With such assumptions, wherever he found them operant, he was not afraid to deal remorselessly. ' I fear
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this illusion ' (the impression that English Litera- ture was the easiest subject on which to secure a grant) ' has been rather rudely dispelled in my district by the pitiless way in which I have rejected scores of children who, though knowing the passage well by heart, showed, by their want of expression or by their unsatisfactory answers to questions, that they knew nothing of the meaning of what they had learned.'
It was thus that the most considerate of in- spectors would, in the interests of the teachers themselves and of their work, deal with every instance of intellectual indolence which he found. He aimed at making teachers feel that initiative was a prime element in intelligence ; that they could not shirk the responsibility of individual choice and cultivation of methods without forfeiting their chances of efficiency ; that they were likely to give a real education to their children exactly by means of those subjects which they had made the instrument of their own special cultivation. He delighted to take favourable notice in his reports of every instance where a teacher with a special intellectual interest had by its means created an atmosphere of general intelligence throughout the whole work of his school. And in later years, when the enlarged scope of educa- tion in the country had succeeded in raising the mere academic standard of qualification for
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teachers, he continually touched with regret upon the danger of a concurrent shrinking of real culture among them. The ripe wisdom of the criticism contained in the following quotation and its appropriateness even after twenty years may excuse its length :
' Among the younger generation of school- masters and assistants I find a good deal of professional ambition and a keener interest in what may be called educational politics. There is also considerable zeal about the grade of their certificates and about obtaining from South Ken- sington special certificates for drawing and science. A small, though increasing, number of the more ambitious is also to be found reading for the degrees of the University of London. But much of this mental activity is directed merely to the passing of examinations, and when the status so desired is once secured, the young teacher is too apt to consider his professional equipment com- plete. Of serious and systematic reading, of the pursuit of any branch of letters or science for its own sake, or of that habit of self-culture which alone can preserve the freshness of mind needed by the true teacher, I do not, I regret to say, find increasing evidence. It is my habit to invite assistants, especially those whose work I have not often tested before, to conduct a class and give questions in my presence ; and though there is
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often much technical skill in the art of teaching, one cannot help being struck also with the poverty of illustration and with the narrowness of the range both of thought and of reading from which additional light is brought to bear on the explana- tion of a lesson or a text-book. I fear it must be honestly confessed that the very remarkable de- velopment of primary education of late years has not been accompanied by a corresponding im- provement in the personal qualifications of the teachers. It is one of the saddest results of any reform of official machinery and regulations that it tends to diminish the apparent necessity for independent and spontaneous exertion on the part of the workers. As the legal requirements approach more nearly to a high ideal they become more easily accepted as final and sufficient, and many teachers who are capable of better things are found fastening their whole attention on the best means of complying with this or that regula- tion of the Code and of securing the maximum grant. After watching with keen interest for many years the work of public education, I may be permitted to express my conviction that the one thing required to give full effect to the re- forms which are devised from time to time with so much thought and care by your Lordships is a stronger sense on the part of the younger teachers of the need for personal cultivation.'
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It was, no doubt, disheartening to Fitch, whose hopes for education were always so closely associ- ated with the formation of a body of teachers of fresh and eager intellectual interests, to find that of the younger generation of teachers who were being formed under conditions more favourable to professional ambition and self-respect, and who were admittedly qualifying themselves with eagerness for a higher standard of technical fitness, it was impossible to record a higher judgment in the matter of the one thing necessary than he had passed fifteen years earlier on an older generation. In 1867 he had said : ' I confess it is disheartening to me to find how few of the teachers seem to be taking any pains with their own mental cultiva- tion. They have more leisure than most persons, and they often tell me what the occupations of their leisure are. Among those occupations it is extremely rare to find that the steadfast pursuit of any kind of knowledge takes a place. There seems to me very little of that love of literature, that hunger after self-improvement, or even that choice of a pet pursuit which would go so far to redeem a schoolmaster's life from intellectual dull- ness, to enlarge the range of his illustrations, and to penetrate his teaching with force and life.' But it may be confidently asserted that this criticism, so transparently honest and sympathetic at the same time, directed to the sole end of
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educational improvement, and yet adjusted to a clear perception of the opportunities and tempta- tions of the teacher's calling, had its effect. No single influence, perhaps, has told so surely as Fitch's in raising the standard of professional responsibility among the elementary teachers of England in this generation. He gained that in- fluence in the first instance by his patient and disinterested insistence upon an ideal of pro- fessional duty among those teachers with whom his own official work brought him into personal contact. In the end it extended, by his growing authority with the public, over the whole field of English elementary education.
But among the factors of educational improve- ment Fitch never failed to rate at its due worth, and to stimulate by every means in his power into greater activity, the interest of the parents. This is a factor which those to whom the direction of national education is entrusted often seem to overlook, though no doubt the oversight is more apparent than real. The truth is that the interest of the parents of a considerable section of the children who are taught in our elementary schools is so slight that it has to be disregarded. Bather, it would be still more true to say that their want of interest is often so negative a factor that it has to be controlled and overridden. Hence the present tendency to call upon the State to super-
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sede the parent altogether, and to deprive him of a responsibility which he seems inclined to reject, or at least not anxious adequately to fulfil. But Fitch was very far indeed from accepting any such easy solution of the difficulty. To him the function of the State was that of a collective con- science educating and stimulating the individual conscience. It was to set the measure of the common duty, so that the most careless member of the commonalty might not be merely compelled to discharge that duty, but encouraged to make it his own. He never tired, therefore, of pointing the legitimate influence of parents and encourag- ing its exercise. Here, as in all practical questions, there was need of the justest discrimination, and it was in these matters of nice discrimination that his wise and patient judgment had scope. He had, for instance, constantly to condemn any truck- ling to the foolish and capricious interference of parents on the part either of teachers or managers. It was a danger which had especially to be guarded against under the working of the old system. That Fitch appreciated this danger to the full is very evident from a section of his report for the year 1867. He is speaking of the unnecessary and hurtful competition of the small schools which each religious denomination thought well to establish side by side in small Yorkshire villages.
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* Parents,' he says, ' will patronize each school in turn, not on educational or religious grounds, but whenever an unreasonable request is denied, or when there is any wish to flatter the managers of one school at the expense of the others. This is not a hopeful prospect. In an ideally perfect state the parent would feel it a high duty to give education to his child, and a special privilege to have a good school within reach ; he would be in no danger of supposing that the Government or the richer classes had any reasons of their own for inducing his children to go to one good school rather than another. At present the absence of a due sense of responsibility on the part of the English labouring man, and our inability to impart it to him, must be reckoned as part of the price we pay for the denominational system, and for the voluntary efforts of the religious bodies by whom primary schools are conducted/
It was on this account that Fitch advocated, as long as it was possible, the payment of school fees by the parents. He regarded it as the normal pledge of their prerogative interest in the education of their own children, as the normal sacrifice which that interest involved. Even when imperative general reasons led at last to the abolition of their general payment, and to the establishment of a practically gratuitous system of elementary education, he was still not a little
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anxious about the possible results on the all- important point of the parents' sense of immediate responsibility. His strong desire had been to retain that responsibility, as one which could not be delegated, in the very forefront of the factors contributing to educational elasticity and vigour ; and he feared that the result of merging the particular parent in the mass of mere ratepayers, especially in a country like ours, where the parent is only indirectly a ratepayer, and is therefore not reminded of any immediate contribution to- wards the cost of education, might be prejudicial to the healthy and unselfish interest of the parents in their children's education. No doubt his views were much modified by the experience of unsatisfactoriness and inadequacy which had attended the old system, but his root feeling about the matter probably did not change since he wrote in 1869 : f It would be a misfortune if the payments of the parents were to be given up. That portion of the school revenue which is fur- nished from this source is very cheerfully paid ; it is most equitably assessed, for it falls upon the parent in exactly the proportion in which he derives advantage from the schools ; and it fluctuates, as the income of every school ought to fluctuate, in regular harmony with its popularity and usefulness. And even if there should prove to be high political reasons for surrendering this
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income altogether, and for rendering primary education universally gratuitous, the only parents who would be relieved of their payments would probably be the first to regret it, for payments represent influence ; and while I am keenly sensible of the evil of a preponderating influence on the part of ill- instructed parents, and have seen many sad instances of its lowering and vulgarizing effects on the schools, I may venture to remind the working classes that there is a perfectly legitimate deference due from a teacher to the wishes of the parents, and that this might be put in peril or sacrificed altogether if the whole duty of finding the money and of direct- ing its expenditure were relegated to the rate- payers.'
Of the service to education of local interest and enthusiasm Fitch always took the very highest account. In England education had for long depended almost entirely on the operation of this single factor ; and though by itself it had not unnaturally proved unequal to the task of creating an adequate national system, the hope of State intervention lay rather in the direction of extending the usefulness of its efforts and co- ordinating their results, than in superseding them. This was a doctrine which Fitch consistently preached and sought to enforce by the whole weight of his official action and influence. There
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is no need to insist on the importance of this factor, and Fitch's high estimate of its value has been recorded in every report he wrote and in almost every one of his numerous writings on the subject of education. His gratitude to the great voluntary societies which had for so long borne the national burden in this regard, and especially to the national Church, was unstinted and sincere. To no element of our educational tradition did he attach greater importance than to the enthusiasm, freedom, and variety which the cultivation of this habit of local service had secured and could still further secure. His great hope from the Act of 1870 was that it had helped to extend this service, and might be used to intensify it.
To State action Fitch looked for the wise direction and co-ordination of these various factors. That was its peculiar province. Its object must be to set a minimum standard of education below which no school receiving State aid must be allowed to fall ; to stimulate and encourage by its action the variety and enthusiasm of local en- deavour ; to form a duly qualified body of teachers drawn into ever closer and more intelligent co- operation with its educational ideals ; and by every possible means to foster the interest of parents in the education of their children. Where the opera- tion of State influence might seem for a moment to supersede or depress the natural action of any
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one of these factors, some attempt must be made to recover it. If, for instance, there was a tendency on the part of ill-instructed parents to think that the teaching of their children had been taken out of their hands, that they were relieved of a burdensome responsibility, it was a tendency which must somehow be checked in the national interest. It was one of the many lessons which Fitch, with his open mind, was ready to draw from alien experience that the danger of such a tendency need only be temporary, and was, indeed, likely to be temporary only. In his memorandum on the working of the free -school system in France he happily draws the conclusion of experi- ence in that country, and insinuates the hope which it suggested for his own : * It is rare for a parent in any rank of life to be content to see his children brought up more ignorant than himself ; and when in any country a system has existed long enough to produce one instructed generation of parents, legal compulsion, except in a few cases, becomes unnecessary/ To the increasing action of the State in matters of education Fitch, like his great fellow-worker Matthew Arnold, turned with confidence and hope. In England, at least, with its native bent of character and its rooted tradition, there was little danger of that action becoming excessive or prejudicial to the forces which it was its privilege to convert into a sound
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national economy. Besides, as with his sane political instinct he saw very clearly, the character and meaning of State action had in our times undergone an unconscious but thorough trans- formation. In some words addressed to the Teachers' Guild at Birmingham in 1895 Fitch put the whole matter with unmistakable clear- ness :
t There are those who distrust all action of Government in regard to the intellectual life of the nation ; who rely wholly on local and personal effort, rather than on the machinery and influence of the State, and who are disposed to think that the one thing needful for the completion of our social reforms is a society for letting people alone. On the other hand, there are those who reflect that the experiment of letting things alone has now been tried for a long time with rather dis- couraging results ; that under democratic institu- tions we can no longer regard the State as a dominating and external force, but as the expres- sion of the collective will, judgment, and conscience of the nation ; and that what is effected by the State is done neither for us nor against us, but by ourselves, our own corporate resources being employed for objects in which we have a corporate and common interest. In regard to many subjects of the highest public concernment which in older days were left entirely to private and individual
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initiative — in production, in the supply of some of the necessaries and conveniences of life, in commerce, in national defence, in the encourage- ment of art — we are beginning to find that the great forces wielded by the State can be made to enrich and bless the community, and that these forces ought to be utilized. And those who think that there is still room for the further develop- ment of the principle of national association in the sphere of education are increasing in number, and are ready to inquire how and within what limitations governmental action may be ex- tended and may be expected to result in national benefit.'
Such, then, were the educational ideal and the view of the available resources for giving effect to it which consistently inspired the special work of Fitch's life. Both were already clearly present to his mind when he commenced his work as Inspector of Schools in 1863. Throughout the great educa- tional changes which filled the period of his public career, and of which he was himself so great a part, he wrought successfully to give effect to the one and to utilize the other. Nowhere, not even in the large public counsels to which he was so often called, did he work so hard or so effectually for these ends as in the ordinary official duties of his life as inspector. There he felt that he was in touch with the beating heart of the machine.
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He found in what might be so easily the dreary grind of a humdrum official routine the oppor- tunity of a great public, indeed of a great human, service. For he never forgot that the service of the public was a ministry to human souls, a deepening and purifying of the life -sources of humanity. It is not strange to find the uniform note of his career struck once again in the last official words which, as inspector, he ever addressed to the Lords of the Council, and to find, too, that he concludes his labours with the hopeful thought of the vast work which it yet remains for the future to accomplish.
' Much yet remains to be done. Considered either as a science or as a fine art, education is at present in an early stage of development. Better methods than have ever been adopted yet wait to be devised, new truths to be enunciated and proved, and new channels of access to the under- standing, the conscience, the character, and the sympathies of children to be discovered. The future is full of promise, but if that promise is not to be disappointed, it must be fulfilled, not merely by removing the responsibility from one authority to another, but rather by the right co-ordination of all the agencies — imperial, local, religious, academical, and scientific — which in a free country like ours are concerned with the intellectual amelioration of the people.'
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There it all is again, in the end as at the begin- ning— the thing to be achieved and the conditions of achieving it. And there, too, is the spirit of the true workman, forgetting his ' little done ' in the vision of the * undone vast ' which it is for the hands of the future to shape.
CHAPTER III
COMMISSIONS AND INQUIRIES
MR. FITCH'S official career as Inspector of Schools was interrupted once and again by the special duties entrusted to him by the Education Depart- ment. During his stay at York he was thus employed by Lord Taunton's Schools Inquiry Commission of 1865 to examine into and report on the condition of the endowed and proprietary schools in the West Riding of Yorkshire and in the City and Ainsty of York. This he supple- mented by a further inquiry into the state of certain endowed schools in the North and East Riding and in Durham. Again in 1869 he was appointed by Mr. W. E. Forster one of the two special Commissioners to whom was assigned the duty of reporting on the condition of elementary education in the four great cities of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Leeds. This work was intended to strengthen Mr. Forster's hands as Vice-President of the Council in preparing the Education Act of 1870. But that same year was
66
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productive of further legislation destined once more to enlist Mr. Fitch's services in a special field. The Endowed Schools Act of that year was intended to do for secondary education some- thing of what the Elementary Education Act had more completely and systematically projected for the education of the working classes. Mr. Fitch was relieved for a time of his duties as Inspector of Schools, and was appointed an Assistant Com- missioner to give effect to that Act. For seven years he was engaged in the discharge of this important duty, and it was not till 1877 that he again returned to his ordinary official duties as Inspector of the Metropolitan district of East Lambeth. In 1883 he was appointed one of the new Chief Inspectors whom the Department had chosen to superintend and direct the work of the ordinary inspectors of the various districts. In this capacity he had entrusted to him what was known as the Eastern Division of England, com- prising all the eastern counties from Lincoln to Essex. Two years later he succeeded Canon Warburton as Inspector of Training Colleges for Women in England and Wales, and this duty he continued to fulfil until his final retirement from the service of the Education Office in 1894.
The Department had wisely adopted the excep- tional course of asking Mr. Fitch to continue his
5—2
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services for a further period of five years beyond the usual retiring age of sixty-five, which he had reached in 1889. Even then a memorial, signed by representatives of every women's training college, was forwarded to the Education Department pray- ing for his further continuance in office, but the necessary rigour of public regulations made it impossible that this request should be complied with. Fitch himself freely recognised the justice and necessity of giving impartial effect to these regulations, though his mind still remained so youthful, and the love of his special work was still so strong in him, that the compulsory abandon- ment of duties to which he had so long grown accustomed must at first have been a painful wrench. His friend Mr. Francis Storr reports his comment upon a necessity which he admitted to be sound and just. It aptly marks the un- avoidable want of discrimination incident to the application of official regulations. ' I have just been staying/ said Dr. Fitch, f with a Bishop ' (it was Dr. Durnford of Chichester), * still vigorous both in mind and body, and able to take his full share of work. Yet he was appointed to his see at exactly the same age at which I am compelled to retire, and has held it now twenty years.' But Mr. Storr hastens to add in defence of the rule, with a humour whose edge had no doubt been sharpened by a ripe knowledge of the conditions
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of public office : c It is certain that if the public service occasionally cuts short the ripe wisdom and mellow experience of a Dr. Fitch, it rids itself by a process of painless extinction of endless Old Men of the Sea/
Among Fitch's other official or semi-official labours must be mentioned his visit to America in 1888, and the report on American education which he prepared as a result of that visit, and which was presented to Parliament and afterwards published under the title of ' Notes on American Schools and Training Colleges.' He also prepared a similar report on the working of the Free School System in America (United States and Canada), France, and Belgium. This inquiry had been undertaken at the request of the Education Department with a view to the legislation pro- jected in 1891, and was also ordered to be printed and presented to Parliament.
It would be impossible to attempt an adequate review of the labour, so rich and varied, which Fitch thus devoted to the interests of educational improvement in this country. Yet without some such attempt the record of his life would be but a maimed and halting enumeration of disjointed and unrelated activities. Of one of Fitch's reports — that which he drafted as a member of the Schools Inquiry Commission — Mr. Francis Storr has well said : * A more graphic picture of what
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English middle-class education was in the sixties could not be found, or, I may add, a more telling argument against the school of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Dr. Fitch's experience of the Sleepy Hollows of Yorkshire furnished him with a fund of anecdote and illustration of how things ought not to be done which he used to good purpose in his subsequent lectures and articles.' The same might be said, with the necessary modification in view of the special reference of each, of every report, and, indeed, of every article ever written by Fitch on the subject of education. But the special interest of the work which comes under our notice in the present chapter is that, as it took him outside the rigid limits imposed by his ordinary official duties, so it reveals the ease and certainty with which he moved in every part of the educational field, and appropriated his experi- ence of each to an ever-enlarging view of the needs of the whole.
Fitch's report for the Schools Inquiry Com- mission is certainly a living document. It is riot only an interesting and luminous page in the history of English education, but also a revelation throughout of the character of its author in all its varied strength, fairness, and intellectual supple- ness. Fitch had an eye which always saw every- thing that was essential, because he so clearly realized what was essential to any inquiry which
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he might have in hand, and knew so instinctively where to look for it. He had a judgment which never failed to take proportionate and just account of the ideal to be aimed at, and of the actual con- ditions which, in a particular case, defined the possibility of its attainment. He had the courage which never shirked the clear statement of facts, however unpleasant to individuals, and the con- siderateness which sought to recommend the justice of such statement even to those whom it con- demned. All these qualities are conspicuously revealed in this document. It is an almost perfect example of the just relation of general principles to individual circumstances. Too often, in the hands of the clumsy or obstinate investiga- tor, general principles seem to press with a kind of antecedent weight upon the special circum- stances of the case so as to force them out of the picture. Here there is nothing of this pedantic tendency. The conclusion grows out of the justice and breadth of the general picture. Prin- ciples do not clumsily impose themselves upon facts, but seem, on the contrary, to detach them- selves with an impressive force and majesty from the degree of success or of failure, of strength or of weakness, which the facts disclose.
The object of the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1865 was to examine into and report upon the manner in which the ancient educational endow-
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ments of the nation were then fulfilling their purpose, and thereby to provide a trustworthy account of the condition of secondary or middle- class education in England at that time. There existed already, in the report of the patient Com- mission which, during almost twenty years (1818- 1837), had examined into the condition of English endowed charities, an immense mass of accurate information as to the origin, history, constitution, and revenues of the endowed schools. But it had not lain within the scope of that Commission to report upon the character of the education which those schools supplied. The Commission of 1862, presided over by Lord Clarendon, was entrusted with the duty of furnishing such a report for nine of the great public schools. To Lord Taunton's Commission a similar duty was assigned for the remainder of the endowed schools of the country. It was found that there were in all about 3,000 such endowments, of which 782 were grammar schools, or schools specially intended by their founders for the teaching of Latin and Greek, while the rest were charity schools, intended to furnish a non- classical or elementary education only. As we have seen, the specimen district assigned to Mr. Fitch was a part of Yorkshire with which his work as Inspector had already made him well acquainted. This district con- tained a very large number of these ancient
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foundations. It was possible to decipher the general history of educational endowments from their typical fortunes in this single corner of England. That Fitch interpreted aright the reasons of past failure and indicated the true line of reform is evident from the fact that his own report contains in itself every finding and every recommendation of the Commission's general report.
It was about the middle of the last century that the old educational endowments of this country had reached the nadir of possible useful- ness. Their futility would have been grotesque if it had not been a national tragedy. What England needs, and needed still more in the sixties of the nineteenth century, was an organ- ized and adequate system of middle-class educa- tion, accommodated to modern social and intellec- tual conditions. A beginning, at least, of such provision might have been made by an intelligent use of these endowments of the past. But the dead hand weighed heavily upon them, crushing out, in most cases, the last remains of their vital energy. As long as any trace of the old social conditions under which these schools had been founded remained, it was still possible to extract from them some measure of public usefulness. But Fitch saw clearly enough that those condi- tions had totally disappeared, that the growth of
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wealth and the consequent fluidity of social status, which had been the chief results of indus- trial development, had accentuated even the most trifling differences of social rank, and had so rendered chimerical the hope of giving a satisfac- tory education in the same school to all classes of a single local community. Yet exactly this was the original purpose of the old foundations. Under the changed conditions a new aim had become necessary if the resources inherited from the past were not to be utterly wasted. And this aim was not only necessary, but was also easily possible of attainment. The Parliamentary grant had already rendered superfluous the use of the endowments for the education of the working classes, and the imposition of local rates for the same purpose was soon to render it still more un- necessary. The increase of wealth and the improved means of travel had, in the same way, carried off the sons of the larger land-owning class and of the rich manufacturers to distant schools which attracted by the prestige .of their great tradition. It was evident, therefore, that an attempt should be made to preserve and adapt the ancient founda- tions to the needs of the children of the middle classes in each local centre. In other words, they would serve to create and foster a type of educa- tion midway between the teaching given in the elementary schools and that provided by the great
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public schools in close connection with the Univer- sities, a true secondary education adapted to modern requirements. If this were to be done, it would be necessary to loose the fetters which kept the old endowments bound in an impotent servitude. Nothing could be clearer or more pointed than the general conclusions which Fitch reached on the general question of the use of endowments. More than twenty years later he admirably summarized them in an address de- livered before the College Association of the University of Pennsylvania.
4 First, that the intellectual and social wants of each age differ, and always must differ, from those of its predecessors, and that no human foresight can possibly estimate the nature and extent of the difference. Next, that the value of a gift for public purposes depends not on the bigness of the sum given, but upon the wisdom of the regulation and upon the elasticity of the conditions which are attached to the gift ; and, finally, that every institution which is to maintain its vitality and to render the highest service to successive genera- tions of living men should be governed by the living, and not by the dead/
The evidence of the failure of these ancient endowments was most impressively marshalled in Fitch's report ; but it was marshalled throughout with a view to exposing the causes of the failure.
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At a first glance the report reads like an indict- ment. On a closer view it becomes the most sufficient of explanations. It is a sociological study of organic decay. Every fact is disclosed in its vital relations. Nowhere has the traditional English habit of ignoring the need of progressively organized method, of trusting entirely to indi- vidual force and initiative, been more mercilessly, because so dispassionately, exposed. Fitch was, perhaps quite unconsciously, one of the most intelligent pioneer workers in the field of sociology. At least, for students of that still embryonic science, this report is a lesson in both the method and the spirit of inquiry. Believer as he was in the supreme importance of the living agent, he saw, nevertheless, that in all social affairs the conditions were living also, and that the amount and quality of life in the one were determined by the amount and quality of life in the other. If the education provided by the old endowed schools had in large measure ceased to have any value, it was first of all because the conditions under which it was offered had ceased to correspond with the circumstances of actual life, and then because this lifelessness of traditional conditions had paralyzed the teaching power.
It was under these two heads that Fitch ex- posed the failure of the schools. Dealing with a phase of social life, his clear mind seized at once
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and always kept to the front the guiding principle of a continuous social life — the progressive good of the community. His common-sense instinct taught him that the only way to give vital effect to a law of the past is to avoid pedantic legalism, to seek to establish under changed conditions what ancient founders sought to establish under the conditions of their own time. The benefactors of the past had had but one object, the educational advancement of their own little community. The means which they had devised for the attainment of that end were no doubt well adapted to procure it. They had in most cases assigned the ad- ministration of their bequest to a local body of trustees, whose interests in the matter of educa- tion might be supposed to represent adequately the interests of the local community as a whole. It was obviously, too, in the interests of the local community as a whole that they had in most cases devised sufficient lands for the free teaching of Greek and Latin to all children in the parish or district who might desire it. Yet it was exactly these means, so carefully devised to give effect to the feelings and needs of the community, that had ended by ignoring both the one and the other. From being men who by their superior intelligence and public spirit were able to repre- sent the common educational interests and needs at their highest, the trustees had too often become
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a mere local clique, jealously perpetuating its ignorance and inefficiency by nomination from a single uneducated class, and concealing both behind the necessity of obedience to the letter of the trust. In other cases the trustees might be men entirely worthy of their position by indi- vidual intelligence and general public spirit, but, living at a distance, they were without that local interest and knowledge which could alone have rendered their administration effective.
Seldom, indeed, did it happen that these two elements of a competent trust, local interest and general intelligence, were to be found in combina- tion. If the trustees were confined by the terms of the foundation to the locality, they tended to become representative of a single class, and that the least intelligent and public-spirited. If, on the contrary, they were drawn from a distance, they hesitated to interfere under conditions which they imperfectly understood. Besides, their powers were in some cases confined to the manage- ment of the trust property, even the nomination of the schoolmaster being in other hands. In the same way the provision made by the foundations for the free education of a district had degenerated under modern conditions into a system of compro- mises and evasions which degraded the schools in popular estimation. As Latin and Greek had been specially mentioned as the subjects of in-
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struct ion in most of the deeds of foundation, the teaching of these subjects continued to be free ; while for even the most elementary subjects of an ordinary English education regular fees were charged. But, as Latin and Greek were just the subjects which in most of the schools no one wished to learn, the intentions of the founder had been in one of the most important particulars completely negatived. But perhaps the gravest defect of all was the all but absolute irresponsi- bility of the schoolmaster. By the terms of most of the trusts he enjoyed a freehold tenure of his office on condition of his readiness to teach sub- jects which in practice he was often never called upon to teach. No more grotesque perversion, perhaps, of past benefactions had ever been witnessed; yet it was all a perfectly natural result of the divorce of the letter of ancient docu- ments from the spirit which had informed their original intentions. The living social conscience had abdicated in favour of the dead letter of the instrument originally devised as an organ of its expression.
The effect of this absurd pedantry of obedience to the letter upon the character of the education given in the schools was what might have been expected. It was not only that in most of the endowed schools Latin and Greek were no longer taught at all, that they had sunk to the level of
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the elementary schools in their educational pro- gramme, and far below it in educational efficiency. Much more serious was the fact that, where the classical languages were still taught, they had altogether ceased to be a real educational instru- ment, so lifeless and mechanical had the teaching of them become. But Fitch went even further. While admitting most fully and generously the efficiency of a very small number of the grammar schools on the lines which had been fixed by their traditional connection with the Universities, he boldly challenged the value of the contribution which education on such lines could make to the kind of secondary education needed in these days. He felt that a system which subordinated the educational interests of all the pupils of a school to those of a proportion which in the best schools did not exceed 20 per cent, was self- condemned. The teaching of the junior pupils even in the best schools was conducted on the assumption that they would continue their course with a view to preparation for the Universities. On this assump- tion much that was merely mechanical in the teaching of the junior classes was not only pardonable, but almost unavoidable ; but it was an assumption utterly unwarranted by the facts. Hence Fitch contended that throughout the grammar-school course an attempt ought to be made to convert even the most elementary teaching
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into an instrument of real intellectual culture. In the lower classes all pupils alike ought to be taught efficiently the subjects preparatory to the most complete course of instruction which the school aimed at affording. When in the higher classes it became necessary to differentiate between pupils whose intellectual preparation had different objects in view, a considerable portion of the school work ought still to be common to all, while a part of the school time might be reserved for the special lines of study which corresponded with the broad lines of division incident to any com- plete scheme of secondary education.
It was only in this way that the grammar schools could become real secondary schools, ministering in their special localities to a real national need. They had failed to realize this purpose, both because a pedantic and unintelligent adhesion to the letter of their charters had blocked the way to gradual and continuous reform, and because this tradition had produced a class of teachers wedded to an ancient educational method and ideal. One of the most essential elements in any reform must be an entire change in the character of the teach- ing body. It was not enough to have teachers who were mere scholars, and who were appointed on the ground of their scholarship alone ; it was necessary, above all, in the secondary school, as in the elementary, or even more than in the
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elementary, to have teachers with a large and vigorous interest in the nature of education itself, and with at least some training in method as a contributory aid to such interest.
These were the broad conclusions to which Fitch's inquiry had led him, conclusions as judi- cious in their detailed content as they were generous in spirit. By their adoption he looked forward to a transformation of existing endow- ments into at least the beginnings of a national and universal system of secondary education in England. It has been, perhaps, worth while to dwell at some length on the document in which these conclusions were enforced, because Fitch was soon afterwards entrusted with the duty of turn- ing them, so far as was possible, into fact. The work which he had to do as an Assistant Com- missioner under the Endowed Schools Act of 1870 must indeed have been often disappointing to him. But it was at least work which he was peculiarly fitted to perform, alike by his experience, by the clearness and wisdom of his own educational aims, and by his peculiar tact and skill in affairs. His patience never failed him in presence of that local conservatism, sometimes vigorous, sometimes in- dolent, but always tenacious and obstinate, which resisted the accomplishment of the work which he had in hand. He knew how to extract the most that was possible out of circumstances the most
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adverse. With his generous ideal of what ought to be done and his clear perception of the oppor- tunities for doing it presented by the Endowed Schools Act, he might well have been excused if he had emerged from the ordeal of administering that Act a reformer with crushed heart and broken will. But instead he was grateful for what he had been permitted to accomplish, and always hopeful of the gradual accomplishment in the future of all that still remained to be done. He knew with a sympathy which was akin to admira- tion the weaknesses of his countrymen, perceiving with a true insight that in national as in indi- vidual character weakness does not exist apart from strength, that strength is always made perfect in weakness. To him there was a pro- found truth, not to be lightly overlooked or for- gotten, in the verdict of traditional experience on the English character — ' slow, but sure.' He felt that the Englishman could not be rudely forced into any reform, however obvious to a wider intelli- gence, but must learn for himself its necessity in the school of experience. Yet there runs through many of his references to his experience as an Assistant Commissioner under the Endowed Schools Act the note of disappointment with the rejected opportunities which strewed the path of the administration of that Act. Here, for instance, is a reference which he interjected into one of his
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inspectorial reports after his return to his old work in London. It shows at once how much he could have done for London education if the stupidity of local conservatism had given his reforming spirit room to work, and how much London lost through lack of a social conscience which might have yielded to the direction of one of its wisest advisers in the matter of education.
1 There are resources enough in the educational charities of London to surround the Metropolis with a zone of such schools ' (secondary or middle schools), * and it is well known to have been the desire of the late Endowed Schools Commissioners to effect this object. But at present it has been very inadequately achieved. There is in my dis- trict only one such school, the excellent Datchelor School for Girls. Close, however, on the border of the district at Hatcham, there are the two great schools of the Aske foundation, which draw many scholars from Peckham and its neighbour- hood. The history of the foundation is instructive. When, some seven years ago, it was my duty as Assistant Commissioner to investigate its condi- tion, I found that the trusts required the main- tenance of a small alms-house for twenty decayed members of the Haberdashers' Company and a little charity school for twenty-five orphan children. But the income had become enormously dispro- portioned to these humble objects ; and, with the
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intelligent and generous co-operation of the Haber- dashers' Company, the Commissioners were able to frame a scheme which, after providing amply for the original purposes of the trust, created four large middle schools in the north and south of London, two for girls and two for boys, with handsome modern buildings and equipments, with moderate fees for those who paid, with special provision for the gratuitous admission by merit of scholars from the elementary schools, and with upward exhibitions to enable the best scholars to proceed to higher education elsewhere. All these schools are now full and flourishing, and arc greatly appreciated. But, for the complete or- ganization of the secondary education of the Metropolis, they should be multiplied at least fivefold. They might easily be so multiplied if the intentions of the Endowed Schools Act were fully carried out. And if the London ratepayer thinks it a grievance that the costly and beautiful schools which the law has compelled him to pro- vide for the poor are appropriated in part by the children of those who could well afford to pay, he may be reminded that a more cordial acceptance on his part of the provisions of that Act would long ere this have helped to solve the problem in a much more satisfactory way. He has not yet become fully convinced that since the passing of the Elementary Education Act a charity school of
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the eighteenth-century type has become a mis- chievous anachronism, and that, having regard both to the altered requirements of modern times and to the spirit of the founders' intentions, the wisest use which can be made of many of the rich educational endowments of London is to establish good public intermediate schools. He will prob- ably learn this lesson, as most of us learn some of the best lessons of our lives, just a little too late.'
These words were written at the close of the seven years' struggle to give effect to the great purpose which his own high vision had given him before the Government of his country entrusted it to his hands. They are a representative record of its success and its failure. It may be well to place beside them other words spoken by him at the beginning of the same enterprise. In November, 1870, the elementary teachers of his Yorkshire district presented Fitch with a farewell address and testimonial. He had already been for some months engaged upon his new work as Endowed Schools Assistant Commissioner at Exeter. To the Yorkshire teachers he brought the report of the aims which were directing his new work in that far south-western corner of England.
' Scattered all over the country there is an immense number of schools professing to give an education in Latin and Greek, and such an educa- tion as will prepare the pupils for the Universities.
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These schools are enormously in excess of the demand, and the consequence is that they are doing very little or none of the work for which they are designed. I won't say that is quite the fault of the schools. Many of them are trying very honourably, but unsuccessfully, to fit the work of the nineteenth century into schemes designed for the sixteenth century. Now, the policy of the Commissioners is to select certain schools which, from their history, their tradition, their wealth, and their present condition, are adapted to become first-grade or University schools. These will be few in number, but the object will be to make them strong and efficient. The other schools must not attempt to rival them, and therefore the Commissioners desire that all the rest of the endowed schools should deliberately accept their position as modern institutions adapted to give a good, generous education to English boys who are not going to the Universities. In that way all the endowed schools of England will have to be reorganized, and there will be besides these University schools two distinct grades — the second and third grades. The second-grade schools will take those boys who will remain till they are sixteen or seventeen years of age, and who want a good, sensible scientific education up to that age, and the third grade of schools will be between them and the ordinary primary schools.
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They will take scholars who are going to leave school at fourteen or fifteen years of age, and will give an education adapted to the necessities of that very large class just above the children attending the ordinary primary schools.'
The general purpose of the Commission could not have been more clearly expressed, and that purpose had no more intelligent, energetic, and tactful instrument than Joshua Fitch. Shortly after his death one who then worked with him for the first time, and who was then drawn to him by a sym- pathy of ideas and a community of aim which continued and increased till the end — the late Lord Hobhouse — thus wrote of him : ' My estimate of him was founded on numberless details of busi- ness in which we were for some time concerned together. I came to know that he had clear and sound ideas of what school education should be, great skill in applying them to varieties of cir- cumstance, and patient industry in making his views acceptable to others. That estimate re- mains clear and strong as ever/
It is work of this kind, fateful as it always is in the development of a nation's real life, that is apt to pass unnoticed in the records of its history. It is just possible to indicate generally the principles which controlled such work, and crudely to record the rough measure of its success. The living souls which energized within its mass, and which
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gave it its real form and value, only too easily escape our rough handling. Yet Fitch's bio- graphy, and the biography of such men as he, are hidden in the living movements which such work bequeaths. History takes account of the work as a whole : with the passing years it loses sight of, even if it had ever interest or sympathy enough to see at all, the clear intelligence, the patient, plodding will, without which that work could never have been. Yet here and there a memory from the sixties and seventies of the last century still retains the picture of Fitch's buoyant spirit and observant eye in the midst of the work which was so peculiarly his own. To the Rev. R. D. Swallow, Headmaster of Chigwell Grammar School, we are indebted for such a momentary finger - touch upon the ' human pulse of the machine':
' I made acquaintance with Sir Joshua Fitch nearly forty years ago, when I was a boy at the head of an old grammar school in Yorkshire — Heath School, in Halifax. He visited the school for purposes of inspection, on behalf of the Endowed Schools Commission, in the autumn of 1865. Now, inspectors in those days were strange and formidable personages, and I was, naturally, nervous and timid in conversation with him, for he talked to me for half an hour, at least, in his care to discover the work the school was doing in
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the place. But his pleasant manner and kindly sympathy soon placed me at my ease, and I have since discovered that he picked the brains of my- self and my schoolfellows to good purpose, though we were unconscious that we were making history. I recall, as if it were yesterday, his skilful hand- ling of us in the lesson for the day, which he took out of our head-master's hands. It was a transla- tion from the "De Corona" of Demosthenes, and here again nervousness vanished under his helpful encouragement. Side by side with me then was a scholar whose career has been of some distinc- tion. We went together to Cambridge the following year, and in 1870 he was Senior Classic. When, a few years ago, he became Sir John Bonser, and a member of the Privy Council, I discussed his success with Sir Joshua, describing the surprise we felt at the brilliant result of the Tripos — for even his closest friends had not ex- pected him to win the foremost place in his year. But I found that the young inspector had dis- covered in him an ability which was almost genius, if there is anything in the idea that one mark of genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. I mention these things, for I can recall in that visit to Halifax two characteristics of the man which constantly impressed me in later intercourse — I mean his kindliness and his thoroughness. Of his kindliness I have other
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proofs. For painstaking and efficient thorough- ness I venture to think that there was never better work done than in his official survey of Yorkshire schools. That Blue-Book is a /crfjiua ec <m in English official life.'
It was characteristic of Fitch that acquaintances formed in what would be for most men the lightly- forgotten accidents of official life so often ripened into lifelong friendships. In every situation with which his official duties called upon him to deal he not only at once detected the larger human interests involved, but seemed to feel with an immediate sympathy the interests of the indi- viduals whom it affected. Men were drawn to him, both by the sincerity of this personal interest and by the impersonal standard which he had set for his own judgment, and to which he knew so well how to induce others to conform. Many a firm and grateful friend of Fitch's dated his friendship from some chance encounter of the kind which Mr. Swallow has described. Even the terrors of the examination-room were con- verted by Fitch, when he examined for the Indian Civil Service Commissioners, or for the University of London, into an opportunity for detecting character and making friends. The undeveloped boy was to him an open book, almost as easy, and often more fascinating, to read than the developed man. He had, indeed, as the very essence of his
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nature, that great hopefulness which detects pro- mise at least as easily as it appraises performance. But it was not only the young for whom he felt, and of whose promise he was such a kindly and earnest helper. Many of the closest friends of his later life were men whom he first met during his official work in Yorkshire or Birmingham, or, later, as an Endowed Schools Assistant Com- missioner.
The late Canon Ainger was a valued friend of later years in London, whom he first knew as an Assistant Master in one of the Yorkshire schools which he visited. While engaged on the work of the Commission at Taunton, and in other towns of the south-west, he also renewed his acquaint- ance, begun some years before at the Education Office, with Dr. Temple, who had now become Bishop of Exeter. The shrewd wisdom and the massive earnestness of the great Archbishop appealed to Fitch as much as the more liberal theology, of which he was then esteemed to be a representative and leader. While still at York Fitch had also made the acquaintance of Mr. Voysey, who was then Vicar of Healaugh. Yoysey's frank and courageous character had a great fascination for Fitch, but it is probable that he was still more attracted by the intel- lectual loneliness of the man. Himself the most gentle and patient of reformers, he was also
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the most determined and unyielding, and he felt a kind of kinship with the spirit of every sincere and earnest protest against the authority of mere uncritical tradition, even when he least agreed with its substance. But there was room, too, in his intensely receptive and sympathetic nature for all that was genuine and vital in the heritage bequeathed by the past. York, with its ecclesiastical associations and atmosphere, laid its spell upon him from the first. He loved the Minster and its services, and was delighted when the Dean, Dr. Duncombe, assigned him stalls in the choir for the use of himself and his family. It gave just that touch of spiritual domesticity to worship in which an Englishman delights, and which Fitch was Englishman enough to prize with a hearty and childlike simplicity. Even the somewhat airless social atmosphere of what is called, by one of the happiest accidents of nomen- clature, a cathedral close was not without its elements of enjoyment for him. He had the power of extracting all that there was of wider and more intelligent interest in such a society, and the gift of natural obtuseness to whatever might be narrow and petty in it. Among the friends whom he specially prized at York was the late Mr. Corbet-Singleton, first warden of Kadley. Fitch would always be found at St. Sampson's on the Sunday evenings when the eloquent Irishman
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preached there. Other friends of that time were the Rev. Richard Elwyn, afterwards Master of the Charterhouse, Dr. Monk, the organist of the Minster, Dr. Vance Smith, afterwards one of the Committee which produced the Revised Version of the Bible, and Mr. Kenrick, who was soon to become Professor of Hebrew at Manchester New College.
Among the men who worked with Fitch upon the Endowed Schools Commission were many who had already made their mark in the world of scholarship or affairs or both, and who were afterwards to attain to the very highest distinc- tion. Thomas Hill Green was a Commissioner, and so was Mr. D. R. Fearon, afterwards the distinguished secretary to the Charity Commis- sion. Fearon had already shared with Fitch the duty of preparing the report on education in the four towns which proved so useful to Mr. Forster in the preparation of the Elementary Education Act of 1870. Liverpool and Manchester were reported on by Fearon, while Birmingham and Leeds fell to Fitch's share. An interesting example of the way in which Fitch would turn to the best educational account every opportunity offered by his official labours is given by the Rev. E. F. M. M'Carthy, of Birmingham :
* The first occasion upon which Sir Joshua Fitch (then Mr. Fitch) was brought into official contact with Birmingham education was in the year 1869,
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when he was entrusted by Mr. W. E. Forster, then Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education, with the duty of making a report for the information of the House of Commons on the state of education in the boroughs of Birmingham and Leeds, while Mr. D. R. Fearon was instructed to do the same for Liverpool and Manchester. Mr. Fitch's report was a very able and exhaustive one, and furnished a complete picture of what was then the condition of educational machinery, both as regards quantity and quality of production, in the town which was admittedly the most advanced in the kingdom. His picture of the state of things even there was sufficiently depressing to open the eyes of Parliament to the immediate necessity of legislation, and largely helped Mr. Forster to pass the memorable Education Act of 1870.
' In the course of this inquiry Mr. Fitch put himself in communication with Sir Josiah Mason, who had founded an orphanage, and was contem- plating the endowment of a college of University rank, which has since developed into the University of Birmingham. Mr. Fitch's experience in con- nection with the Schools Inquiry Commission (1865-1867) had made him thoroughly conversant with the uses and abuses of educational endow- ments in England, and his broad views of the proved necessity of the continual revision of founders' wishes made a great impression upon
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Sir Josiah Mason, and confirmed him in his opinion that the machinery by which a founder would best achieve his aims should not be too rigidly prescribed in his deed of foundation, but that it should be subject to periodical revision by the trustees. It was in this spirit that in the following year, 1870, Sir Josiah Mason provided in the deed of foundation of Mason Science College that the provisions of the trust should be subject to alteration or variation every fifteen years. Sub- sequently (1886) Mr. Fitch gave evidence to the same effect before a Committee of Inquiry of the House of Commons into the working of the Charit- able Trusts Acts and the Endowed Schools Acts.'
But of all Fitch's colleagues of that time there was probably none for whom he came to entertain a higher esteem and a greater admiration than Mr. James Bryce. They were men peculiarly fitted to understand and appreciate each other both by the earnest public spirit characteristic of each of them and by their common political creed and conception of national well-being. It was fitting that to Mr. Bryce should have fallen at Fitch's death the duty of expressing in fitting and graceful language the national recognition of his services in Parliament. Here it may suffice to insert some words in which Mr. Bryce has recorded his impressions of his friend.
' It was in 1865 that I first came to know Sir
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Joshua Fitch. He and I then were working as Assistant Commissioners under the Schools Inquiry Commission. There was a large staff of University men employed in visiting and reporting on secondary schools, and especially on the endowed schools ;; and among the Assistant Commissioners were D. R. Fearon, afterwards Secretary of the Charity Com- mission, and T. H. Green, afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. Mr. Fitch (as he then was) knew far more about education than any of the rest of us, except perhaps Mr. Fearon, and I found his knowledge and his judgment extremely helpful whenever I consulted him. He possessed even in those early days a mastery of the whole field of education such as few in our time have reached. He knew the facts thoroughly, and he studied them in a thoughtful, penetrating, dispassionate way, with no apparent bias even on the questions that were then the subjects of such bitter controversy — the Revised Code and the Conscience Clause. From 1868 onwards when the work of the Commission ended — I ought to say that he produced an admirable report on secondary schools in the West Riding of York- shire— he and I met occasionally, but not very often until in the latest part of his life he became permanently established in London. His retire- ment from the active work of a School Inspector did not diminish his interest in educational prob-
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lems. Few persons had grasped them so com- pletely and exactly ; no one, I venture to think, wrote on them with more authority. He had acquired a complete familiarity with all the details of the intricate and highly artificial system which is administered by the Education Department. He knew it not merely as an official in Whitehall knows it, but as one who had seen and tested it in its working, and had applied rational principles to it in the spirit of a statesman. Having a high ideal conception of what education might do for the people, he approached the subject as a reformer, a reformer at once zealous and temperate. When- ever any new phase in the perpetually recurring education problem appeared he was the first person to whom many among us turned for counsel, and we never turned in vain. No one was able to lay his finger with so much certainty on the weak point in any proposal or to indicate so clearly the measures that were needed. No criticisms of more value, perhaps none of equal value, appeared in the press between 1896 and 1903 as those con- tained in the letters which Sir Joshua addressed to The Times. They were always moderate in expression, but they were trenchant in substance as well as lucid in expression, and the judgments they delivered have been shown by what has since occurred to have been sound. That he was quite free from sectarian or party prejudice made
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him an all the more valuable adviser to those who, being themselves disposed to a particular view, wished to know the weakness of their own case and the strength of their opponent's. An unfeigned love of truth, a constant public spirit, a sense of what better and wider instruction may do for the people — these were the keynotes of his character and action in the career to which his life was devoted, and they seemed to me no less strong in 1903 than they had been nearly forty years before. ' In private he was an eminently genial and kindly companion, tolerant in his views, lenient in his judgments, freely and modestly giving from his large store of experience. He had a wide knowledge of literature and a discriminating taste. No one appreciated more warmly and in a more catholic spirit the work of others, nor did differences of opinion affect his estimate, as his book " Great Educators " conclusively showed — a book, it may be added, in which his lofty ideals of education are clearly seen in their breadth and richness. There was both in his talk and in his writing a gentle persuasiveness and ripeness — a sort of mitis sapientia — which was very attractive, and made it always a pleasure to discuss a subject with him. This equanimity and candour were characteristic of the man, and belonged to the impression which his personality made, with its modesty, its simple dignity, its occupation with high aims and thought.'
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CHAPTER IV
UNIVERSITY PROBLEMS
As Mr. Fitch's conception of education was of the most catholic and complete, so the zealous and energetic temper of his intellect carried him into every field of practical activity for giving effect to it. If circumstances had associated him in a special degree with the development of elementary education, he was also able, as we have seen, to render a signal service in the sphere of secondary education. But even here neither his indirect influence nor his direct action was to find a limit. His mind had always been much occupied with the aims and work of Universities and with the fresh contribution which in our times they might make, and therefore ought to make, to the intel- lectual training of the nation. Among the educa- tional dreams of the past, none more fascinated his imagination than that of Bacon in the ' New Atlantis.' He deliberately set before himself the hope* of realizing that vision of a ' universitas ' of learning under modern conditions. Here as else-
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where he knew how to make the desirable wait upon the possible. But all through the long struggle for the transformation of the London University he kept his ideal in view. It was his sense that the old University had done much towards the establishment of one aspect of a sound University education that inspired him to resist so tenaciously the adoption of hasty schemes which might sacrifice what had been gained to the praiseworthy desire of securing another aspect of University work hitherto lacking. Fitch, indeed, felt by instinct, and by reflection had deepened the feeling, that every reform must be gained alike by hard fighting and by skilful and alert general- ship— that it is of the nature of a campaign against prejudice whether obstinately active or indolently passive, against the incalculable force of the inertia of socialized opinion. He distrusted the flighty generalship which was ready in the midst of a campaign to change the base of operations because that which had been originally chosen had proved less central and convenient for the purposes of the campaign than had been hoped. He preferred rather to be satisfied with progress, however slow, from a position once fairly secured than to indulge in the guerilla tactics more suited to the needs of a combatant fighting for bare life than to those of an imperial power organizing the permanent conquest of an essential territory. Such certainly
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was the spirit of his leadership in the struggle for University extension and reform in which he played so great a part.
Fitch's work in this field was determined by his close connection with the University of London. So far back as 1860, while still at the Normal College in the Borough Road, he had been appointed by the Senate Examiner in English Language and History for a period of five years. From 1869 to 1874 he again held the same post. In 1875 he was nominated by the Crown to a fellowship in the University, and remained till his death a member of the Senate. He was, besides, from an early date a Life Governor of University College. He was thus closely identified with the often conflicting interests of those institutions to which the higher education of London had been entrusted. Yet he was perfectly clear as to the policy which it was necessary to pursue in order to extend the usefulness of the University without forfeiting the gains which its actual development had secured. That policy may be roughly described as the policy of freedom of teaching.
Fitch's mind was quick to seize the lessons of actual facts. Not only the history of his own University, but the consistent tendency of the later development of the older Universities as well, taught him that the conditions of modern life were steadily setting in favour of the utmost
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liberty of teaching. Whatever else a University might in our days set itself to do, it must first of all recognise and appraise knowledge, however acquired. If the old Universities, with their tradition of centuries binding them obstinately to the collegiate system, had been forced to relax it and to recognise the necessity of assessing by their Examining Boards the knowledge of non- collegiate students, it seemed to Fitch a dangerous instance of conservative pedantry that educational institutions should in these days be seeking a University charter on the terms of a rigorous revival of the old system. It was not that he was blind to the excellences of that system and to the advantages which it could still legitimately claim over other methods of acquiring knowledge. Indeed, he would occasionally dwell with an affec- tionate tenderness, as if he himself had been one of their sons, upon even the most elusive influences of the ancient English seats of learning, and claim those influences as things not lightly to be appraised in the sum of English education. Is it possible, for instance, to conceive of a nobler and a more liberal estimate of the worth of an Oxford or Cambridge degree than this? — 'It represents residence for a certain period in the midst of a learned society, encompassed by ancient tradi- tions and ennobling memories. It symbolizes leisure and repose, the companionship of youthful
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students, access to ancient libraries, walks in trim gardens and under the shadow of mediaeval build- ings. It means, in short, that the holder of an Oxford or Cambridge degree has, for a certain time in his life, cut himself off from the world of business and money -getting to breathe the air of an academic community, and to partake of the many nameless social and intellectual influences which belong to an ancient seat of learning/
And liberal as the estimate is, it is perfectly sincere. There was something in Fitch which was intimately responsive to all the poetry of the past. He could not contemplate for the youth of England the possible loss of all that the city of the dream- ing spires could itself teach them. But there were other cities in England with spires that did not dream, but rose gaunt and stubborn, crowned day and night with the smoke of their own fierce incessant labouring. And in those cities a great part of the youth of England had to learn the harsh, stern poetry of the present or not learn it at all. To Fitch it seemed that the methods of the past could not there be exclusively insisted on. Even there he admitted that knowledge might still best be acquired under the conditions set by the collegiate system. But other methods were not only possible, but necessary. And the essential note of a true University system for the modern world must be the frank recognition
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of this diversity of method in the acquiring of knowledge.
In an address upon the proposals for establish- ing a new University in the North of England which Fitch delivered before the Social Science Congress in 1879 — the address from which the quotation given above is taken — he made this claim for the freedom of teaching with the utmost definiteness, yet with an equal persuasiveness. Owens College, Manchester, was then agitating for a University charter which would enable it to confer degrees upon those students only who had pursued a definite course of collegiate training under its own professors. Fitch reminded his hearers of how retrograde such a step must be, how it meant that the aim of the proposed University would be more restricted than the work which the College had already actually accomplished. One of the most valuable experi- ments which the local circumstances had induced the College to make was its evening classes for those students who, owing to their being already pledged to a business career, were unable to attend the ordinary day courses. If the proposed charter were granted, none of these students, however sufficient their knowledge, could present themselves for a degree. The plea for a charter, Fitch urged, would have been unanswerable if it had been presented in this wise : ' We are planted
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in the midst of an active-minded and enterprising community, conscious of the need of intellectual culture, and daily more and more disposed to look to us to supply that need. We are making it our business to understand and to encourage the best aspirations of the great industrial com- munity in the midst of which we are placed ; we are sending out emissaries to neighbouring towns to hold evening classes and give lectures ; we are gathering together large numbers of the young men in Manchester who are getting their living all day, and who are pursuing regular courses of study in the evening. We feel a strong interest in the many struggling and ambitious students in the North of England who are using public libraries, who are attending courses of lectures, and otherwise acquiring sound knowledge by the best means within their reach. We think that, if we were in a position to direct the studies of all these people by a well-arranged curriculum and scheme of examination, and to confer appropriate distinctions on all who proved themselves to have acquired a given amount of knowledge and mental cultivation, our usefulness would be greatly ex- tended. We could then not only co-ordinate and direct, but also greatly ennoble, the best of the scattered educational agencies which surround us ; and for this purpose we ask that, in addition to all the means of usefulness we already possess,
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the power of granting degrees shall be conferred on us.'
There is no surer way of contributing to the solution of a difficult problem than by showing what it really is. Fitch had the gift of clear and courageous intelligence which gets behind all the surface complexities by which a practical problem baffles or escapes us to the simplicity of the problem itself. It was by simplifying the Uni- versity problem that he so effectively pointed the way to its solution. He was able to see it as a whole because he insisted on examining it from within. He recalled those reformers who per- sisted in skirmishing at some chance point on the circumference to the central position which com- manded the whole field. The purpose of a University remained at all times the same. It was to foster and extend sound learning to the largest possible extent and by every means which might be from time to time available. The method or methods by which this purpose could best be accomplished varied, and were bound to vary, according to the circumstances of place and time. In the Middle Ages learning could flourish only in great centres provided with sufficient libraries, and therefore attracting the best teachers. In our days the conditions were com- pletely altered. The best teaching might still be offered in the ancient foundations, or even in
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modern institutions founded on the same model. But liberal learning could be acquired in many other ways. A University could best achieve its purpose by marking out courses of study to guide students in their pursuit of knowledge, and then by testing it, however acquired. This was, of course, only the first and most obvious way in which a modern University could attain its end. It was its duty, besides, to keep in closest possible touch with all institutions which provided the highest teaching, to consult continually with those who provided such teaching, to recognise and co-ordinate the various instruments of educa- tion, and to take action itself for extending the usefulness or increasing the number of such instruments.
This was the ideal of the work of a modern University which Fitch advanced as a member of the Senate of the University of London, and enforced with all the power of his pen during the long struggles of the nineties over the recon- struction of that body. He was entirely in sympathy with the desire for a teaching Uni- versity in the first city of the English-speaking world. He cherished as much as, perhaps more than, any the alluring dream of Bacon and Stow and Gresham and Cowley. He felt acutely the national disgrace of a great capital like London lagging behind Berlin and Paris in the organiza-
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tion of its higher education, the more that all the instruments of the best knowledge lay about ready to hand, but in most admired confusion. He was especially anxious that University and King's Colleges should be brought more closely within the circle of University life, and that their teachers should have an intimate share in shaping the work of the University and guiding its counsels. But he was equally anxious that in seeking to gain this object the University should not imperil the particular kind of success which it had already achieved. By the accidents of its brief history it had revealed the educational needs of the time, and measured aright its own special capacity to meet them. Originally founded to meet the special needs of London, it had been forced by the mere effort to do its own work as well as it could be done to become a national, even an imperial, institution. It had been com- pelled to confine itself to the task of setting a standard of the kind and range of knowledge to be acquired, and of awarding the value of that which had been acquired. To do this it had had to loosen its original close connection with the London colleges ; but the boldness of the step had been justified by a success which could not possibly be disputed. Its influence upon higher education had penetrated throughout the whole British Empire, and its awards were an absolutely
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trustworthy guarantee of the acquisition of a high standard of knowledge in all its principal departments. Fitch felt that this success must not be tampered with or endangered for the sake of any future developments, however important. Yet he admitted fully that the work of the University was incomplete so long as it stopped here ; that it was essential that some means should be found for incorporating the colleges more closely in the life of the University; that the University could become, and ought to become, a centre of the best teaching for London, without sacrificing the imperial functions which it had come to discharge. By his frequent discussions of the subject in the public forum of our leading reviews, especially the Quarterly and the Nine- teenth Century r, he did more probably than any other single person to keep this twofold aspect of a satisfactory solution to the front. By his official labours on the Senate he did as much as any to procure the actual solution which has secured the practical recognition of both these aims in the reconstituted University.
It might seem from what has been said that Fitch was unduly enamoured of the examination system, that he unduly depressed the importance of fostering the great teaching corporations. Both charges would be exactly the opposite of the truth. Though he advocated the utmost
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freedom of method in acquiring knowledge, or, rather, insisted that such freedom had universally become a fact which the modern University must recognise, and though he held that the controlling function of a modern University must be to assess the worth of the knowledge acquired by all comers, he contended none the less strongly that the examining work of the University was worse than useless, that it must be pernicious and retro- grade, unless it complied with two conditions. It must set the highest possible standard of knowledge, and it must be free from the slightest suspicion of partiality. It was because he feared that the multiplication of Universities must in- evitably lower in both these respects the standard of value attached to their tests of knowledge that he so stubbornly resisted that policy. He was always pointing a warning finger to the example of America. When the dark shadow of the Gresham University scheme hung ominously over the educational future of London, he fearlessly prophesied the woes which its fulfilment would bring upon us. He dragged into the light the thinly - veiled promises of cheapened medical degrees which that scheme had immediately in- duced some of the leading men in the profession to make, and forced the public eye to measure the disastrous nature of the results to medical learn- ing which must follow. In the same way he
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signalled danger if the exclusive right of examin- ing the students of the London colleges for University degrees were to be reserved to their own teachers. The public would have no guarantee either of the strict impartiality or of the high standard of knowledge required, which were alike essential to the credit and the success of a modern University. Nothing, in short, could be a greater disservice, both to the cause of education generally and to the public estimation of Universities in particular, than an examination system which could be legitimately suspected either of partiality or of want of thoroughness.
On the question of the importance of fostering great centres of teaching Fitch was equally decided. Other methods of knowledge had grown up to meet the variety of need of a complex society. But the well-equipped college, with its staff of learned teachers, each of them not only repre- senting the best general culture of the time, but devoted to some special branch of learning as the business of his life, with its libraries, museums, laboratories, with the incessant action of its vigorous intellectual and social life — this must still remain the most perfect and universally satisfactory instrument of education. Even the best type of student must lose something by missing the influence of such a society. Only from such influence could the worst type hope to
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gain anything which could be justly called educa- tion. That such institutions should grow in number and develop in teaching power must be the desire and the aim of every educational reformer. But Fitch held that the surest way to fetter them in the fulfilment of their legitimate duty and in the development of their special qualities was to grant them a University charter. Lampeter and Durham were his awful examples. Their business was to teach, to learn how to teach better, to draw within their educational net un- touched classes of society, and then to leave the assessment of the worth of their teaching to some impartial and largely independent tribunal.
Here, again, of course, he did not insist upon an impossible and, indeed, injurious independence. He felt that both the University and the teaching colleges must profit by close harmony of aim and continual consultation between examining and teaching bodies ; but none the less the principal duty of a modern University was to measure results, just as the principal duty of a modern teaching college was to produce them. That principle once frankly recognised on both sides and distinctly provided for, there could not be too close an intimacy in their relations or too close a co-operation in their survey and occupation of the field of work. It was the principle which, owing largely to Fitch's clear advocacy of its necessity,
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formed the basis of the compromise which gave its present form and character to the University of London.
But it was not only in large questions of Univer- sity policy that Fitch's influence upon his Alma Mater was felt. He gave himself wholly, with his characteristic generosity of mind, to the minutest details of University work which were entrusted to him. He had been an excellent and conscientious examiner, instinctively apt to take just account alike of the vigorous requirements of an examination standard and of the varieties of human nature which presented themselves to be tested by it. It was of course in vivd voce examination that this opportunity of nice dis- crimination was given him most liberally. And he as liberally seized it. He had the power of detecting easily and at once the moral abilities or disabilities of an examinee, the shyness, mauvaise honte, pretentiousness, self-possession, which usually count one way or the other for so much in the results of this kind of intellectual test. In the hands of many an examiner it becomes a terrorizing ordeal, and is worse than useless as a test of know- ledge. Fitch regarded it as his supreme oppor- tunity, and succeeded in making it such. He quickly set the shy youth at his ease, and readily drew out from him all he had to give. Just as easily he unmasked pretentiousness and exposed
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it, and discovered what of real knowledge lay behind an easy and assured manner. It was his sympathy with the student that inspired even his application of the rigorous standard of a Univer- sity test. He had always before him not the exacting claims of an official standard to be blindly wreaked upon a number of morally indifferent subjects, but the moral fortunes of a human being to be determined, so far as a single act could determine them, by the application of an intelli- gent justice. In all sorts of ways his thoughtful- ness sought and found the hearts of those whom he examined. In reading aloud for dictation, he always remembered the acoustic defects of an examination hall, the need of perfect distinctness in enunciation, of careful and unhurried repeti- tion. In a memorandum of later years on the examinations of the University in English he advises the abandonment of that curious subject in an Intermediate University examination which was described as ' writing out the substance of a paragraph previously read by the examiner.' The reasons he gave for his advice exemplify this thoughtfulness of his. They are marked, too, with a touch of that sly humour which used to strike one as the gentlest of ruffles on the surface of his punctilious politeness of manner. 'The different dimensions and acoustic properties of the rooms in which the examination is held, the
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defective hearing of some of the candidates, and, it must be owned, the imperfect elocution of some of the examiners, combine to make this form of test somewhat uncertain and unequal in its opera- tion.' Such a hint of possible imperfection on the part of examiners, as suspected by one of them- selves, would have been a comfort in the days when one had to bow before these deities throned above the thunder. It may be a comfort to a new generation to meet it now.
But perhaps the form of vivd voce examination in which Fitch took most pleasure, and through which he thought he was able to measure most accurately both the intelligence and the know- ledge of those whom he examined, was one which, probably at his suggestion, had been adopted by the Home and Indian Civil Service Commissioners. He certainly recommended its adoption by the Senate of the University. The candidate was asked to send in a special list of books which he had read with particular care and interest, and on which he desired to be examined. It was the few minutes devoted to this test which proved to be the beginning of many a lifelong friendship between the candidate who had crept, perhaps, abashed into the examination hall and his very human examiner.
Fitch treasured the impressions of character and the promise of future power which these oppor- tunities often revealed to him. He would recount
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with the delight of a child to the members of his family in the evening every instance of peculiar intelligence or of marked literary interest which the day's work had brought to his notice. On one occasion he was surprised to find that the candidate, instead of selecting, offered the whole range of English literature for his test. Fitch was inclined to be amused, and perhaps a little annoyed, at the apparent presumption of the choice, or, rather, want of choice. But he was not easily annoyed ; besides, he was taken with the can- didate's look and manner. So he set himself seriously to the rather ample task which had been set him. He took his favourite authors, Chaucer, the Elizabethan dramatists, Milton, Fuller, Dryden. He found that the candidate's appreciation of literature and of the development of thought which it represented was as marked as the range and accuracy of his knowledge. Fitch was de- lighted. He was full of his brilliant candidate for some days, and told everyone he met about him. He looked anxiously for the lists to appear in order that he might learn the name of his hero. When at length they did appear, he found to his delight that the ' number ' which he had examined represented a son of his old friend, Mr. Llewellyn Davies. This was the spirit in which Fitch in- variably set himself to the somewhat prosaic duty of an examiner. Even in the examination hall he
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never forgot that he was engaged in the work of education.
Another aspect of the function of Universities which much occupied Fitch's thought was their co-ordination of general culture and professional learning. He regretted the growing English ten- dency to separate them, the growing tendency of the Universities themselves to depress the import- ance of the professional faculties. He desired to see professional training in the special work to which human lives were to be dedicated as closely con- nected as might be possible with that more general culture which appertained to human beings as such, with the learning which was rightly called humane. It grieved him to observe that an in- creasing number of young men were seeking their professional instruction in legal and medical schools, in colleges of engineering and practical science, without the stamp of liberal learning which they might have acquired within the walls of one of the ancient Universities. He regretted it because of the positive intellectual loss, but still more because it fostered that spirit of mere pro- fessional association which is only too ready to assert its cramping influence among men engaged in the same life-work. He used to quote with whole-hearted approval a saying of his friend, the late Lord Hobhouse, that ' the corporate spirit in any profession is precisely that which it is easiest
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to create, and which it is easiest to have in excess.' He felt that the largest and most whole- some parb of a man's influence in the world was determined by those interests which he had in common with all other men, or at least with as many other men as possible. One part of the work of Universities was to foster the intellectual cultivation of those common interests, to provide for the life of men, as men, a common intellectual background. An indispensable condition of suc- cess in this aim was that they should retain and strengthen the ties which bound the professional teaching to the University system. In a wise and striking passage he indicated exactly the kind and the measure of the influence of the Church of England as a result of the University training of her clergy.
f It is in every way a fortunate circumstance/ he wrote, f that the clergy of the Church of England are, as a rule, not educated in theological seminaries, but in communities which fairly reflect the mind and tendencies of the non-clerical world ; and it cannot be doubted that much of the legiti- mate intellectual influence now exercised over that world by the English clergy would be sacri- ficed, even though greater skill in pastoral work and in homiletics might easily be attained, by the adoption of a more exclusively professional system of clerical training.' Though written thirty years
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ago, it was no doubt meant to be as much a warning as a bare record of fact. And it was written by one who, though he would have dis- claimed the somewhat narrow zeal which has come to be associated with the modern term, ' a strong Churchman,' would still have claimed to be a faithful and devoted member of the Church of England.
But it was not merely to the revived importance and activity of the existing professional faculties at the ancient Universities that Fitch looked for a hopeful future for English education. It was to the extension of the connection of the Univer- sities with all influential forms of national activity. And the prospect of this extension in the case of the newer Universities which obtained charters during the later years of his life did, perhaps, reconcile him to a development of the University system which on other grounds he deplored. But it was still to the older seats of learning that he appealed for an adequate recognition of this need. * The larger conception of a studium generate,' he wrote in 1876, 'includes both general and specific, both human and professional, culture. There is no real inconsistenc}T between these two purposes. And it is mainly to a University that a nation ought to look for those influences which will pre- vent the professions from degenerating into trades. Is it too much to hope, as one looks wistfully
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down into the future, and thinks of the gigantic possibilities which lie in the tradition, the wealth, and the young intelligence of the English Uni- versities, that means may yet be found by which they may play a larger part in co-ordinating the various elements in the intellectual life and the practical activity of the nation, and that they may accept it as their mission, not only to equip for his vocation in the world the cultivated scholar and gentleman, but also the accomplished jurist or physician, the keen naturalist or engineer, and the skilled schoolmaster ?'
It was to the case of the schoolmaster, as that with which he had immediate and special concern, that Fitch mainly directed his attention. He hoped that an arrangement might be reached by which a University course, reinforced by some evidence of training in the theory and practice of teaching, should be accepted in place of the certifi- cate of elementary teachers, and that some at least of the students of the older Universities might be tempted to undertake the more important posts in the field of elementary education. Thus the Universities would do something to save the profession of schoolmaster from becoming a trade or to prevent it from remaining one. But it was mainly in the sphere of secondary and higher education that he hoped for substantial help from the Universities. The means which he proposed
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was the establishment of a professorial chair in the science of teaching, in what must be described by the unlovely name of Pedagogy. He knew, indeed, how uninfluential the professorial system had become in the English Universities. But here again he hoped, and consistently pressed, for reform. He was keenly alive to the intellectual stimulus which the lectures of all the professors ought to provide for young and eager minds, and, though he frankly admitted that the tutorial system tended to produce a greater thoroughness and a more exact acquisition of knowledge, he none the less bitterly regretted the decadence of the professor's chair, and as ardently hoped for its revival. Thorough Englishman as he was, there was something in the character of Fitch's mind which reminded one more of the Scotchman, or the German, or the Frenchman. He had the instinctive habit of arranging his impressions in the form of general ideas, and the spontaneous delight in them, which the Englishman seldom possesses and always suspects. But he had, too, the peculiarly English faculty for subordinating his ideas to the clear exposition of a practical pro- posal, and so he usually managed to win the con- fidence of practical men interested in the same subject as himself, and to gain his point, if not directly, then indirectly. It was so in the case of the University lectures on the science of teaching.
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He did not, indeed, persuade Oxford and Cam- bridge of the neglected opportunities of the lecture- hall. But he persuaded Cambridge of the necessity of doing something for the training of the secondary teachers of the country. And so the examinations for University diplomas were inaugurated, and, best of all, the lectureships were established which produced as their first-fruits one of the most inspiring contributions to the art and science of good teaching which have ever been written, his own famous ' Lectures on Teaching.'
One other aspect of University work, the for- tunes of which Fitch followed with attention and sustained by his advocacy may here be mentioned — the movement known as University Extension. He was, indeed, one of those who, without know- ing what they did, brought the movement, and with it others of equal or greater importance, into being. It was about the year 1866 that the North of England Council for the Higher Educa- tion of Women was founded. Mrs. J. E. Butler was President, Miss Clough Secretary, and among its original members were Mr. James Bryce and Mr. Fitch. It was one of those associations of a few reforming spirits, gifted with zeal, large ideas, and practical wisdom, which become the germ of important and far-reaching changes. One of its original objects, for instance, was to induce the University to promote the higher education of
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women by itself undertaking the regular examina- tion of girls' schools. The Council succeeded in its endeavour, and the revolution which the Cam- bridge Higher Local Examinations have effected in the character of the teaching given to girls was the direct result of its action. Another in- direct result of the work which the Council suc- ceeded in doing was the foundation of Newnham College at Cambridge. But the University Ex- tension movement with all that has grown out of it, and may yet grow out of it, was, perhaps, the most important development of the educational machinery which the Council set in motion. The original organization of this crusade of knowledge was simple and unambitious, but its immediate success soon justified a vast extension of its original aim.
In the year 1867 Mr. James Stuart, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was asked by the Council to lecture to women in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield. Mr. Stuart's personal influence and enthusiasm, and his remarkable skill as a lecturer, at once made these lectures popular. Fitch has himself described the progress of the movement : ' The value of such lectures was at once recognised as a means of directing the reading and stimulating the appetite for knowledge among girls who had recently left school — a class often sadly lacking in definite
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aims and in motives for intellectual exertion. But attention having once been drawn to the nature of the need which had to be supplied, and to the capacity of the University to supply it, memorials began to crowd in upon the University praying that the system might be extended in its aim and purpose and placed on a recognised and secure basis. From Crewe, from Rochdale, from Leeds, Birmingham, and Nottingham, and from the North of England Council for the Education of Women, addresses were in 1873 sent to Cambridge, urging that there was an increasing desire among working men, among ladies who were intending to be teachers, or otherwise en- gaged in self-improvement, and especially among young men employed in business, for systematic instruction such as might be furnished by courses of lectures, popular and interesting, but scientific in method, continuous during a period of several months in the year, and followed up by class- work and by suitable examinations. A syndicate was formed to consider these memorials, and the result was the establishment of missionary lectures in great towns, which have of late been so well known under the name of the University Ex- tension Scheme/
One of the most notable results of the scheme was the eagerness with which rich citizens of some of the great towns came forward with
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offers of funds for the provision and equipment of suitable buildings as lecture-halls. Fitch saw in this outburst of enthusiasm on the part of leading citizens even more than in the somewhat fluctuating success of the lecture system itself a great hope for the future of English education. What was wanted, he saw, to give permanence and real educational value to the scheme was such a graduated sequence of study and such a measure of recognition by the University of the knowledge gained as would induce a larger number of those who might desire to become serious students to take advantage of it. He was not at all depressed by the reaction which seemed to follow upon the first outburst of enthusiasm. His experience told him that such apparent decline of interest was only too likely to accompany the attempt to give greater precision and system to the courses of study, to convert them from an occasional intel- lectual excitement into a serious educational instrument. But he saw at the same time that the local guarantors would not long continue to bear the burden of heavy losses in providing an education for which there was no effective demand. He feared the possible wreck of a scheme which contained in itself the best kind of promise.
It was one of the opportunities for his largeness of educational view and his clear judgment of the possibilities of new and tentative movements. He
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appealed to the Universities to support the work they had begun by something more than their advice and the provision of missionary lecturers. He claimed that what the movement needed, in order that it might grow in value and permanence, was exactly what the University could supply — viz., resident teachers and some recognition of suc- cessful students as its own alumni. The Universi- ties, he thought, might establish a certain number of fellowships, on condition of their holders becom- ing resident lecturers in certain towns, personally directing the studies of their pupils, and con- tributing by their presence to impress upon an industrial community some sense of the usefulness and the dignity of the higher learning. He pro- posed, in short, to establish University colonies throughout most of the great towns of England. In the same way he hoped that some means might be found of connecting the colleges which had grown up in some of the largest towns with the ancient Universities. Finally, he desired to see the Universities recognise as their own pupils those who had attended the lectures of their missionary teachers and passed with a certain dis- tinction an examination at the close of a specified course of study, by some such plan as dispensing such students from one of the necessary years of residence at the University and from the necessity of passing the Previous Examination, if
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they should desire to prosecute their studies by working for a University degree.
Such were some of the hopes and prospects which opened out before the eager mind of Fitch as he surveyed the field of English education, and took accurate account of the vast work that needed to be done, and of the instruments which were at hand for its accomplishment. Never, perhaps, was the principle of order so closely associated with the instinct for reform as in his case. He saw in extension from within, in an ordered increase and development of the means at hand, the true method of vital growth. He feared and suspected the haphazard creation of new and untried instruments, some of them futile and ridiculous reproductions of the most questionable aspects of institutions venerable by age and length of service, some of them the mere daring experiments of a raw and jejune empiricism. Nowhere were both these tendencies of his mind more conspicuously displayed than in his brilliant and stimulating contributions to the question of University reform.
CHAPTER V WOMEN'S EDUCATION
IT is characteristic of all practical reforms that they are no sooner accomplished than they become part of the natural and necessary demand of society. It is with the social body as with the individual body : its gains become part of its indispensable outfit ; they need no second proof.
' We might go freezing, ages — give us fire ; Thereafter we judge fire at its full worth, And guard it safe through every chance, ye know P
Yet, just in proportion as the practical worth of such gains is quickly absorbed into the life of society, the arduous process by which they were acquired is quickly forgotten. It is the fate of nearly every reformer who lives long and has been successful to see a generation arise which takes for granted what he had spent his life in accomplishing. Fitch was such a reformer. And perhaps there is no change in which he had a share which has come to be so generally taken for
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granted as that which the past generation wrought in the position of women. It is almost difficult for us to realize that not two generations have passed since the time when 'almost the only resource open to a woman who was above the rank of a domestic servant, and who desired to earn her own living, was the profession of teach- ing/ and when the whole field of public service was, even more by general opinion than by specific ordinance, resolutely closed against the entrance of women. Though the battle for equal opportunities to the sexes may not yet have been won, it is rather because the indolence which follows upon partial victory has descended upon the attacking forces than because there is much heart left in the ranks of opposition. Opinion has been conquered even where the tradition of the past still lingers in outward forms. Yet the battle was of yesterday, and many of those who bore its brunt are still with us. In it none certainly took a worthier or more fruitful part than Fitch. He was not only closely identi- fied with every phase of the struggle, but he did much also by his clear-sighted exposition of the reasonableness and justice of the movement as a whole to recommend it to those who might have been offended by some of its incidental expressions. Here, for instance, is an appeal to the common interest which is as noble and
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dignified in its conception as it is obviously true to fact :
4 It cannot be doubted that in the intelligence of many women, in their desire for truth, in their high aims, and in their power to render service to the world in which they live, there is a great store of wealth which has never been adequately recognised or turned to profitable account. The world is made poorer by every restriction — whether imposed by authority or only conven- tionally prescribed by our social usages — which hampers the free choice of women in relation to their careers, their studies, or their aims in life. It is probable that in many ways yet undis- covered— in certain departments of art, of scientific research, of literature, and of philanthropic work — the contributions of women to the resources of the world will prove to be of increasing value to mankind. And it may also be that experience will prove certain forms of mental activity to be unsuitable. Nature, we may be sure, may be safely trusted to take care of her own laws. The special duties which she has assigned to one half of the human race will always be paramount ; but of the duties which are common to the whole human race we do not know, and cannot yet know, how large a share women may be able to undertake. It is probably larger than the wisest of our con- temporaries anticipate. If there be natural dis-
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abilities, there is all the less reason for imposing artificial disabilities. Hitherto every step which has been taken in opening out new forms of active work and increased influence to women has been a clear gain to society, and has added much to the happiness of women themselves. It is, therefore, not merely the chivalry, or even the sense of justice, but also the enlightened self-interest of man, that are concerned in the solution of this problem. It is not his duty to urge women in the direction of employments they feel to be un- congenial to them ; but it is his duty to remove as far as possible all impediments and disqualifi- cations which yet remain in restraint of their own discretion, to leave the choice of careers as open to them as it is to himself, and to wait and see what comes of it. Nothing but good can come of it.'
Here as elsewhere Fitch approached the work of reform in a spirit of serene and persuasive optimism. He preached the gospel of liberty and the gospel of education, which, united, formed the gospel of common-sense. There was a certain amount of human stuff out of which the growing substance of human history had to be fashioned. There were no doubt certain limitations set in the nature of things to the profitable use of that stuff and of its different qualities, limitations which, because they had been fixed by Nature, must be
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learned and taken due account of. But there was no other way of learning them than that of free experiment. All apriorism in determining them was a piece of sheer stupidity. It could only result in establishing and consecrating artificial limita- tions and in confusing them with the natural. Free development alone would discover the measure, and therefore the limits, of the usefulness of each unit and each class of the total human society. Fitch, with his fine sense of measure both in idea and in language, would probably have detested the phrase, ' the emancipation of woman.' But none the less he knew that the thing which he strove for was a free field for women.
Naturally his primary interest in the question was where its solution depended upon his own special work of education. His work on the Schools Inquiry Commission had revealed to him the immense ineptitude and the silly pretentious- ness of what was considered by the majority of middle-class people in England as a suitable education for their girls. The characterization of the defects of that teaching, as embodied in the Commissioners' Report, sounds very like his own language. It speaks of the teaching given in girls' schools, or ladies' seminaries, as they were called, as marked by l want of thoroughness and foundation, want of system, slovenliness and showy superficiality, inattention to rudiments,
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undue time given to accomplishments, and those not taught intelligently or in any scientific manner, and a complete absence of proper organization.' His own special report to that Commission upon the state of secondary education in Yorkshire, with its continual complaint that the ' pious founders ' of the past had entirely ignored the claim of girls to education, shows how fully he must have con- curred in the most revolutionary clause of the En- dowed Schools Act of 1869. ' In framing schemes under this Act provision shall be made, as far as conveniently may be, for extending to girls the benefits of endowments.' As one of the Assistant Commissioners under that Act, he worked with unwearied patience and tact to overcome the timidity or the prejudice of trustees and to secure for girls as large a share as was possible in the advantages of those educational endowments of the past. It was with a wholly impersonal satis- faction that he chronicled towards the end of his life the results of the famous twelfth clause — the more than eighty new secondary schools for girls founded throughout the country under the Act, the more than sixty schemes providing for girls, by means of scholarships and otherwise, a share in endowments formerly devoted entirely to the education of boys. Fitch had indeed a peculiar knack of inoculating even hard-headed men of busi- ness with some of his own educational enthusiasm.
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He somehow succeeded where a less direct and simple nature might have despaired of success. He was an excellent representative of the diplomacy of modest simplicity and a witness to its success. To him London owes the excellent schools of the Haberdashers1 Company, founded on revenues once appropriated to the support of an alms-house with twenty residents and of a charity school with twenty-five pupils. It was one of his great ambi- tions to use some of the many wasted local charities in establishing a network of such schools round London ; but even his patience was not sufficient nor his life long enough to wear down the ignorance and the prejudice which barred the way to such a scheme.
But perhaps a more important, though an in- cidental, outcome of the Report of the Schools Inquiry Commission, and especially of Fitch's contribution to it, was the establishment of the Girls' Public Day School Company in 1874. The intelligent and active-minded section of the com- munity had been alarmed and awakened by the revelations of that report. To Mrs. William Grey and her sister, Miss Shirreif, were due the conception and initiation of a scheme for providing schools in the great centres of population in which girls could receive the best secondary education that was possible. The model for such schools already existed in the Ladies' College at Chelten-
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ham, founded so far back as 1854 by Miss Dorothea Beale, and the North London Collegiate School for Girls, founded in 1850 by Miss Frances Mary Buss. Fitch was a member of the governing body of the former school, and was also one of the most trusted advisers and enthusiastic admirers of Miss Buss's excellent work. It was natural, therefore, from every point of view, that his help and advocacy should be sought in launching the new project, and just as natural that they should be freely given. He helped not only by guiding the principles of the whole movement, but by taking an active personal interest in the fortunes of every school founded by the Company which was within his reach. Some notion of the range and value of his interest in these schools may be obtained from the following appreciation by Miss Jones, the late head-mistress of the Netting Hill High School for Girls :
' I first met Sir Joshua Fitch about thirty years ago, shortly after my appointment as head-mistress of the Notting Hill High School. I was then greatly impressed by the keen interest he took in the opening of a new type of schools for girls, and from that time onwards until his death I always felt that the higher education of women had no truer, wiser, and more zealous friend than he.
' As an Assistant Commissioner in the Schools
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Inquiry Commission, Sir Joshua Fitch knew from personal investigation to what a low ebb the education of girls had sunk during the first half of the nineteenth century, and as far as lay in his power he helped on the movement which resulted in the gradual opening of schools through- out the length and breadth of England, where girls might enjoy the same advantages as boys, and receive as good an education as their brothers were getting in public schools. Of immense value to teachers in the newly -opened schools were Sir Joshua Fitch's lectures on educational subjects. In 1876 he gave at Exeter Hall three lectures on the teaching of English, a subject which his marked literary ability enabled him to invest with interest as well as with profit. During the next year he gave an admirable course of lectures on the " Science, Art, and History of Education" which were as inspiring as they were instructive, and many of those who heard them at once began to put into practice some of his valuable suggestions. Happily the lectures on education which he delivered at the University of Cambridge were published in 1881, and soon found their way into school libraries, where they have become a standard classic on the aims and methods of teaching. They are indeed a mine in which one may dig profitably and find the great principles underlying all true education admirably set forth, as well as the new
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ideas and suggestions of one who had studied the subject both as a science and as an art.
* Among the chief characteristics of Sir Joshua Fitch were his wide, broad, temperate views on all educational matters, and his freedom from fads and eccentricities of all kinds. In the many educational controversies of the last thirty years his calm, clear judgment and his invariably temperate language often formed a great con- trast to the extremes indulged in by the opponents of some existing system. On the subj ect of external examinations, at one time so hotly discussed, he wrote and spoke most reasonably. He would point out how much we owe to external examina- tions by showing up the schools, especially the girls' schools, of pre-examination days, and whilst allowing their possible abuse, he would acknow- ledge their use when rightly conducted. Again, many years ago there was a newspaper discus- sion on " Brain and Nervous Pressure in Schools." Sir Joshua Fitch read a paper on the subject before the College of Preceptors. It was a very able as well as a very temperate paper, owning that some of the dangers were real, but that they had been greatly exaggerated, and pointing out forcibly that late hours and unhealthy entertain- ments were often responsible for what is set down to the pressure of school- work.
' Another of Sir Joshua Fitch's characteristics
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was the extraordinary range as well as variety of his educational knowledge and interests. From the teaching and the codes of elementary schools to the studies and aims of a University, from the technical schools of Paris to the schools and colleges of America, from the teaching of modern languages to the training and registration of teachers — on all these subjects his knowledge was great and accurate, whilst the literary form in which that knowledge was often set forth for the public added greatly to its interest.
1 To myself personally Sir Joshua Fitch invari- ably showed great kindness, as well as much sympathy with my work. Both he and Lady Fitch always took a special interest in the Netting Hill High School. About six years ago Lady Fitch distributed the prizes, whilst Sir Joshua gave an admirable address to the girls, not for- getting a few wise words to the parents. He always knew exactly what to say and how to say it, which is not invariably the case with those who make speeches on such occasions. And now that he has gone from among us, I mourn his loss not only as a personal friend of many years' standing, but as a great and wise authority on all educa- tional matters/
It is an appreciation which may seem to take us far beyond the limits of Fitch's interest in the schools, but it is at least pertinent as revealing
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the measure of his effect upon them by the inspi- ration which his wisdom and knowledge contri- buted to the teachers themselves. Indeed, perhaps his most notable influence upon education in his time — and it was an influence which, from the nature of the case, was felt more in the education of girls than of boys — was that he helped to create a new feeling of the dignity and worth of the teachers' craft. As another head-mistress, Miss Andrews, of the Maida Vale High School, said of him, 'he looked on the work of teaching as a sacred calling — the noblest in which a man or woman could engage.7 And he imparted his view to all the best teachers, especially women teachers, of his time. He founded, in short, a new school of teachers. He acted as a kind of informal spiritual director to a great professional class. Miss Beale says of him : ' He did not consider that the duty of an inspector or a critic was chiefly to find fault, but, when he saw anything going right, to say " Well done !" pointing out at the same time how improvements might be made. We used to try to arrange our Teachers' Guild meetings when he was in Cheltenham, and ask him to address us on the subject of the evening. His patience seemed inexhaustible, and his sympathy with the difficulties not merely of teachers generally, but of heads of schools, very great and helpful.'
One further witness to the impression which
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Fitch made upon the great band of women engaged in the work of teaching in our time may be adduced, not only for the warmth of its appreciation, but by reason of the quarter from which it comes. The success of the Girls' Public Day School Company stimulated the Church of England to launch a similar venture for members of its own communion. It was one of the few new schemes for the development of women's education with which Fitch was not directly con- nected. It seemed to him, with his special way of regarding the Church in its relation to the national life, as unnecessary, and tending to a sectarianism which he suspected and feared, that the Church should insist upon providing special institutions of her own, and repudiate those which had already been established upon a national basis. Yet once the Church of England High Schools for Girls had been founded, he took exactly the same interest in their welfare as in the fortunes of those with which he was more directly associated. It is therefore the more pleasing to be able to quote the testimony of the head of one of the schools, Miss Strong.
* It was my misfortune to come very little into personal contact with Sir Joshua, but that little only confirmed the impression which I had built up in my thoughts from the study of his writings, especially his book on teaching. In that book
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he made me realize his intense enthusiasm for teaching, and for the profession of the teacher, but I felt it was an enthusiasm tempered with the most excellent judgment, with exceptional breadth of thought and elasticity of mind — gifts so often lacking to the man of zeal. I never to this day read a page of that book on teaching without being uplifted as a teacher, without having the dignity of my work presented to me, without having my enthusiasm and my zeal pricked on ; and I never talked, even for a few minutes, with Sir Joshua without having these same feelings •kindled within me. I believe we differed widely in our views on some matters apart from educa- tion, but what I always felt so very strongly about him was that he never allowed differences to prejudice, and that is a rare gift which one ac- knowledges very gratefully when one meets it.'
This movement for improving the secondary education of girls owed much of its success to the fact that it was supplemented by a scheme to provide them with University education as well. The most prominent pioneer in this work was Miss Emily Davies, and from the earliest days of her patient and vigorous campaign she had Mr. Fitch's warmest interest and most valuable sup- port in all her efforts. As far back as 1862 he read before the Social Science Congress a paper written by Miss Davies on the whole subject
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of women's education. The women's colleges in London, Bedford and Queen's, which had owed their origin and much of their immediate success to the vigorous interest of Maurice and Kingsley, seemed to Fitch the promise of fuller opportunities for women's share in the higher education of the Universities. He felt that these opportunities would be honourably and satisfactorily secured only when the ancient Universities had been induced to recognise it as their duty to provide them, or at least to acknowledge and encourage them. When, therefore, in 1867 Miss Davies, Lady Stanley of Alderley, and others succeeded in founding a college at Hitchin, chosen because it was a half- way house between London and Cambridge, for carrying on this work, Fitch was one of the first to give a hearty adhesion to the scheme. Seven years after the college was transferred to Girton, near Cambridge. The final step had been taken in asserting the claim of women to share in the best and fullest knowledge of the time. Nor was it long allowed to remain the single instance of this demand. Already in 1871 Miss Clough had established Newnham College in Cambridge, and soon afterwards Somerville College was founded at Oxford, to be followed in time by Lady Margaret Hall and St. Hugh's Hall. From the first Fitch was on the governing body of Girton. His chief interest was centred in the bold yet patient efforts
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of Miss Davies and Miss Clough to give to the colleges the educational status which they desired by securing for their pupils the tests which the University applied to men. These attempts he followed with a keen and critical attention, and he hailed each success as a temporary position from which to work for more. He was by no means one of those fiery spirits whose impassioned zeal for reform blinds them to the difficulties which a deeply-rooted and wide-branching tradi- tion has set in its path. He appreciated the hesitation of the ancient Universities to take the step of admitting women to the full privileges of University membership which might involve a radical reconstruction of the whole fabric of their endowments, and of the constitution established by their means. But if he appreciated it, he did not for a moment accept it as necessary. He exposed its unfairness with a fairness which must yet win the day for the view which he espoused. Mean- while he constantly counselled action on the part of the authorities of the women's colleges which would leave the way open for the final settlement of equal privileges for men and women within the Universities, and would exclude any other solu- tion. He stoutly resisted the idea of a special examination for women. He rejoiced when that plan, on its being tried at Oxford in 1875, broke down and was superseded by the first step towards
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the admission of women to all University ex- aminations. He approved of the Girton scheme of procuring informal examination of its students by the University examiners on the papers set in the University itself as the surest means of com- pelling in time a formal admission to the ordinary tests.
Meanwhile, where he had the power, he urged home the necessity of insuring this measure of justice to women where the difficulties of yielding it were not so great. It is a little astonishing to recall now with what opposition the proposal to open the degrees of the University of London to women was met. Sir Richard Quain was the head and front of that opposition ; but in Fitch he had a foeman of fine temper as a fighter, of patient and unbending purpose, and of un- challenged authority. In the modern University it was not necessary to effect reform by experi- mental stages. The opposition was, perhaps, more bitter and prejudiced than at the ancient Universities, but when it was overcome it was overcome completely. In 1878 the University obtained a new charter enabling persons of both sexes to graduate in all faculties on equal terms. Fitch lived to see a group of still younger Univer- sities concede, as an original element of their constitutions, the same equality of privilege to men and women. He lived, too, to see women sitting
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on the Senate of the reconstructed University of London. There was a certain irony in the in- gratitude of a body which deprived the reformer of the position on its Senate which he had so long held while so fully recognising the furthest im- plications of the reform.
Like every thinker who is also a practical worker, Fitch was also a learner. In later years — indeed, throughout the main term of his advocacy of the cause of women's education — he consistently and strongly pressed the view that the subjects of women's study should be determined by themselves, that their special aptitudes should be subject to the test of free experiment, and that there was, there- fore, no need for a special type of education suited to their supposed needs. The project of a women's University, which commended itself more to some women, seemed to him not merely unnecessary, but, in the present stage of educational experi- ment, retrograde. Yet that that was not always his view the following letter, written to Miss Davies in 1863, one of the few letters of his which it has been possible to recover, will show :
' . . . My ideal curriculum for a women's Univer- sity differs much from that adopted at the existing Universities of England. It gives the prominence to history, modern languages, literature, and especially to certain branches of inductive science, rather than to the ancient languages, logic, and
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the pure mathematics. There is almost as great a difference between the intellectual needs of men and those of women as between the practical pursuits of their lives. So I neither expect nor hope that the orthodox academic course will ever become very generally adopted by women. As a rule, indeed, such a course is neither necessary nor useful to them. But I feel sure that the present arrangements which forbid all women to compete for University degrees are clearly unjust, and ought to be altered. A woman is better able than anyone else can be to judge whether a certain form of mental activity is good for her ; and if she thinks it worth while to obtain for herself a particular kind of knowledge, she is entitled to have her exertions encouraged and her success recognised exactly as if she were a man.
* The difference between the mental character- istics of one woman and another is as great as between those of the average man and the average woman, and I can easily believe that to many women the sort of discipline by which a degree is to be won would prove very healthy and ennobling. At any rate, we have no right to interpose any hindrances in the way of one single honourable effort which a woman may be disposed to make in this direction.
* The only way in which a community can get the maximum amount of good from its individual
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members is to leave to each the choice of the particular form of intellectual exertion which he or she prefers. Men claim this liberty for themselves, and refuse, as individuals, to be bound by rules merely because, on theory, those rules are considered best for the majority. It is unfair that the same freedom of choice as to a career in life, and as to the kind of distinction most worthy of attainment, should be denied to women. I cannot doubt that, if the present re- straints were removed, and if women were invited to bring their own intellectual attainments to the same tests to which men bring theirs, great good would be accomplished. For every one who obtained a degree, at least a hundred would be beneficially influenced by the fact that a degree was obtainable. There is no better way of raising the general level of intelligence in any community than by affording opportunities to some to rise above that level ; and so long as the intellectual ambition of the most accomplished women is systematically checked by barriers which accident has raised and prejudice keeps up we have no right to complain that the average standard of female education is low.
' I confess to you that it is only by slow degrees that I have come to my present conclusion. All my feelings and habits of thought rebelled against the proposal when it was first made; but the
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whole question becomes daily clearer to me as simple matter of right and wrong, and I feel sure it will ultimately be solved in the way you desire. That our systems of education should be so altered that the present University curriculum shall be enforced on women, or even generally recommended to them, I certainly do not desire, but that degrees should be accessible to all who covet them and are disposed to work for them seems to me very evident, and will not, I hope, be long denied/
In 1882 a Pro visional Committee was formed to take measures for establishing a hall of residence in London for women students, principally those attending University College and the London School of Medicine for Women. College Hall, as it was called, was constituted provisionally for a space of three years under the direction of the late Miss Grove, and at the end of the three years of trial a meeting of subscribers was called to arrange for its future, over which Fitch presided. As a result of this meeting the Hall was incorporated as a limited liability company in 1886. Fitch's experience was, as usual, freely placed at the service of the Council, and it was principally owing to his advice that an endowment fund was started, out of which the rent of the three houses in Byng Place, which formed the Hall, should be paid. Such institu- tions, he pointed out, in order to be successful,
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should start with a free gift of building and equip- ment, or at least with an equivalent in the way of endowment, so that these charges might not fall upon a maintenance fund. It was in such humble ways that this friend of the education of women was ready to steer every fresh enterprise for its furtherance through the shoals of its first beginnings into the deep waters of the open sea. It is not wonderful that the gratitude of all friends cf this cause followed him throughout life and still lingers about his memory. A picture of him hangs in College Hall, the gift of Miss Annie Leigh Browne, who was its honorary secretary from its foundation to 1890, with the inscription : ' Sir Joshua Fitch, LL.D., one of the earliest supporters of College Hall. He presided at the meeting held in University College in April, 1882 (when the scheme for a College Hall of residence took shape), and was a member of the Council from 1889 until the time of his death in 1903.'
Fitch's championship of women's education was always based upon the broadest grounds. Educa- tion released human power and developed it. That must be the sufficient motive of its advocacy. ' Even though the knowledge or power which are the product of a liberal education may seem to have no bearing at all upon the special business or definite duties of a woman, yet if it be felt by its possession to make life more full, more
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varied, and more interesting, and better worth living, no other justification is needed for placing the largest opportunities within her reach/ Educa- tion was primarily concerned with the liberation and development of qualities which were simply human. Only after this work of liberation and development had been continued for some time was it desirable to enlist those qualities, or possible to enlist them successfully, in some special type of life-work. The liberal education ought always to precede the professional. And it was with the liberal education of women that he was primarily concerned. But he did not on that account with- hold his interest and sympathy from the many attempts which women were making to utilize their liberal learning in professional service. He seemed to appreciate at once the importance of woman's choice of the medical profession, without any of the preliminary conflict with ingrained prejudices through which most people who came in time to accept the change won their way to such acceptance. He was one of the best friends of the London School of Medicine for Women. Mrs. Garrett Anderson and Mrs. Thome both testify to the value of his help in the foundation of the school.
But it was not only on the more dignified forms of professional work for women that he bestowed thought and care. He was possessed
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by a great jealousy that women might show themselves everywhere equal to the tasks which they had so hardly won to undertake. He felt as though his personal honour was at stake in the loyalty of women to public trusts. There was at one time a newspaper outcry over the alleged negligence of women employed in the service of the Post Office. It is just possible that women of a class too long accustomed to the mask of polite submission to the most despotic vagaries of the shopping woman may have acquired with too great ease, and perhaps, too, with something of a savage pleasure, the habit of abrupt defiance or of wearied tolerance which the official so often manages to import into his deal- ings with the layman. But Fitch would have none of this tendency, if, indeed, it had begun to appear. He addressed a gathering of these workers, called together by the committee of the Society for the Employment of Women, during the thick of the newspaper discussion. It was an appeal, marked by all his natural tact, to the women workers to remember that they were pioneers in a great movement ; that they held in their keeping the honour of their sisters as capable of the worthiest type of public service ; that their admission to the ranks of public servants meant not merely a position of economic freedom for themselves, but also an arduous responsibility
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towards others. Fitch had that simple faith in human nature which is not afraid of treating it seriously. He had plenty of humour, and perhaps it was that which made him fearless of applying the sermon in season. He applied it in this case with complete success.
It was natural that Fitch should be appealed to by most of those who in his day were anxious to imitate and repeat the educational benefactions of the past, and especially by all who wished to devote their wealth to the promotion of women's education. When, for instance, the late Mr. Pfeiffer, a city merchant, left £60,000 for this purpose, he named Mr. Mundella, who was then Vice-President of the Council, along with Mr. Fitch and Miss Anna Swanwick, as a consultative committee to apportion it as they might deem fit. Mr. Pfeiffer and his wife, Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, the poetess, whose name he specially desired to be associated with his own in the bequest, were enthusiasts in the cause of women's education. The will is a somewhat unconventional confession of faith. ' I have always had/ it begins, ' and am adhering to, the idea of leaving the bulk of my property for charitable and educational pur- poses in favour of women. Theirs is, to my mind, the great influence of the future. Education and culture and responsibility in more than one direction, including that of politics, will gradually
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fit them for the exercise of every power that could possibly work towards the regeneration of man- kind. It is women who have hitherto had the worst of life, and I therefore have determined to help them to the best of my ability and means. Moreover, boys should work out their own career, and not be brought up with a silver spoon in their mouth. The world would be by far the better were every boy made to work, and no money be left, except in peculiar cases, for him to lean and depend on. I have therefore arranged my be- quests in accordance with these never-forsaken views. ... The remaining part of my property I desire to be divided as endowments among charities or educational establishments on behalf of women — I repeat, of women solely.'
Fitch was evidently enamoured of the spirit of this document. He loved to quote its phrases wherever opportunity made it apposite to recall them. On Miss Swanwick and himself the main burden of selection for its benefactions was laid. With the sanction of the Court of Chancery, Girton and Newnham received £5,000 each out of the bequest, and a sum of not less than £2,000 was allotted to each of a number of other educational institutions, including Bedford and Queen's Colleges ; the School of Medicine for Women ; the Maria Grey Training College in London ; Somer- ville Hall, Oxford; the Women's Training
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College in Cambridge ; the Women's Colleges and Halls attached to Trinity College, Dublin, to the Universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, and to the Welsh Colleges at Cardiff and Aberystwyth, besides the Society for the Employment of Women, the Hall of Residence attached to Uni- versity College, and the College for Working Women. The choice illustrates the width of Fitch's knowledge of educational work for women and the catholicity of his sympathy with it. There was not a single one of these institutions whose value he could not have exactly appraised, and there were few which he had not helped either to bring into existence or to guide with his wisdom and experience.
Another scheme in which Fitch's advice was largely drawn upon and as liberally given was the founding of Hollo way College. Mr. Thomas Holloway seems to have consulted him with regard to almost every clause of the founder's deed, and to have been greatly influenced by his counsel. There are letters from Mr. Holloway covering a period of five years, and dealing with the minutest points of the scheme ; but as Fitch's answers are missing, it is only possible to guess at the actual details of the constitution of the college which are due to him. Two things at least are clear : that the founder was not always easily persuaded by his advisers, and that he recog-
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nised, and in the main yielded to, Fitch's authority in all the purely educational aspects of his scheme. It is evident, too, that Fitch devoted himself to its perfecting with a thoroughness which witnessed to his sense of immediate personal responsibility for its success. It was characteristic of the man in all that he undertook.
It would, indeed, be impossible to enumerate all the projects, educational or otherwise, for further- ing the influence and employment of women in which Fitch had a share, and always a leading share. An association was formed in 1897 for promoting the employment of high-school girls in elementary school work. The Archbishop of Canterbury * became its President, and among the many leading men and women who consented to serve on its committee was that constant friend of all educational causes, the present Bishop of Southwark. Miss Judith Merivale, of University Hall, Bangor, who acted as the honorary Secretary of the association, writes : ' Our association was formed in May, 1897, and Sir Joshua Fitch was one of the first who consented to join it ; and from that time he was present at all our meetings, and acted as chairman of the executive com- mittee. His wide knowledge of educational matters, and his real concern for the welfare of both teachers and taught, made his co-operation most valuable, because his counsel was always * Dr. Temple.
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not only wise, but kindly. He was in sympathy with ail who are doing their best for the schools ; and while strongly convinced of the need for bringing into our elementary schools a fresh element drawn from other sources, he still fully appreciated the value of the work done by those teachers who are devoting their best energies to the service of the elementary schools in which they have themselves been trained. It was this spirit of kindliness which — if I may add a personal word — I think I always felt most strongly in my intercourse with him, and which made him always ready to give his time and experience to help us in any difficult question that might arise/
It was the same kind of interest in giving as much vividness and variety as was possible to the teaching in elementary schools, and in employing especially for that purpose the peculiar influence and teaching capacity of educated women, that led him to support the movement inaugurated by Miss Isabel Fry for the organization of volunteer teaching in elementary schools. Miss Fry had herself tested the value of such work, and founded a society to help all those who were taking part in it by bringing them into touch with each other, and to induce others to devote themselves to it. Fitch knew quite well all the disadvantages which might attend its working : the possible disorgani- zation of time-tables and relaxation of discipline ; the disfavour with which some of the better class
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of teachers, wedded to their routine, might view the scheme ; and its lazy acceptance by the more indifferent. But he felt also that its main effect would be for good, that it would bring into the schools that element of freshness and reality which he always so much desired to see associated with the teaching of children, and so he gladly consented to take part in the working of the society. He always knew exactly what was to be expected from any new project, and his great hopefulness robbed him of the official fear of giving his name to anything which had in it the seeds of usefulness.
The training of women teachers in secondary schools was naturally one to which he always gave much thought and constant counsel. With the Maria Grey Training College and the Training College for Women Teachers at Cambridge he had been closely associated from their beginnings. But no such institution came into existence in his time without calling for his advice and command- ing his support. Miss Alice Woods, the dis- tinguished head of the Maria Grey College, thus recalls her impressions of his work as a member of the Council : * He was so extremely careful and cautious, and always looked at questions from every side ; but if circumstances justified a course of action which he considered unwise, he was very ready to admit that he had been mistaken. The
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rare occasions on which he could find time to lecture to the students, or help with the criticism lessons, were welcome days for everyone. He helped forward the work of training on every possible occasion hoth in public and in private, and had so wide an outlook in educational matters that there was scarcely anyone to whom I felt it more helpful to appeal in any difficult educational problem.' One other testimony to the interest he took in the work of training may be quoted. The Mother Superior of the Roman Catholic Training College in Cavendish Square writes : ' His first visit to us was paid on March 10, 1896, as we had applied to the Cambridge authorities to recognise us as a train- ing college. Sir Joshua was sent to look into our scheme of work, etc., and it was my privilege to see him on each occasional visit and to receive his instructions. He was so thorough in the work, and so patient in listening to any difficulties, that I soon learnt to rely upon him as a good friend. Several visits of inspection were paid during that year and 1897. At last, when he decided that we might apply again to the University, he ex- pressed a wish to meet Cardinal Vaughan and hear what his wishes were about a Catholic college. This showed, I thought, his kind con- sideration for the opinions of others. Accord- ingly, on November 18, 1897, the two great men
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met here, with the result that, at Sir Joshua's kind intervention on our behalf, we received the letter of recognition from Cambridge which has established our work here so satisfactorily. I always feel we lost in him a true friend. On one occasion I appealed to him as a last hope to gain some little concession for a foreign student. He exerted himself most kindly, called to learn further particulars, and obtained by his authority a favour which a less considerate patron would hardly have troubled himself about.'
But it was not in the matter of women's educa- tion alone that Fitch's sympathies were enlisted. He rejoiced over every fresh opportunity of applying women's peculiar power and influence to the public service. He was a warm and con- sistent advocate of the extension to them of the Parliamentary suffrage. He resented the later expedient of co-opting women to service on special committees, with certain restricted duties, of public bodies, and claimed for them the right to election and to full control. He placed the highest value upon their work on Boards of Guardians and in the administration of all charitable trusts. He hailed every new demon- stration of their skill and capacity in professional work. Perhaps the greatest pleasure which he knew in later years came to him from the appoint- ment of women on the Consultative Committee of
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the newly-constituted Board of Education. He felt, in short, that from the point of view of the public service woman was a newly-discovered national asset — not merely a reserve of power hitherto untouched, but a fund of power comple- mentary to that of man. Yet it was not with a view to the mere development of this kind of service that he so strongly advocated the educa- tion of women as a national duty ; it was still more with a view to the development of the power and quality of her service in the home, and to the introduction of that quality of service into public life. In a remarkable address on ' The Part of Women in National Education/ which he de- livered before the Association of University Women Teachers in January, 1902, he urged this point most forcibly.
' Man/ he said, * may make the machinery and contrive the instruments of administration, but the motive force which sets the machinery in action comes in a large degree from the sentiments and moral ideals that are cherished by the best women. It will always be true that men will wish to be and try to be what women will admire and respect; and when the ideals of women are noble and right, the whole standard of life and conduct and manners of the society in which they move is lifted up to a higher plane. I think that as this becomes more generally recognised, the
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function which women have to discharge in education will be seen to become more and more important. Schoolmasters cannot help looking at what they teach in its bearing on the market, on the workshop, on the profession, or on public life and duty. Schoolmistresses will not, of course, disregard these things, but they will be freer to consider the bearing of what they teach mainly on the home. Now, to every good man, and to all women, the home is the centre of the world, the sacred enclosure in which the highest enjoy- ment is to be found, and in which all that is best in human character grows and flourishes. What- ever, therefore, makes the home more dignified and more attractive helps to make the life of all the inmates better worth living, and proves to be a moral safeguard, as well as a source of happiness.' It rings true, this exaltation of the home as the centre of life. It sounds like the sincere expression of a personal experience, as most things that Fitch ever said or wrote did. It was no doubt to his native chivalry, to his love of free- dom, to his sense of justice, that Fitch's incom- parable advocacy of the claims of women was due. But it was due also, and above all, to the fact that he enjoyed all his life long the blessings of a home of the most intimate charm, where he daily offered and received the comfort and sustenance of a supreme affection.
CHAPTEE VI
A 'MERCHANT OF LIGHT'
WHEN, in Bacon's ' New Atlantis,' the Father of Solomon's House has set forth the end of the foundation and the 'preparations and instruments' by which it is to be achieved, he proceeds to de- scribe ' the several employments and functions whereto our fellows are assigned/ And in the forefront he places those ' twelve that sail into foreign countries, who bring us the books, and abstracts, and patterns of experiments of all other parts.' These are the 'merchants of light.' Fitch was never so happy as when serving as a 'merchant of light.' It was impossible for him, as, indeed, it is impossible for any cultivated man, to find himself among strange peoples and in the midst of those unfamiliar human conditions which do so much to stimulate observation and challenge thought, without storing up fresh impressions as to the conduct of life and the effect of various types of educational method upon it. He had, besides, the advantage over most observers that
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he brought to his observation ' a life spent train- ing for the sight/ He had a wide and accurate knowledge of the educational systems of modern nations, and he was continually correcting and vivifying the knowledge of the study by the close scrutiny for which travel gave the opportunity. No one felt more than he the practical fallacy in- volved in the attempt to transplant institutions which had worked well in one country into the soil of another, which might be so constituted as to afford them no promise of healthy growth. But, none the less, he knew that there were few local experiments which had not their universal bearing, that it was a responsibility laid upon all who were zealous for education to discover how such experiments might be made to bear profitably on the work of instruction in their own countries, and that in proportion to the special appropriate- ness of the experiments to one set of conditions there was the more need of thought and imagina- tion in disengaging their universal worth and incorporating it in an alien system.
Fitch's best work in this kind is contained in his ' Notes on American Schools and Colleges,' and in the * Memorandum on the Working of the Free School System in America, France, and Belgium/ which was presented to both Houses of Parliament in 1891. Each of these reports is marked by his characteristic thoroughness, sym-
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pathy, and judgment. He confined himself to a record of what he had observed, and refrained from hasty generalizations as to the peculiar ex- cellences or defects of the systems which he reviewed. He was anxious only that the record of his experience might sink gradually into the most thoughtful section of the public mind. ' No attempt,' he says, at the conclusion of his Memo- randum of 1891, 'has been made here to discuss the significance of the facts now collected in their bearing on any of our controversies at home. But it is thought possible that a simple account of the conditions under which free school systems exist in other countries may be of some service, if not for warning or for guidance, at least for sugges- tion and helpful comparison/ It was in the same spirit that he issued his ' Notes on American Schools. ' e As to mere figures, statistics, and printed reports,' he says, 'they may prove seriously mislead- ing, unless the special conditions which give their true significance to their details are thoroughly understood.' He had just received a lesson from America itself in the fatal ease with which the most unjust and unwarranted conclusions may be drawn from statistics imperfectly understood. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, one of the most dis- tinguished and fair-minded citizens of the United States, had just contended in the Forum (July, 1889) that there were twenty times as many
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readers in America in the same population as there were in England. This remarkable conclusion he deduced from the figures, obtained from Whitaker's Almanack, of the expenditure upon public educa- tion in Great Britain. He found that Great Britain, with a population of 35,000,000, had spent 17,000,000 dollars on education, while in the same time the State of Massachusetts, with less than 2,000,000 people, had spent 6,000,000 dollars. It was not difficult for Fitch to show how fallacious the mechanical use of statistics had been, how the 6,000,000 dollars of Massachusetts had been spent on higher and intermediate, as well as on elementary, education, while the 17,000,000 dollars of Great Britain formed only that part of the money spent on one kind of education — the elementary — which was supplied by a Parliamentary grant, while even on that kind the actual expenditure from all sources was 35,000,000 dollars. Fitch knew too well the de- ceitfulness of statistics — the dangers of a random and mechanical use of them — to make mistakes of this kind himself. Besides, he felt keenly the odium and the general futility of comparisons. Yet he knew how to learn, and to help others to learn, from the educational experience of other countries, and there were very few educational controversies of his later years to which he did not bring some light from such sources.
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America had always attracted him. His hope- ful spirit had seen in it the unknown possibilities of a vigorous race straining towards the future. He admired the fearlessness, the audacity, the self-possession, the candour, the generosity and warm-heartedness, above all, the instinct for public service, and the enthusiasm for righteous causes, of its people. Even where a certain fas- tidiousness in him recoiled from the brusqueness which occasionally accompanied the manifestation of these virtues, he still appreciated them at their full worth. The American want of reserve did not repel him as it repels so many Englishmen. He felt the reality and warmth of the human interest which it expressed. It was, therefore, a great pleasure to him when, in 1888, he was allowed an extension of his official holiday for the purpose of visiting America and reporting on its schools and colleges. The Americans prized him as much as he prized them. Already his name was a household word among all interested in education in the States. For years he had con- tributed to the Educational Review (edited by Dr. Murray Butler, the President of Columbia University, and, next to Dr. Eliot of Harvard, perhaps the most influential figure in the educa- tional life of America), a monthly record of the progress of education and of educational thought in England. His ' Lectures on Teaching ' had
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had a great vogue, and exercised a profound influence among all those engaged in teaching throughout the country. Everything that he had written since was eagerly looked for. He had come, in short, to be something of an educa- tional oracle in America. It was natural, there- fore, that a country naturally hospitable, and so much predisposed in his favour, should receive him with open arms. The Americans were as anxious to learn from him as he was to learn from them.
His own feeling of the interest of the New World may best be expressed in his own words, written long afterwards : ' There is no country in the world whose social and intellectual progress is so profoundly interesting and so full of significance to the thoughtful Englishman, and none wherein the institutions and polity, the ideas and experience of the people, will so well repay his attentive study. All the interest of his journey lies in the help he gains for the con- templation of the future. He finds himself in the presence of some of the most potent forces which will move the world in the coming centuries, and he cannot fail to be struck with the pace at which life is lived, the energy and enterprise of the people, their boundless exhilaration and hopeful- ness, their consciousness of power, and their con- fidence in themselves.' It was just the kind of
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satisfaction which an eager spirit like his desired — the satisfaction of contact with a life which was marching with unfearing confidence towards the future. Everyone he met interested him. His wife and their niece, who accompanied him, enjoyed it all as frankly as he did himself. They were ideal travellers, preserving the freshness of their interest on the longest journey, and ready at the end to admire all that some new host was eager to show them. Fortunately, they had all three that un- failing and vivid interest in things and people which — at least in a climate like the American — made rest all but unnecessary. Their stay in New England they specially enjoyed. They were there just in time for that feast of colour, its autumn woods.
But it was Boston itself, its memories and its celebrities, that most attracted them. Francis Park- man, the historian, received them at his beautiful house in Jamaica Plain. Though a great invalid, he insisted on accompanying them himself to all the spots which had grown familiar and dear to him through long association. They visited Wendell Holmes at Beverley Farm, where he then lived with his married daughter. Phillips Brooks was an old friend, whom they had often met and always enjoyed meeting in London, Fitch had an intense admiration of Brooks both as a man and as a preacher. One of his most valued
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possessions in his house in Leinster Square was a portrait of Brooks, which the great preacher had sent him, and which reached London only after his death.
But Fitch did not allow himself to be diverted by American hospitality from the main purpose of his mission. Wherever he went, he kept his eyes open to note every unfamiliar detail of new educa- tional experiments. One of the things that most interested him was the ' co-education ' scheme of some of the higher colleges and Universities — the provision for teaching young men and young women in the same classes and under the same professors. Another was the arrangement in college chapels, like that of Harvard, by which representatives of the different religious denomina- tions were asked to preach throughout term. He recalls, for instance, how he found on the rota of University preachers for a single year the name of Phillips Brooks, followed by those of well-known Unitarian, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist ministers. The naturalness and suitability of such an arrangement to the American mind seemed to him a measure of the distance which separated opinion in the Old World and the New on the relations of the Churches to one another, and to the great educational foundations.
Anxious above everything else to acquaint himself with the aims and hopes of the teachers
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themselves, Fitch seized every opportunity of attending their conferences. He was present at the Convention of Head Masters and Assistant Masters at St. Johns, New Brunswick, at New- port, and at Chautauqua. The latter place illustrated for him more than anything else he saw the spontaneity and unconventionality of American attempts to extend the sphere and influence of knowledge. This summer camp on the shores of Lake Erie, with its heterogeneous collection of classes and of interests, aroused his unreserved admiration where it might have merely challenged cynical criticism. What stirred him was the unfeigned interest in knowledge which characterized the whole assemblage, an interest which might have been pathetic had it not been at once so confident and so humble. Here were men from lonely farms, from the workshop, ministers of religion, whole families enjoying their summer holiday together, but all inspired by the same desire to add to their knowledge, and to penetrate, however perfunctorily, into that world of thought and larger interests which lay apart from the ordinary routine of a too busy life. And here, too, were some of the most distinguished of American teachers and scholars ready to share of their best with all comers on perfectly equal terms. It was an object-lesson in the helpfulness, the freedom from prejudices
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of either social or intellectual caste, the true brotherliness, of a great democracy. It made such an impression on Fitch that, immediately on his return to England, he wrote an enthusi- astic description of it for the Nineteenth Century. The article inspired that veteran enthusiast and reformer, Dr. Paton, of Nottingham, along with Dr. Hill, Master of Downing College, Cambridge, to found the National Home Reading Union. Dr. Hill's account of the origin and objects of the Union is so discriminating, and his apprecia- tion of those elements in Fitch's character which made him the inspirer of these and similar move- ments so just, that they may be quoted here.
' My own interest in the National Home Read- ing Union, or, to speak more correctly, my desire to see such an organization as this established, is entirely due to him. In the Nineteenth Century for October, 1888, Sir Joshua contributed an article on the Chautauqua Reading Circles, which set me and many others talking and planning. How far it served to inspire Dr. Paton to found the Union I cannot say ; it certainly prepared the ground. If so broad a scheme for education of the most popular kind met with such signal success in America, why had we no similar scheme on this side the Atlantic ? University Extension had done excellent work ; but lectures are ex- pensive. Those of us who had lectured for the
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Extension, and had seen the pleasure and purpose which this form of instruction brings into thousands of lives, saw also the opportunity for a more widely-permeating movement. It must be the cheapest, most elastic, and most popular of schemes, suited to the limited experience and limited leisure of the classes who find University Extension lectures too great a strain upon their mental energy ; and at the same time it must supply the place of lectures in the case of those who, owing to their isolation or other reasons, find them inaccessible. Above all, it must be a guild of readers. It must involve the idea of co-opera- tion, and bring with it the sense of comradeship in intellectual pursuits.
' There is nothing easier than to decry popular culture. Few leader-writers, when ostensibly extolling movements which have this aim, can resist the temptation of pointing out that Uni- versity Extension, the Home Reading Union, and similar agencies can hardly be said to make for culture at all, as measured by the writer's own superior standard. Study (if the word may be used) of this kind is but scrappy, superficial, amateur, at the best. The self-complacent recipient of a little second-hand learning does not value his acquisitions for their intrinsic interest. He wears his Brummagem jewels in order that they may excite the envy of neighbours
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who, having no jewels, either genuine or paste, mistake these for diamonds of the first water. Sarcasm directed at this subject is sure to reach its mark. There is truth in the sneer. Yet it need not be so limited in its application as the critic intends. We can imagine the representa- tive of a truly cultivated people, if such shall ever arise, alleging that he discovers treason to learning even amongst our recognised leaders. It is not only amongst those who have not had the good fortune to receive a University educa- tion that the desire to know is less active than the desire to attain a reputation for knowing. Of this kind of snobbery Sir Joshua Fitch was absolutely free. He neither displayed his own learning nor depreciated the attainments of others, whether Board school children, training college students, or artisans. Knowledge and un- derstanding were talents to search for, however limited they might be in amount, however humble their possessors. This may seem but a small thing to say of him, yet to those who have striven to raise the general standard of mental attain- ment it will mean a great deal. At Chautauqua Sir Joshua Fitch recognised an aspiration towards a higher intellectual life ; he overlooked the meaner purpose. In describing what he had seen he dwelt upon the dignity and significance of the ceremonies which mark the students' up-
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ward progress. He had the self-restraint to omit from his description the short-comings or exaggerations which occasionally convert ceremony into burlesque. The same sympathetic earnest- ness distinguished him in all matters of which I have any experience. He never depreciated effort. Recognising existing conditions, he planned to obtain, under them, a slightly better result. This faculty of looking at things in all their relations is very rare.
' Reformers are numerous. Numberless are the men who do not attempt to reform what they lightly condemn. The honest, earnest spirit which applauds what is meritorious and consis- tently strives to give it freer play is not so common. Sir Joshua looked at the world with kind eyes. His long experience as one of Her Majesty's inspectors had taught him to watch for points worth praise ; praise duly given, every- one paid attention to his " Here and here you can do better." It is very difficult to give specific illustrations of this habit of mind. Numerous as were the occasions on which, in my recollection, Sir Joshua Fitch said the right thing at the right time and in the right way, checking discursive conversation, bringing the members of a committee back to the business in hand and face to face with practicable issues, such instances will not bear quoting. I can but
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give expression to my own feeling of confidence in his ripe judgment and great tact, to the satisfac- tion with which I used to note his presence, and to the greater responsibility which rests upon me, now that his help is no longer to be obtained.'
Fitch, indeed, had never more truly found his role than when he was trafficking as a merchant of light. Every land he visited was for him a Land of Promise, and he would never return from it with empty hands. His friend Matthew Arnold had written to him on the eve of his own departure for America : c I don't like going, I don't like lecturing, I don't like living in public, and I wish it were all well over. I shall be glad, however, to see an American common school with my own eyes.' Fitch did not mind any of these things. He was conscious of them only as the necessary incidents of the getting or the giving of knowledge. He was himself as ready to give as he was anxious to get. And America, which held so lightly to the past and even to the present in its confident readiness to invade the future, seemed likely to give him just what he wanted. Arnold had written to him in a letter of the same period : * I hope that some day we shall change r61es, and that you will have my outing to America, and I shall have yours to Italy.' It marks just the difference in outlook of the two men — the poet and thinker
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whose eyes scanned the present with such clear and often disappointed scrutiny because they were naturally lifted to the hills of the highest human achievement in the past, and the practical reformer who occasionally visited the hills of the past to trace the course of the waters that ferti- lized the plain wherein his hopeful spirit laboured and rejoiced. Italy pleased Fitch, but America satisfied him. He could appreciate the dignity and the beauty of all that remained of what had once been life, but he revelled in the chaotic energy of that which was actually alive.
From America he had brought much educa- tional inspiration. Its experiments in method ; its use, however crude, of psychology in perfecting method ; its provision for the development of technology and practical science ; its * elective J system of study ; its encouragement of post-grad- uate research at the Universities — all these were elements in the American system which he thought might be adapted co English needs, or, in so far as they had been adapted, might point the way to their further extension at home. But it was not only from America that he got useful hints for the improvement of English education. The subject of technical instruction was one which interested him very closely, and it was to France and Germany that he looked for special guidance in that field. In October, 1896, he was invited
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by the Technical Education Committee of the Newcastle City Council to report upon the grants made by it to different institutions in the city for the promotion of technical education. The report which he presented in February, 1897, was marked by all his usual carefulness of inquiry and shrewd- ness of judgment. One of the objects which he had most in view in such reports was to secure that technical instruction, wherever it was given, might be closely and vitally connected with a more liberal course of study. It was to his Parisian experience that he looked for a model of successful accomplishment in this object. ' Of institutions with a still more directly practical object ' — he quotes from his own memorandum on the subject — ' the Ecole professionelle menagere, in the Rue Fondary, for girls, and the Ecole Diderot, for boys, are sufficiently remarkable to justify a brief description here. Each of them may be regarded mainly as an apprentice school in which the pupil is learning the particular art or trade by which he or she intends to get a living. But neither is a mere trade school, for intellectual instruction re- ceives much attention in both. In the girls' school the day is divided into two parts, the morning being devoted to the general education presumably acquired by all the pupils alike, and the afternoon to the special businesses which they have respectively chosen. From half-past eight
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to half-past eleven the work includes advanced elementary instruction generally, exercises in French language and composition, book-keeping, since French women are very largely employed in keeping accounts, one foreign language — Eng- lish or German, at the parents' choice — and such practice in drawing or design as has a special bearing on the trade or employment to which the pupil is destined. The afternoon of every day is devoted to the practice, under skilled instruc- tresses, of millinery, dressmaking, artificial flower making, embroidery, and other feminine arts. Orders are received from ladies, and articles are made and ornamented by the pupils and sold at a profit.
' In the Ecole Diderot, for youths from thirteen to sixteen, a similar general plan prevails. There is an entrance examination, which is practically competitive. The mornings are spent in the class or in lecture- rooms, under the care of professors in language, mathematics, chemistry and physics, history, geography, design, geometrical and artistic, and comptabilite. The pupil elects one foreign language, German or English, at his dis- cretion. Written reports are also required of visits to factories, and descriptions with drawings of machines and instruments. The afternoons are spent in the workshops. During the first year a boy visits each of these in turn, gets some
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elementary knowledge about tools and their use, but does not select his metier until the beginning of the second year. Then, when he has been helped to discover his own special aptitude, the choice is before him. There are the forge, the engine-house, the carpenter's shop, the modelling- room, the turning lathes, the upholsterers' de- partment, and the workroom in which instru- ments of precision are used for making electrical or other scientific apparatus. When he has selected one of these, he devotes the afternoons of the remaining two years of his course to learn- ing, under a skilled director, the " art or mystery " of his special craft. In the workshops articles are made and finished for the market, many of the desks, forms, and blackboards, for example, required in the Paris schoolrooms being manu- factured in the carpenters' department, and in this way some part of the generous provision made by the municipality for affording gratuitous technical instruction is rendered back in the form of profit.
' The most striking feature of these two great trade schools is the association in them of general and special training. There is in them no attempt to divorce hand-work from head-work, or to treat the first as a substitute for the second. The girl who is to be a modiste or a brodeuse is to be that and something more. The boy who is to be a
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joiner or an engineer is also to know something of literature and science. It is in this spirit that manual training appears to me to be finding its true place in the French schools, not as a new instrument of education in rivalry with the old, but as a part of a rounded and coherent system of discipline, designed to bring into harmony both the physical and intellectual forces of the student, and to make them helpful to each other/
Fitch rejoiced over the Act of 1890 by which the local Customs and Excise duties were allotted to the County Councils for the promotion of technical instruction. He regarded it as a neces- sary addition to the existing provision for national education. But the burden of his counsel as to the use of it was always that it might not be made an excuse or an occasion for the divorce of the head and the hand, that no art or craft should be taught apart from an adequate knowledge of the sciences on which it depended. He repeated his advice in an excellent speech delivered at a distri- bution of certificates at the Norwood Technical Institute in 1898, and again in a paper read before the Society of Arts and printed in the Society's journal for July, 1897.
Another scheme which Fitch did more than anyone else to promote, and in illustrating and recommending which he again drew on his foreign experience, was that of schools savings-banks.
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It was not merely from the economic, but espe- cially from the moral, point of view that he was a strong and consistent advocate of thrift. The economic view of the value of thrift may suffer change, but the moral considerations which weighed with Fitch remain. He held that the right use of money was one of the most intimate and universal tests of character, and the training in its right use one of the most potent and gener- ally applicable instruments in making character. His attention was called to a scheme with this object in view inaugurated in the communal schools of Ghent by M. Laurent, a professor in the University of that city. He visited Ghent and other Belgian towns where the experiment had been tried, and in 1874 wrote an account of it in Macmillaris Magazine. He quoted with evident conviction of their applicability to our own case M. Laurent's fine words : ' Les besoins factices sont la plaie et la malediction de la richesse,' and he did not hesitate to add that such needs are not unknown among the poor, and that of poverty, too, they may be an unsuspected plague-spot and curse. At any rate, it was as a training in the unselfish use of money, in thought about and the sense of responsibility for its use, that he desired to see thrift urged upon the young on the very threshold of life. The schools savings- banks which he did so much to establish in the
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elementary schools of England have not, perhaps, had all the success he could have desired, but at least they have done something towards the forma- tion of wiser and worthier habits of life.
But it was not only examples for imitation that as a merchant of light he brought from overseas ; it was also warnings as to possible dangers which ought to be avoided. When the Education Bill of 1896, with its daring scheme of decentraliza- tion by transferring so much of the purely educa- tional control of the Education Department over the schools to local authorities, seemed likely to become law, Fitch pointed warningly to the ' awful example ' of America. That was just, as he claimed, one of the points of unquestioned superiority in the existing English system over the American. American education is entirely in the hands of the individual State or municipal autho- rities— that is to say, it is entirely local. The Government of the United States has no part whatever in the education of the country beyond the maintenance of a Bureau of Education, with- out even the power of imposing regulations or principles of action upon the Legislature of any State, with, indeed, no function beyond that of collecting statistics, which, however useful they might be, and occasionally are, are too seldom turned to profitable account. The result of this purely local system is that, while in a few of the
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older, richer, or more populous States education was a matter of as anxious public concern, and was as thoroughly developed, as in the older coun- tries of Europe, yet in perhaps the majority of the newer States the period of school attendance was absurdly brief, the teaching of an inferior quality, and the public interest in education un- trustworthy. With his usual shrewd and just appreciation of varying national circumstances, he was also able to point out that in practice the evil results of such a system in a new country like America were neither so apparent nor so real as they must be in England. The immense energy of the people, with its innumerable outlets in a rich and undeveloped country, with the vivid interest it gives to life, in itself atones for an imperfect preparatory education. Besides, in such a country men who begin to make their way have everywhere at hand the means of supplementing their imperfect initial equipment, and do not fail to use them. The American may not. sooner or later, have acquired much knowledge, but at least he is always acquiring it. But in England the defects of the initial preparation are not likely to be atoned for or repaired. And it is just those defects which would be the inevitable result of any relaxation of the central authority on at least the purely educational side of the management of the schools of the nation.
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In the long-drawn-out controversy on the ques- tion of religious education in elementary schools which has raged intermittently since 1894, Fitch bore his part. It was naturally not the part of heated zealots on either side, whose least interest in the controversy was educational. Yet it happened to be the part of uncompromising opposition to the claims of what is known as the Church party, but what was really, according to Fitch, who had some knowledge behind his opinion, a party composed of one section of the clergy of the National Church and of a handful of laymen. He contributed article after article on this subject to the leading reviews between 1894 and 1902, all of them based on an impartial scrutiny of the facts, and all of them contending for an unhesitating rejection of the proposed measures. Indeed, he was by far the most powerful and influential opponent of the various proposals of the Government (the views and unauthorized suggestions of the thousands of newspaper legislators never stirred him to com- ment) during those years. He had but one motive in every line he wrote upon this question — his desire that religious education, to which he attached an absolute value as an integral portion of the school education of every child in the nation, might be preserved. Here, again, he referred his countrymen to France and America
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for examples of what was to be avoided in the solution of the religious question in the schools. He held that the educational systems of both these countries had been weakened by their exclusively secular character ; that the weakness of the French system had revealed itself in the necessity which the Church felt was imposed upon her by the existence of the secular State school of establishing a rival and hostile school in nearly every commune by its side ; while the weakness of the American system betrayed itself in a virtual violation, in many cases, of the secular character of the schools, and, in spite of the in- tense devotion of America to the common school system, in the possibility, even likelihood, of a coming indictment of this particular aspect of it.
In England he believed that, with common- sense and something of that give and take which accorded so well with the national temper, there was no need for such a menace ever to arise. Through the circumstances of the growth of the national system of education, a sufficient, and, besides, the only practicable, religious education of all the children in the schools had been secured. In the schools of the National Church a religious education authorized by the Church was given by its own teachers to its own children. In most of the Board schools throughout the country a course of religious teaching such as that prescribed
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by the London School Board prevailed. This teaching was simple and practical, and was founded upon a study of the most devotional parts of the Bible refracted through that minimum of dogmatic conception which is the common medium of their religious faith for prac- tically all English laymen. It was, besides, given by teachers who could teach, who understood the mind and character of children, who in nearly all cases believed in their religion arid conceived of it through the simple theology of the ordinary layman, who undertook the Scripture lesson in a spirit of earnestness and reverence and with a deep sense of its value to the educational work of the school and to the formation of the children's character, and who, finally, had been most of them trained in the colleges of the Church.
This priceless privilege of the common English school, permanently guaranteed by long usage and accepted gratefully by the vast majority of the people, was, it seemed to Fitch, about to be wantonly endangered for the sake of proposals which had not the slightest chance of being carried, and which, if they were, would destroy the moral even more than the formal discipline of the school, would place the religious instruction in the hands of persons of whose capacity for teaching children there was no guarantee, and would rob the responsible teacher of one of his
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most influential and most highly-prized privileges. He held that the real danger of these proposals was that either a protracted agitation in favour of them, or the chance of their being carried in some moment of despair of a wearied and worried Legislature, would provoke a passionate and irre- sistible national demand for purely secular educa- tion in the State schools wholly alien to the normal desire of the English people. It was to avert this disaster that he fought so courageously and persistently for the established state of things. His exposure of the hollowness of the arguments by which these proposals were supported was, of course, genial and good-natured, but it was also relentless. When their upholders posed as cham- pions of the rights of the parents, he reminded them that the parents were apparently entirely unsuspicious that their rights had been infringed, and confidently asserted that, even if these sup- posed rights were restored to them, they would never think, if left to themselves, of claiming them. And he twitted these champions of the rights of poor parents with neglecting to enforce their own exactly similar rights where they were at perfect liberty to do so. For, he reminded them, they allowed their own sons and daughters to receive in schools of their own choice, and supported, for the most part, by their own pay- ments, a religious education of exactly the same
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kind as that against which they were clamouring in the State-aided elementary schools.
Fitch was, indeed, like most of the educational officials of a past day, and with more conviction than most of them, the truest friend of the voluntary schools. He liked variety of type in the educational system of the country ; he valued, and did his best to foster, local interest in and local sacrifice for the cause of education ; and he thought it right that the Church, which had shown so much of that interest and endured so much of that sacrifice, should continue to enjoy the privilege of teaching its own children in its own schools. But he saw that the recent trend of legislation was slowly but surely robbing her of the last remains of right to that privilege. He saw that measures like the abolition of school fees, and the special aid grant, and, still more recently, the imposition of the full charge of school maintenance upon the ratepayers, in gradu- ally reducing the amount of voluntary subscrip- tions, were also removing both the evidence and the fact of ioca! interest and sacrifice, and were, therefore, annulling the justification of the con- tinued control of schools by unrepresentative persons. It was because he saw this process of gradual destruction of the voluntary schools going on, by the very means on which their supporters relied for their continued existence,
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that he desired so much to see that working arrangement for the continuance of religious education, which had grown up since 1870, generally accepted. It would secure that, when all the schools were at last brought under the management of the ratepayers' representatives, a simple and universal scheme of religious teaching suited to the capacities of children, and capable of being supplemented by the pastoral care of the churches, should prevail. There was no object for which Fitch, with his deeply religious nature, fought harder or was ready to sacrifice more.
One more instance of the way in which he could learn from foreign experience may be given. It is an excellent example of how his shrewd wisdom could detect the truth underlying conflict- ing evidence where a less penetrating mind would have been imposed upon by the mere superficial appearances and confused by their contradictori- ness. His report on the working of the free-school system in America, France, and Belgium was drawn up with a view to the introduction of the measure which practically abolished fees in English elementary schools. One of the questions on which legislators needed information was, what would be the probable effect upon attendance of a free system ? Would free education do away with the necessity of a vigilant and vigorous
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exercise of the right of the State to compel attendance in its schools ? In America, where compulsion was repellent to the republican in- stincts and sentiments of the people, and where, therefore, attendance was not legally enforced, it was fitful and unsatisfactory. In France, on the other hand, where attendance was legally enforceable, it was so generally satisfactory that the need of compulsion was of the slightest. Fitch's interpretation of this conflicting evidence is an admirable essay in the comparative psy- chology of nations. * There is in France,' he says, ' a longer tradition [than in England] among the working classes in favour of education for their children. It is rare for a parent, in any rank of life, to be content to see his children brought up more ignorant than himself; and when in any country a system has existed long enough to produce one instructed generation of parents, legal compulsion, except in a few cases, becomes unnecessary. Moreover, democracy in France differs essentially in the manner of its manifesta- tion from that of America. It does not take the form of self-assertion in regard to such a matter as the education of children, nor look upon the authority of the State, in this particular, as intrusive or objectionable. Compulsory laws, as we have seen, are alien to the habits and feelings of American citizens. They exist to a
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very limited extent in the States of the Union, and when they exist they are seldom enforced. But in France they are in harmony alike with the instincts and with the interests of the people ; and :n the long history of revolutionary and governmental changes, one fails to find any ex- pression of impatience or any sense of grievance on the part of the working classes in relation to the laws and usages which require the regular attendance of children at school. In France, as in Germany and Switzerland, in Sweden and Denmark, the peasant and the ouvrier have learned to identify the success of their children in life with the possession of a good education, and, therefore, to acquiesce cheerfully in the maintenance of the obligatory law/ The lesson for us was so obvious that he did not stay to enforce it. Since, happily, the method of com- pulsion is possible of application in England, let us use :"t for the one o:1 two generations which will make its use no longer necessary.
It was ir this spirit and with this nigh measure of capacity that Fitch discharged his duties as a * merchant of light.' Wherever he went he gained much, and perhaps he gave as much. As we have seen, h?s influence over the teaching world of America was unbounded. In France, too, his name was highly respected. There was something of secret sympathy binding him to the high
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intelligence and the clear reason of that great nation. He had no greater pleasure when in Paris than in attending the lectures at the College de France or the Sorbonne. He longed to see his own University attempt something of the same kind for London. The measure of success which has attended recent experiments in this direction would no doubt have delighted him. But he would have been very bold and asked for more. It was fortunate for the English Education Office that it had at its moment of greatest and most critical activity such a capable servant to report to it upon the general movement of education beyond our shores. It was fortunate for the English nation that, in the forging of its educational machinery, it could command a craftsman of the greatest skill, of the widest knowledge, and of indefatigable industry.
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CHAPTER VII
OTHER DOINGS AND INTERESTS
WHEN the Fitches came back to London in 1870, they took up their residence at 5, Lancaster Terrace, Regent's Park. There they remained till after Fitch's retirement from official life, when they removed to 13, Leinster Square. At Lan- caster Terrace they were within easy distance of many old friends and of the institutions in which they were specially interested, like University College and Bedford College. Miss Anna Swan- wick was near at hand in Cumberland Terrace. Fitch was attracted by her vigorous mind, her literary tastes, and her active interest in all reforming movements. She in turn admired in him the public servant in whom thought and work, zeal and wisdom, were so happily wedded, but, above all, the consistent and chivalrous advo- cate of the free admission of women to all the privileges and responsibilities of the common life. When, in 1890, a committee was formed to present Fitch with his portrait in memory of his services
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to the cause of the higher education of women, it was Miss Swanwick who was chosen to express their gratitude. No one could have done it better than she, for no one shared more com- pletely Fitch's conception of education as the deliberate and various organization of life.
Fitch lived in his work, and every form of work which was ever so remotely connected with his manifold intellectual interests became his by an instinctive appropriation. He would seek it out, measure its scope and effect, interest himself in all those who were engaged in it. There was no important forward movement of his time which he did not in this way make peculiarly his own. For most men such variety of interest might have resulted in a dissipation of energy. For him it was itself the natural and orderly expression of a strongly concentrated energy. He cared about so many things because he saw them all as parts of an ideal whole for which he was consistently working. Sir Robert Hunter, in an article in the Contemporary Review for December, 1903, happily described this inspiration which gave force and meaning to all that Fitch did. ' Sir Joshua Fitch/ he says, ' had always the inspiration of a great cause, that of so organizing the means of instruction in England that every child shall have the best chances of developing the faculties which it inherits, and of tilling that position in the
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community for which it is best adapted. In this cause Sir Joshua was an enthusiast, and in its advocacy and in his daily labour for its promotion he found that stimulus which kept his faculties at full stretch, and that pleasure which attends the hope of far-reaching results.' It was into this general plan that all his special interests fitted, and he knew how to advise in the special case because he saw so clearly the needs of the whole. No one was ever so ready as he to attend meet- ings, sit on committees, deliver a lecture to some obscure society, because in doing any of these things he knew that he was contributing, and exactly the measure in which he was contributing, to a general end.
It was especially after his retirement from official life that he found opportunities for this kind of service. At an age when most men would have regarded the release from official duty as the due term of a life of action he continued his work exactly as if nothing had happened. The work remained much the same both in its nature and in its extent. Only the manner of doing it had changed. And even the method changed but little. He continued, for instance, to write freely upon all the educational questions which were being publicly discussed during the last nine years of his life. And the pen of the independent critic differed but little from the pen
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of the official public servant. During his official life he had never hesitated to speak his whole mind with perfect freedom, so that retirement did not mean for him a recovery of independence, Nor, on the other hand, had he any tendency to yield to that craze for excessive and irritating frankness which occasionally marks the enfran- chised official. On the contrary, in the freedom of unofficial life he spoke his mind with all sin- cerity indeed, but also with all due respect for the responsible authority whose policy he had so long helped to mould and direct. Nothing more clearly revealed his humility and self-effacement for the sake of work than the fact that he did not use the years of his retirement in writing some permanent and authoritative contribution to the literature of education by which his name would have been remembered. He had the knowledge, he had the literary skill, he had the delight of a true craftsman in the literary art. But he had trained himself all his life long to treat the pen as an occasional instrument in advancing a practical cause. And he continued to use it for that purpose only. He devoted the whole of his time in retirement to the practical claims of the cause which he had made his own. In so far as the pen could serve the cause, he used it. In so far as it could be better served in other ways, he turned to them
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with perfect contentment and singleness of purpose.
It would be impossible to enumerate the ser- vices, public and private, which Fitch rendered to the cause of education, either in its technical sense or in that wider sense which was his own, during the last nine years of his life. A few, however, must be mentioned, if only as charac- teristic of the laborious days he lived to the end. In January, 1895, he was appointed by Mr. Shaw Lefevre a member of the Departmental Com- mittee ' to inquire into the existing systems for the maintenance and education of children under the charge of managers of district schools and Boards of Guardians in the Metropolis, and to advise as to any changes that may be desirable.' His friend Mr. Mundella had written to him some weeks before : ' I am satisfied that a report from you upon these schools would be a great national advantage. The opportunity is too good and too important to be lost, and I should be grateful to you if you would confer with me upon it.' Fitch's work upon the Committee was marked by his usual zeal and thoroughness. He visited most of the Poor Law schools in or near London, as well as the cottage homes at Bir- mingham and Sheffield. His examination of the state of these schools convinced him that their educational control would be more effectively
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entrusted to the Education Department, and he strongly urged that they should be subject to the ordinary inspection of elementary schools. He was, therefore, not altogether satisfied with the report of the Committee, which, as usual with such reports, was somewhat of a compromise.
When Lord Spencer was at the Admiralty, he nominated Fitch as one of the members of a small Committee to inquire into the working of the naval and dockyard schools. It opened up to him a new aspect of the educational problem, and brought him into contact with men of a very different training and experience from his own. He liked both the work and the men, and when the report was completed his colleagues devolved upon him the duty of drafting it. The Rev. J. C. Cox-Edwardes, Rector of Ecton, Northampton- shire, who was one of his colleagues as the then Chaplain of the Fleet, thus writes of him :
1 When associated with Sir Joshua Fitch on a committee to inquire into the management and working of the Royal Marine and Royal Dockyard Schools, one was at all times impressed not only by his ability and by his earnestness in all matters connected with education, but by his absolute honesty in all he said and did. One admired the patience and courtesy with which he so readily listened to the opinions of others when they differed from his own ; and one could not help
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feeling that his final decision was not made without giving due weight to all that might be said.
' A good deal of sentiment and tradition had grown up in connection with the management of these service schools ; it was a pleasure to see how tender he was towards all this, and how careful to avoid recommending any changes which would seem likely to do violence to those tradi- tions and that sentiment.
' It was at all times a real pleasure to be with him, not only in hours of business, but in social intercourse, for nothing seemed to ruffle him, and he was always genial and full of a quiet humour.'
This report had not yet been presented when, in January, 1895, the Lords of the Admiralty ap- pointed another Committee * to consider whether Greenwich Hospital School should be placed under the inspection of the Education Department.' Fitch was nominated on this Committee also, and it was owing to his advice that the Department undertook the inspection of the school. It was another triumph for his ideal of a national test of the value of every form of national education.
But random Commissions from Government Departments were not enough to occupy his time or his energy. His later years remind one of the spontaneous zeal of those immediate successors of the Apostles in the Early Church who were
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itinerant bishops and evangelists in one. He constituted himself at once a propagandist of the educational faith in all its details, and an overseer of all the schools — at least, of all within his reach. Miss Latham, Principal of St. Mary's College, Paddington, writes of him : ' When we first came to St. Mary's College, in January, 1901, Sir Joshua was most kind in every way. I had met him in old days at the Ladies' College at Cheltenham, but there was no special reason why he should help us in our work, which presented very grave difficulties. For that reason we valued all the more Sir Joshua's kindness to us as a college in coming several times in the midst of all his engagements to lecture to our students on the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. Those who were able to avail them- selves of the further pleasure of visiting the National Gallery with him will not forget all that he helped them to see in the pictures. For my- self, I may perhaps add how deeply I shall always value the sympathy and help given so generously in the most difficult days of our work in the training of teachers. There were many reasons why this sympathy might have been withheld, but it was given fully and freely.' It may be safely asserted that to Fitch himself there never were any reasons powerful enough to induce him to withhold his sympathy from any capable and
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conscientious effort to make the work of teaching real. However little he might sympathize with the accidental constitution of particular educa- tional foundations, it was enough that they were doing the work of teaching well to secure for them the full measure of his interest and support. For him there was no distinction between school and school save such as was marked by their com- parative excellence in method and skill in work. Nor was there any distinction in the service he rendered as a public official and as an independent authority on all educational matters. The one form of service was never formal because pre- scribed, nor the other casual because voluntary.
Few things delighted Fitch more than the opportunity of teaching others about his favourite subjects. He not only taught others to teach, but loved to teach himself. There was something strangely inspiring in the readiness of one who had fulfilled a long career of public service and was approaching his eightieth year to leave his fireside on a cold winter evening for the purpose of lecturing in some dingy room to a little group of people who were making some humble attempts after self-culture. Yet he never refused such invitations, save when other engagements made it impossible to accept them, and then only with sincere regret. In the last months of his life he struggled through a London fog after dinner to
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deliver his lecture on the National Portrait Gallery to a literary society, humble in its aims and insignificant in its numbers, which met in a cold and dreary schoolroom in Paddington Green. He had delivered the same society's inaugural lecture the winter before on ' The Value of Literature in a Business Life.' It was the same delightful lecture, full of a serene wisdom and of happy estimates of his favourite authors, which he had delivered years before to the thousands assembled at Chautauqua. He probably enjoyed the attempt to arouse an interest in literature among forty or fifty of his working-class neigh- bours as much as the meed of acclamation with which the American multitudes received him. He had a real pride in our great art collections, and an immense sense of their educational value for London. He never gave a lecture on the National Galleries without offering his services as a guide to those who might desire to visit one or other of them in his company. He was always ready to devote his Saturday afternoons to this work, which he regarded as one of the pleasantest recreations of his busy days.
Perhaps no single enterprise of his later years enlisted so much of his thought and care as did the establishment of St. Paul's Girls' School under the great foundation of Dean Colet. It appealed both to his imagination and to his sense of justice
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that the girls of London should at last share in one of the greatest and most famous educational foundations of the past, and that there should be at least one girls' school in England whose revenues would enable it to rival, both in the range and in the quality of its teaching, some of the best public schools for boys. When at last the scheme was successfully launched, he gave the closest attention to the selection of a site and the choice of an architect. One of his favourite afternoon recreations was to go down to Brook Green from time to time to watch the progress of the building. There was something delightfully fresh and childlike in the pleasure which he found in the promise of great things which he could never see fulfilled. He was appointed one of the committee to choose the head mistress. But he did not live to see the opening of the school which was the crown of all his lifelong hope and labour for the education of girls. The present Bishop of Bristol, who, as a representative of the University of Cambridge on the Board of Governors of St. Paul's School, was Fitch's colleague during the years in which the project of the girls' school was being carried through, thus describes his labours on its behalf, as well as his general work as a Governor :
1 It is a pleasure to be allowed to write a few words about my friend Sir Joshua Fitch.
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' Of his great influence in educational affairs it is quite unnecessary for me to speak. He is a part, and no small part, of the history of primary education in England in the past and passing generation. He and I did not take at all the same view of the treatment of the religious element in education ; but he was one of those rather rare men in whose company it is possible, and indeed easy, to leave out of sight a whole compartment of difference of opinion, with abun- dant scope left for hearty agreement.
' It was in his work as one of the elected Governors of St. Paul's School that I saw most of him. He represented the University of London, as I did the University of Cambridge. From the very first I found myself in complete agreement with him in that most important work. The position of the University Governors was, and is, a very responsible one. The Company Governors — namely, the master, wardens, and selected members of the Mercers' Company — outnumber the nine representatives of Oxford, Cambridge, and London, as in my judgment it is right that they should. But I never knew a clear opinion of the University Governors overridden by the Company's majority. There never, in my time, was a separation into two camps, nor was even a tendency in that direction perceptible. It seemed to me sometimes that almost too much
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respect was paid to the opinions which some of us on the part of the Universities expressed. I am inclined to attribute a great deal of this singularly happy state of things to Fitch's influence. He was so kindly, so courteous, so clear in his argu- ments, so full of common-sense and simplicity in combination with a keen insight, so eminently anxious to give at least full weight to the argument of an opponent, that he naturally kept discussion and good - temper at a high level. I should like to take this opportunity of saying that he and I frequently spoke in private, with gratitude and admiration, of the charming treat- ment we all of us received from the succession of able and experienced men who represented the Company on the Governing Body.
' There were, during the period of our joint tenure of office, two grave questions, to which continuous attention was given. The one was the great question of the amount of income from Dean Colet's endowments which should be placed at the disposal of the Governors each year, including the question of the application of the surplus. The other was the question of establishing a girls' school which should rank as high in women's education as St. Paul's School does in the education of men. On the former point feel- ings ran very high. There was for a considerable period of time a real danger that the Charity Com-
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missioners would cut the Governors down to a small number of thousands a year, and apply the large remainder to education lower than the highest. Fitch was firmly set against this, and many a plan he and I have devised for making our opposition effective. In the end the efforts of the whole body of Governors were completely successful, and mischief, which it is impossible to estimate at its full danger, was averted. No one played a higher part in the fight than my peaceful friend Fitch. Of the other matter it is not too much to say that he, more than anyone else, kept on pegging away, regardless of difficulties and delays, good-temperedly pressing on and keeping the ultimate goal clearly before the eyes of his colleagues. Before he passed away he knew that the victory was won and was complete. Every- one wished that he had lived to attend the auspicious opening of the girls' school at Brook Green a few weeks ago.
' A grateful companion of his in some parts of his work for the St. Paul's Schools is of opinion that to no one man more than to Sir Josh ua Fitch is the now assured independence of position of St. Paul's School, and the actual existence of the girls' school at Brook Green in full life, to be counted as due.'
But Fitch was not satisfied with being the apostle and evangelist of his educational
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faith. By some silent but unanimous vote he had been appointed a kind of educational consul-general for all strangers who came to our shores in search of knowledge. And he never thought of declining the task which had been thus imposed upon him. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to know that people wanted to learn anything that he could teach them, or to find that they wanted help which he could give. One was always siire to meet at his house men from all parts of the world — a professor from some American University, a student from India or Japan, a Frenchman or German studying some phase of our national life. And it was not only men of distinction who found the welcome of his kindly face and his richly-stored mind. He paid just as much attention to the rawest youth whom some friend had commended to his interest and assistance. Indeed, he loved the young with their generous enthusiasms, and remained himself till the last as young and as generous-minded as any of them. Of his help to Indian students in this country, the late Miss Manning, who worked indefatigably for many years as honorary secretary of the National Indian Association, wrote :
' Among the many illustrations of Sir Joshua Fitch's kindliness, I like to remember the friendly interest that he showed to Indian students in
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London, especially to those who came to England with the object of learning about our educational institutions. He was always ready to supply the desired information, or, through introductions, to enable them to visit colleges and schools. Sir Joshua's volume of Lectures on Teaching, de- livered at Cambridge, has been widely circu- lated in India, and one Bombay schoolmaster told me that he had presented a copy to each of his assistants. His name was, therefore, already familiar to many Indian students, and, if he could have visited their country, he would have certainly received a very cordial welcome.
1 In October, 1896, Sir Joshua Fitch presided at a lecture given by Professor S. Satthian- adhar, M.A., of Madras, at the Imperial Institute, the subject being ' What has English Education done for India ?' In his opening speech he dwelt on the great difficulties connected with the adapting of Western educational methods to the peculiar character and traditions of the people of India. Questions as to success in this direction must constantly occur to responsible officials in that country, and thus, Sir Joshua observed, the present system could only be considered experi- mental. In saying that experience would indicate some modifications he predicted what has actually happened, for the recent Universities Commission in India was appointed in order to inquire into
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several defects in the educational system which had been disclosed by time, and to suggest effectual remedies/
The same kind of generous aid he extended to those French students and professors of the Ecole Normale, elected to the free travelling scholar- ships awarded by their Government to promote the knowledge of foreign languages and insti- tutions, who chose England as the land of their educational pilgrimage. Fitch had made the acquaintance of M. Bonet-Maury (the successor of Auguste Sabatier as Dean of the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris), at the London Health and Education Exhibition of 1884, and learned from him the scope and purpose of the scheme of travelling scholarships inaugurated the year before by M. Jules Ferry. M. Bonet-Maury says : ' It was impossible that a mind so open and progressive as Sir Joshua's should fail to recognise the bearing of the scheme upon the work of civili- zation. When I had the honour of being pre- sented to him, and of discussing with him this work of international education, he showed the liveliest interest in it, and promised me his co- operation. It was not, indeed, easy, without the help of those who held high educational positions in Great Britain, to place our countrymen in the training colleges, or to arrange for their presence at the lessons given in the grammar schools. It
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was owing to the recommendation of Sir Joshua, then Inspector of Training Colleges, that our young women teachers were introduced into the training colleges at Oxford and Cambridge and at Cheltenham, and our men into the colleges at Battersea, Isle worth, Westminster, and Exeter, and at Edinburgh and Glasgow. They were everywhere welcomed and encouraged in their studies by the principals of the colleges. Each time they passed through London they called upon Sir Joshua, who received them with his charming kindness, and shared with them the fruits of his consummate educational experience. Many of these professors, who have since become directors of training colleges, professors of English, or newspaper writers, bear grateful testimony to his kindness, and confess that he exercised a fruitful influence on the development of their character and their power as teachers. It was in recognition of these services that the Government of the Republic nominated him to be a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. For myself, whom he had honoured with his friendship, I can hardly express the high opinion which I formed of him. Sir Joshua Fitch was, to my mind, the type of the perfect gentleman, of the English Liberal, and of the ideal educator. He was of the stock of the Arnolds and the Gladstones, and the knight- hood which he received from Queen Victoria was
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only the public consecration of the nobility of his character and the superiority of his intellect.'
No notice, however brief, of Fitch's various energy during these later years of his life can afford to leave out of account his admirable thought and work in the cause of public charity. To him it was a part, and certainly not the least important part, of a sound national economy, and therefore of a worthy ideal of national education. As far back as December, 1869, he contributed a trenchant article on the subject to Fraser's Magazine. A pioneer in so many things, he was here, too, perhaps unconsciously, a pioneer in the conceptions of public charity, at once more scientific and more humane, which have grown up in recent years. The Fraser article outlined the main principles and methods of the Charity Organization Society, and though that Society was in existence some months before the article was published, Fitch does not seem to have known anything of its work at the time. It was after his retirement that he devoted himself with his usual thoroughness and zeal to its service. He was attracted to it partly, no doubt, by the fact that his niece, Miss Pickton, had long been one of its most interested and untiring workers. But its businesslike methods and its sense of the effect of all administration of charity upon char- acter— the character both of those who gave and
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of those who received — appealed to all that was most characteristic in his own view of life. During the year that he presided over its Council he visited most of the committees in London, and made himself thoroughly acquainted with their work. But it will be best to leave the account of his connection with the Society to the man who is best able to estimate it. Mr. C. S. Loch writes :
' You ask me to write a few lines about Sir Joshua Fitch, and I gladly note down some thoughts about him, and some reminiscences of his manner of regarding problems and questions in which we had a common interest. I knew him only in the latter years of his life, at least with the intimacy that comes of comparatively frequent meetings and casual discussions. He was then soon to retire from his work in the Education Office, and was to have more leisure for other things, though education in one form or another remained his chief interest, and his experience and conclusions in regard to it coloured and influenced his thought respecting many other subjects on which it was the duty of some of us to take counsel and to decide as the years went by. The circle of questions that touch on " charity organization," some social, some religious, some educational, represents the range of opinions, projects, hopes, and apprehensions which were
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most frequently discussed by us, sometimes in set debate, more often familiarly and intermittently. And in regard to these his position, the position acquired by him in a life of public service and constant self-education, was that of " a kind of natural magistrate " and counsellor.
' He had, indeed, in social questions something more than the experience of many of the active and intellectual men of his generation. He had himself seen the wasteful slothfulness of bad administration as an inspector of endowed schools. He had seen it on two sides — the educational and the charitable. On both he often found it a meaningless routine, in which personal and selfish interests prevailed over the common good. On the other hand, he had measured the immense force of local tradition, which, as local patriotism, might serve the parish with as good a spirit as it might serve the country, or, unsupervised and unprovoked to good works, might become merely obstructive and unreasonable. Hence, partly by experience and partly, it may be, by temperament, he was, like Sir Stafford Northcote and his colleagues upon the great Friendly Societies Commission of 1874, a believer not only in administrative control and inspection, and the supervision that comes both of official report and of personal conference, but also in the preservation of a certain spontaneity and
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spring in those on whom the duties of administra- tion or of education devolve locally and at first hand.
1 Hence, by inference we may say of him that, as with many of his generation, administration seemed to him largely itself a question of educa- tion, and any proposal that seemed likely to lessen the intellectual scope and energy of the individual was, in his judgment, on the ground of its ultimate effect on the people, to be scrutinized with particular severity and with a qualified mistrust. This, indeed, was a distinctive trait, and it was based on a principle which, with many of that generation, was at the root of all sugges- tion and all comment in public affairs. It was, they thought, better to regulate than to centralize. It was good to have a curriculum or to have regulations ; but, in teaching, the real want was activity of mind in the teacher — an activity that would take the pupil from books to observation, from prose to poetry, that would make the pupil's mind in its turn an active, apprehensive organism, not content with being taught or having learned, but, out of the sheer spontaneity of its own interests, stimulated to teach itself. So, in ad- ministering, the real want was a similar activity, so that, as, in self-help and thrift, public or other subsidies to institutions or individuals might smother their natural fire, that fire should be
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kindled rather, stirred and fed by the incitements that are found in life and grow out of it — love of parents and friends, the realization of the responsibilities of life, the provision of better opportunities for self-maintenance. So, further, on the main lines of administration, whatever the special department might be, he would argue that the gift that weakened discrimination and effort killed, just as the letter of edict and regula- tion also killed, killed or slowly starved the better life, and that the whole end of administration was the creation of a larger mental force in the individual and in the community ; and part of that mental force was a quickened and reasonable sympathy.
' I write all this, of course, in my own words. He would, perhaps, have expressed what I mean somewhat differently. I think of him as one of a group of men who, in their various ways, helped to reform the social life of England, and out of their own experience drew conclusions which many of a younger generation may, with a lesser or a different experience, be inclined to reject, but whom, if I had to write their biographies, I should class together as men (and one might include women too) who, in spite of many differences, had this broad, distinctive social belief in common and left it to us as their heritage.
'In 1898-1899 Sir Joshua Fitch was chairman
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of the council of the Society, and some of his speeches about that time illustrate his manner of regarding questions of charity organization.
' When he became chairman of council he turned inspector on his own account, and, to see what the work of the Society was in detail, with what care and in what spirit it was done, he visited district committees and attended their meetings ; and part of his speech at the close of his year of office, was an account of his inspec- tion. This was characteristic. Not less so was his statement of the scientific nature of charitable work :
' " There is a cluster of buildings arranged round the quadrangle of Burlington House which have been placed by the Government at the disposal of various societies for the promotion of science. There are the Linnsean, the Chemical, the Astro- nomical, the Geological, and others. The members of each of these are engaged in the investigation of truth in some one special department of intel- lectual or practical activity ; but although those departments differ in range, the methods pursued in them are practically the same in all. There is, first, the careful collection of facts, the sifting and verifying them ; then a refusal to generalize while the data for arriving at principles are incomplete ; and more than this, a readiness to listen to new experience such as may require
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even the best of general principles to be absorbed and superseded by something larger and better than itself. On such conditions only does any body of truths, whether in chemistry, biology, or botany, become entitled to the name of science, and hope to make a real advance in human know- ledge. And the Charity Organization Society, concerned as it is mainly in the discovery of such truths and principles as bear upon the wise administration of charity, is bound in like manner to conduct its investigations in a scientific spirit, to watch carefully the working of new experiments, to note carefully their successes and their failures, and to find out why they succeed or why they fail."
1 And so on another occasion :
' " The administration of charity is a fine art ; perhaps it would be stricter to say an inductive science — the science of settling rules and principles before putting them in action. Every physical science begins with facts, with making experi- ments, making the best use of such suggestions as experience offers, and by taking the successes and failures — especially the failures — gradually arriving at general principles, which, however valuable as generalizations, will, by larger expe- rience, be absorbed and superseded by something still better, and thus eventually something like permanent principles of action will be arrived at."
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' Thus, in his view, charity was not a kind of playground set apart for the grown-up people of the world to play in just as they liked. It was part of life, and as such it could claim no title to be released from life's ordinary responsibilities — consideration, science, and foresight. But, further, because it was scientific, because it was not merely emotional and whimsical, because it satis- fied not merely the passing demands of instinctive feeling on the transitory feverishness of devotion, but the greater demands of religious and social obligation, it was full of hope, and was assured that there lay before it a promised land, where new knowledge would lead to new experiments, where by success and failure, " something like permanent principles of action," would be dis- covered and applied. This optimism of hope through science was a constant note in everything he said and did, so far as I knew him.
' So when the question under discussion affected the public elementary school, his words might be summed up thus : " Teach the teacher, teach the child, teach the parents."
* Thus, when we discussed the assistance of school-children, he did not take the line, so often taken, that the teachers saw most of the children, and therefore they would be the best almoners. He said he " knew teachers well, and how sym- pathetic they were towards their children. But
220 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
their sympathy required to be fortified by know- ledge. It was impossible they should know very much about the home circumstances of the children. They were rarely resident in the dis- trict of their schools ; the schools themselves were enormous, and it was hardly possible for them to judge by anything but obvious appear- ances. He was inclined to think that the prin- ciples of relief should be included in the curriculum of training colleges."
* And the school could, in its degree, be a centre for social education — far more than at present. He laid stress on the importance of impressing upon children the right use of money — saved, spent, or acquired. When, in 1891, educa- tion was made free, he took much trouble to explain and enforce the view that the school fees saved to the parent by the alteration of the law might, through the child at a school bank or in some other way, be put by to the credit of the child or the family. As we used to say in loan cases, when the loan is paid off, go on paying it off — to yourself — and you won't want another. A hard saying, perhaps, for borrowers but seldom acquire the art of saving; and the parents of elementary school- children after 1891 did as borrowers do, when the pressure of the enforced payment of fees was taken off their shoulders — spent the money rather than saved it. At least,
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after some time the school banks showed signs of falling off. " Perhaps it was," he said, " partly owing to the trouble of keeping the accounts becoming too great for the teachers, or to the want of interest of managers, or from the talk of old age pensions, which, he thought, would deter the children from saving." But however this might be, the end of school, he felt, was not literary or other accomplishment, but life. This, no doubt, he said in many ways and on many occasions. But on his recognition of it depended his faith in the doctrine of parental responsibility. If the end of school was life, to weaken parental responsibility was to spoil both school and life too. The parents were — could not but be — teachers also. If they were tempted to resign their posts as home-teachers, or became incompetent for such an office, the teaching power of the whole nation on the social side would be reduced immensely. Accordingly, for instance, he looked on the em- ployment of children out of school- hours with more lenience than would satisfy many philan- thropists. There were, no doubt, " shocking instances of abuse," he said, " but they were rare and exceptional, and diminishing under many civi- lizing influences. It would be a grievous blunder to disturb a natural process by introducing the hard, harsh hand of legislation. It would be fatal to substitute a communal for an individual conscience.
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The ill-treatment of children was a serious matter, but a far more serious and more permanent danger- was threatened by further legislative interference in the relations between parents and children." School and home life were not, in fact, looked upon by children and parents as wholly separate one from the other — school as a weary round of severe discipline, home as a place of enforced employment. " Lessons were made interesting, and the children spent some of their happiest hours in school. So, too, many of the employ- ments in which they were occupied out of hours, such as cleaning knives and boots, delivering newspapers, etc., were very innocent. They were not generally laborious. The children took pride and pleasure in them — children had a knack of getting pleasure out of things — and they were not without a disciplinary value in teaching alert- ness, obedience, and punctuality. They were especially valuable in the case of a serious-minded boy who felt his responsibilities, and wanted to do something to help his family like a little man." 1 When one reads over these words the manner and mind of the speaker recur to one. He had a balanced, temperate, believing judgment. Often the little thing that had to be done would make all the difference, he would say in effect. So " a little statesmanship " would settle the question of the inspection of Poor Law schools by inspectors
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of the Education Department, and bring them into the general educational system of the country. He had a long and quite exceptional experience of life, winning his place in it by little and little, as with the " serious-minded boy " to whom he referred with special kindliness. Therefore he was drawn not to large schemes, to overlegislation, to overemphasis, in relation to society and its wants, but to quieter means of thoughtful growth — an administration that seconded individual effort, and individual effort as the friend and ally of the wise administrator. He believed in that gradual unfoldingof strength and purp ose in the people which is, after all, the meaning of "development"; and he was patient in the presence of that self- unfolding growth, and was reverent towards it. In much this was a characteristic of the group of men of a day and generation to which it was his good fortune to belong ; in much — in a very great degree — it was the outcome of his own scientific intelligence, his administrative ability, and his large knowledge of life. And to it all he added a genial kindliness, which gave it a special savour and graciousness — a kindliness which none who enjoyed his hospitality or took part in con- versation with him will forget.'
CHAPTER VIII
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SUCH services as it fell to Fitch's lot to render to the commonalty are not exactly those which the great public hears much of, or interests itself much in. By the elect public, however, of those con- cerned in education, through which he wrought for the national future, he was widely honoured and almost idolized. Above all, teachers of all grades knew his worth, and listened with attention to the least word he uttered. Official recognition of his worth came in the way in which, perhaps, he most valued it — viz., in continuous claims of the most various kinds upon his services. There was more formal recognition as well. In 1885 the University of St. Andrews conferred upon him its honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The French Government made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1889. In 1896 the honour of knighthood was conferred upon him by Queen Victoria.
Even when released from the trammels of office 224
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he never took a leading part in public affairs. The dust and heat of the forum were distasteful to him. His temper was essentially peaceful and conciliatory. Strong in his convictions, and fear- less in the expression of them, he had none of the blunt masterfulness which distinguishes the successful public man. He naturally approached the most decided statement of personal conviction along a way made smooth by a delicate and con- scientious respect for the opinion which he was combating. Above all, his scrupulous justice led him to take account of factors in a given situation which the ordinary party man could not afford to appreciate, so that he often irritated and confused those who thought they were most sure of his support. He was, alike by temperament and by his reading of the needs of the times, % con- vinced— indeed, an ardent — Liberal. Yet when Sir Michael Foster, a Unionist, stood for the University of London against a Liberal opponent, Fitch held that Foster's academic distinction and scientific eminence made him the worthier candi- date for the representation of the University, and strongly supported him, in spite of his personal friendship and esteem for the Liberal candidate. Where the conflicting claims of party allegiance and academic merit would have made decision difficult for the ordinary voter, Fitch was clear in his judgment of the right course to take, and
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inflexible in his adherence to it. In the same way he never made a secret of his detestation of the South African War. The rude simplicity of the people of the Boer States, their republican spirit, their religious fervour, and their unmistak- able sacrifices on behalf of their ideal of racial and national freedom, won him unreservedly to their side in the great conflict. Like others who were influenced by the same feelings, he suffered within from the division between what he believed to be the cause of justice and the cause which his country had made her own, and without from some measure of the persecution which was meted out in those dark days to all who took the un- popular side. Yet he preserved both his serenity and his common-sense throughout it all.
It was at such times that one discovered in him the reality of that vein of quiet humour which is the salt of life. He felt that protest to be effective must be allied with a complete self-possession, must work through a communicative good-humour, and that where that failed only the protest of patient and silent abstention from the popular madness was possible. At the time when the horrors of the concentration camps were sending a momentary tremor of doubt through the hearts of even the most unthinking supporters of the war, it was proposed to hold an indignation meeting in Paddington to protest against the continuance of
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the system. Fitch and a friend of his, a Paddington clergyman, who was known to be a Liberal and an opponent of the war, were asked by their political friends to make arrangements for the meeting ; but Fitch strongly advised that it should not be held, and it was accordingly abandoned. No one was more absolutely fearless than he, but he felt that the matter was a mere side-issue in the whole account of the national defection from the path of right, and that in the then state of public feeling a meeting of protest might help to quench the spirit of self -judgment which had begun to work, however faintly, in the breast of the nation. It was of this fine balance and measured temper that the man was made.
But if he did not care to fight on the platform, he was always fighting with his pen. In the Nineteenth Century, the Quarterly Review, the Contemporary, the Spectator, the Speaker, he was always discussing the questions or the books which interested him. The Times had no more frequent or weighty contributor on the important events of the passing moment. He caught and registered the permanent note in the most discordant clamour of public discussion. After reading the briefest of these criticisms of his, one feels that all that is positive and worthy in some violent public outcry has been redeemed from the negative and vicious elements which obscured it. In December, 1900,
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he wrote for the Journal of Education a most wise and timely condemnation of the movement for introducing military drill into the public schools, which was afterwards reprinted as a leaflet by the National Reform Union. Every morning of his later leisure brought him something new to think about and to reason out calmly in his active- meditative fashion. It was a pleasure to find him in his literary workshop with his books, news- papers, and reports about him, and the light streaming in on the fine head posed in a serene and steady activity of thought. Every sentence, as he wrote it down, came from a lifelong expe- rience ripened to that particular point of thought and time. Fitch had certainly found the secret of whatever sacredness and dignity there is in work.
His afternoons he spent for the most part at his club. He liked club life, as most busy men do. Though no man was more sufficient to himself, less dependent upon others, in the formation of his opinions and the conduct of his business, yet he had none of the instinct of the man of affairs for escaping occasionally from his fellow-men. Perhaps it was that his work brought him into contact with so many different kinds of people, that the human variety of his ordinary workaday life stimulated rather than dulled his interest in them ; perhaps it was merely native disposition.
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At any rate, he loved to discuss the events of the hour, the problems of politics, the tendency of opinion. Purely personal talk interested him less, though he was always honestly curious about everything that happened to his friends. The curiosity of the heart, however, is often silent when the curiosity of a merely frivolous imagina- tion is most voluble. In old days he was a member of the Savile Club, and was often there. But after his election to the Athenaeum in 1888 (he was proposed by Archbishop Temple and seconded by Matthew Arnold), he was usually to be found of an afternoon in its reading-room. He liked to walk back across the park just in time for dinner, and perhaps an evening's work of his favourite kind — a lecture to some teachers' association or working-men's institute. Walking, indeed, was his one form of physical exercise. He did nor shoot, or hunt, or fish, or play golf, or, in short, do any of the things which a healthy Englishman is supposed to do. Yet he was the healthiest of men, though even his holidays, which were his great enjoyment, he liked to share between his interest in the treasures of past civilization or present - day social life in some foreign city and his delight in roaming all day in the open air on the hillsides or lower mountain- slopes of Switzerland. Lady Fitch has contributed the following account of their holiday times,
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which were always spent together, and in later years with their niece, Miss Pickton.
* No account of my husband's life would be com- plete without some mention of the holidays which he so much enjoyed. Although there was always a little reluctance to break off from work, yet, when a holiday was once decided on, he had keen pleasure in arranging some interesting journey, and he threw into his travels his characteristic energy and enthusiasm.
' One of his earliest holidays as a young man was to the Lake District, his love of Wordsworth making him desirous to see the scenery which was so familiar through the poems. He also saw the old poet himself, and this was always a pleasant memory. Another early journey was a walking tour through some of the Belgian cities, in order to acquaint himself with different forms of church architecture, a subject which was specially interesting to him. At different times he also saw all the English cathedrals.
1 When our home was in York we usually came south for our holidays, and visited relations and friends ; but after we were settled in London our long holidays were more often spent in foreign travel, and generally during some part of August and September. On the greater number of our journeys our dear niece accompanied us.
' If there happened to be in any foreign town
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a special fine art or industrial exhibition, my husband would contrive to include it in our route. He never felt, as so many do, that exhibitions were to be avoided. Pictures could not fail to give pleasure, but exhibitions of all kinds were of interest to him, if only as showing evidences of progress in various departments of industry. An industrial exhibition at Diisseldorf led to a trip up the Rhine and visits to some of the old German towns, and following on an exhibition of pictures at Amsterdam was a tour in Holland. If there was no special exhibition in progress, we generally arranged to visit one of the famous galleries, so that for some years past my husband had become almost as familiar with them as he was with our own National Gallery.
( We all enjoyed Switzerland, not so much the lakes or the usual crowded tourist resorts as the high mountain places — preferably those which could only be reached on foot or by mule, as this meant quieter hotels and fewer people. Amongst other places, Eggischorn, Rieder Alp, Bel Alp, Evolena, St. Luc, Chandolin, Miirren (before the railway), Monte Generoso (before the railway), were well known to us. At the latter place we had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Lear, the author of the "Book of Nonsense," with whom my hus- band went one morning to see the sunrise from the Bella Vista, with its wonderful view of the
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Italian lakes, and across the Plain of Lombardy. During our second visit to Chandolin the little English church was opened with a special dedica- tory service, at which my husband took a part, at the request of the chaplain, by reading the lessons. ' Though not a regular Alpine climber, my hus- band was a great walker, and thoroughly enjoyed long expeditions on the glaciers or mountain ascents. The Bel Alp was a favourite resort, especially when the late Professor Tyndall was staying at his chalet. He used to come down to the hotel to see if he found friends there to invite up to tea. We much enjoyed going, and, besides the interesting talk there was sure to be, the Professor knew that his guests would like the home-made bread he gave them, which was a contrast to the sour bread at that time provided by the hotel. On one occasion we all, with some friends, including the late Canon Nisbet, then Rector of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, were making the ascent of one of the mountains in the vicinity of the Bel Alp. A little short of the top, where the path became very rugged, the Canon stopped and said he could go no further. Just then Professor Tyndall strode up and said : " Oh, you must go to the top ; the view is magnificent. Just follow where I tread, and you will be quite able to manage it," and then, with a twinkle in his eye : " It is not the first time, you know, that Science
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has come to the help of the Church." Another favourite place was Saas Fee. One specially pleasant visit was when Lord Avebury (then Sir John Lubbock) was also there. My husband was glad to have the opportunity of long talks with his old friend ; and the walks we all took to the glaciers and rocks were made particularly interesting owing to Lord Avebury 's special know- ledge.
' Although there was always keen enjoyment for the beauties of snow mountains and glaciers, Italy had a special attraction with its wealth of pictures and noble churches. In all the towns we passed through my husband used to like to go into the church or cathedral in the early morning and see the people crowding in before the work of the day began, and we knew if he had visited the market by the flowers and fruit we would find on the breakfast-table. Venice, Verona, and Cadenabbia, with their historic interest and association, as well as art treasures and natural beauty, had peculiar charm for him.
' We once took a holiday in the spring in order to visit Rome. The weather was beautiful, so we could enjoy to the full all that we had time to see, and, in addition, we had the pleasure of seeing our old friends Mrs. William Grey and Miss ShirrefF, who had been in the habit of wintering in Eome for many years. At their
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Sunday afternoon gatherings we met Mr. Adolphus Trollope and many other interesting English and Italian residents. Mrs. Grey obtained for us all tickets for a special service at the Sistine chapel, and also kindly lent us black lace for the head, which was necessary for all women who were present, and which, as tourists, we had not got with us. We were glad to have had this oppor- tunity of seeing the magnificent sight, suggesting a pageant of the Middle Ages. The quaint dresses of the Swiss guard, the uniform of the officers and Ambassadors, the picturesque costume of the Pope's Chamberlains, the red robes of the Cardinals, with the purple cassocks of their chaplains, were a fine setting for the Pope himself, carried aloft on his chair, looking as white as his robes, and with the white peacock-feathers waving before and behind. The beautiful music, and the digni- fied appearance of Leo XIII. as he gave his bless- ing, were most impressive.
' Only a short time was available for Naples. Vesuvius was unusually active, and the streams of lava pouring down the sides looked at night like flames of fire. We ascended as high as we could over the hot ashes, till stopped by the sulphurous fumes and showers of stones. Pom- peii surpassed our expectations. Much as we had heard and read of its unique interest, when we really saw the city and wandered through its
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streets we felt that the half had not been told us, and we regretted we could not stay longer.
' Another very memorable journey was to Ober- ammergau to see the Passion play. It was the last occasion on which Joseph Meyer took the part of Christ, and the dignity and pathos of the whole performance impressed us all very much. My husband was such a good manager that every- thing went smoothly with us on our travels ; only twice did we have serious mishaps, and that through no fault of our own.
' We were staying at the Bear Hotel at Grindel- wald when it, together with the d^pendance, English church, and between fifty and sixty chalets, were burnt down. As soon as the fire was noticed it was felt that the hotel was doomed, as it was built mainly of wood and a strong wind was blowing. Had it been at night, it would have been almost impossible to escape ; as it was, we could only save a few of our possessions by hastily throwing them together and dragging them into the fields. Everyone did what they could to help the villagers save their chalets, and we obtained shelter for the night in the village, but the next morning started for home, as we found we had lost so many necessary things, and also for a time we felt indisposed to live in wooden houses. Our only other mischance was when I was taken seriously ill at Cadenabbia, on Lake
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Como. Fortunately, Dr. Michael Foster was spending his holiday there, and I had the advan- tage of his great skill, as well as the most careful nursing of my niece ; but it was many weeks before we could return home by slow stages.
' When his anxiety with regard to me was somewhat lessened, my husband was able to enjoy long talks with his friend the late Bishop of Chichester, who was staying at the next hotel. Although of an advanced age, Bishop Durnford was full of plans for future work, and could take long walks, and seemed to be in his usual health when he left Cadenabbia. It was sad, therefore, to hear of his death as he was on his way home.
' One year we went to the Channel Islands, and at Jersey had the pleasure of seeing the Bailiff and his wife, Sir George and Lady Bertram, who remain warm friends now that he has retired and lives in London. We also met a French friend, who suggested our visiting her at her chateau in Caen. This we did, and a most interesting, quaint place we found it, with its numerous heir- looms. We then continued our tour in Normandy, staying a few days at Mont St. Michel.
' Our American journey is referred to elsewhere. Holidays were also spent in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. On our last visit to Dublin my husband had the pleasure of lunching with Archbishop Walsh, who wished to talk over Irish education
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difficulties with him. The two had often corre- sponded, but had not before met.
' When staying at Gleiigariff the fine spectacle was to be witnessed of some of the Channel Fleet in Bantry Bay. Admiral Sir Harry Rawson was staying in the same hotel as we were, and most kindly lent us his steam yacht to take us out to the Jupiter^ with a letter of introduction to the commander, Captain Durnford (now one of the Lords of the Admiralty), who received us most courteously, and enabled us to see what a man- of-war was like.
'Our last foreign journey was to Italy, spending some days in Milan to revisit the Brera Gallery, and then going to Perugia and Assisi. My hus- band had always been specially fond of Perugino as a painter, and a portrait of him had hung for many years in our drawing-room. It was a great pleasure to see his work in Perugia, and the olive- trees and blue Umbrian hills, which form the background to so many of his pictures. The visit to Assisi one can never forget, nor Ravenna, with its wonderful mosaics.
1 We had planned to see these places another year, adding Siena and some of the hill towns, but this was not to be.
' My husband's energy in all he took part was noticeable in his play as well as work. He liked to get to know a town as much as was possible in
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a short stay, and enjoyed wandering through the streets and observing the people. Not content with ordinary sightseeing, he would go into a school and see the children, chat to the peasants in the market-place and to the priests in the churches, and after dinner stroll out to see the simple amusements of the people. Everywhere he had an eye for old book- shops, and in Paris all available time was spent on the quays looking at the bookstalls there.
' At mere halting-places his power of seeing below the surface enabled him to find something of interest, so that every journey continued throughout delightful to us all.
' Travelling as we did at the official holiday time, we were sure to come across many friends, but it was a surprise when the cultivated monk with whom he talked when we stayed at the St. Bernard Hospice recognised his name, and showed him one of his lectures in the library of the monastery. In addition to our foreign journeys, we frequently attended the meetings of the British Association, my husband reading papers or taking part in the discussions in the economic section. The meetings were always interesting, and it was at the one at Norwich that the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Magee) preached a very remarkable sermon. We also attended many meetings of the Social Science Congress, and occasionally the Church Congress.
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When the latter met in York, we entertained as many clergy as our house would accommodate.'
In religion, Fitch would probably have described himself as a Broad Churchman, a Liberal of the non- theological school, a mixture of what was best in the pietist and the humanist. He hoped for and laboured towards a practical unity among the different religious communions into which the theological spirit had divided English Christianity. It was this hope which attracted him to become a member of the Christian Conference, an occa- sional convention of Churchmen and Noncon- formists which still meets under the presidency of the Dean of Ripon. Fitch was a most regular attendant at its meetings. He was also one of the original members of the Churchmen's Union, a society of Churchmen which aimed at dis- engaging the positive religious results of a critical and historical treatment of the Christian docu- ments and doctrines. But it was religion itself that he cared for, the profound and eternal lessons of the long experience of the human heart in its attempt to be true to the highest. His was the common religion of the English layman, a religion that may occasionally attribute a kind of secondary importance to theological technicalities, but is more often indifferent to and even a little suspicious of them. Among his best friends were some of the more Liberal English clergy of the passing genera-
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tion — men like the Bishop of Hereford, Mr. Llewelyn Davies, Mr. Haweis, Professor Bonney, Mr. Shepard, late surmaster of St. Paul's School, Prebendary Covington, Mr. Barion Mills, Mr. de Courcy Laffan, and Mr. Bradley Alford, the late Vicar of St. Luke's, Nutford Place. It was at St. Luke's that Fitch worshipped during all the later years of his life. And Mr. Alford it is who has written in a few sentences one of the most charming and faithful pictures of the man.
' What I admired so much in Sir Joshua Fitch was his great versatility of mind. That education of others which constituted his life-work, and which has often had a narrowing influence on those who undertake it officially, was for him the opening to many and various interests. He would discuss the different characteristics of paintings in the National Gallery ; he would bring his experience of the world to bear upon the vexed questions of pauperism and relief ; he would come out of an evening, tired, no doubt, after a day full of engagements, to meet the working men of London socially face to face. I used to wonder at his unflagging energy at a time when retire- ment from office might well tend to repose. Nor did he do these things with the air of a man performing a duty, but with all the appearance of one enjoying to the full whatever he did.
* He was an admirable chairman of a meeting,
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as full of courtesy as of tact, knowing when to intervene and how to sum up results.
6 In respect of the chief subject of my own studies, theology, while he had no patience with the blatant ecclesiasticism of the day, the inter- pretation of Scripture, its application to the prac- tical needs of existence, the Catholicism, which is truly catholic, in that it loves and sympathizes with the truth honestly upheld in any and every church, and rates a man according to his conscience and character rather than by his outward creed, these things found in him an ardent supporter.
' Once I met with a refusal from him which rankled in my mind for a moment, but which I can now look back upon as having been both just and wise. It was at the time when the Education Department was pressing somewhat heavily (as we thought) upon voluntary schools, insisting on considerable outlay for improved accommodation. I appealed to Sir Joshua Fitch, as knowing me and my colleagues, to obtain some exemption for us, or mitigation of requirements ; but he would not turn his friendship into favouritism on our behalf, and we have lived to find out that we are much the better off for not having been spared.
* May the education of the future meet with others like-minded, to guide authority rightly through the difficulties of a new departure !'
Fitch's interest in religious teaching was of the
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keenest. It was an interest of long standing. When he was still at Borough Road he found time to take a Sunday-school class. In 1862 he de- livered an address on ' The Art of Teaching in a Sunday-school' before the General Sunday Con- vention. He lectured, too, on the same theme to the members of the Church Sunday -Schools Asso- ciation, founded by the late Canon Cadman, and to the Sunday-School Union. It was a subject on which he had thought much and thought clearly, and he looked forward to a transforma- tion and a consequent development of the Sunday- school system as a result of the growing and inevitable tendency to reduce the time devoted to religious teaching in the ordinary day-schools. His admirable essay on this subject has been reprinted in his volume entitled ' Educational Aims and Methods.'
Though so much a man of the town and of its busy life, he loved the peace and charm of the country. It was a kind of Words worthian pleasure he found in Nature, the pleasure of the meditative mind and the restful spirit. Indeed, through many a dusty summer heat in London, his Wordsworth was for him, in the intervals of repose from labour, the kindly deputy of Nature and custodian of her secret treasure. But it was a refreshment to consult her at first hand as often as he could gain a few days' freedom, and to
THE REST OF A WORKER 243
learn from herself her secret things. He enjoyed in old days the week-ends which he was often invited to spend at High Elms, Lord Avebury's place in Kent. There he sometimes met Darwin, who lived near, and Ruskin. He liked the high- souled prophet of Nature, even in his most over- powering and oracular moods. In 1902 an ex- hibition was held in London with the view of fostering the study of Nature in schools. Fitch worked hard to organize it, and read a delightful paper at one of the conferences arranged in con- nection with it on ' The Influence of Nature - Study on School and on the Home-Life.'
Thus he spent the evening of his days, import- ing the vivid interest of youth into everything he did, and ready, at the invitation of his friends, to turn his knowledge and experience to such useful account as they might require. Now Dr. Welldon would have him consult on methods of teaching in public schools with his masters at Harrow ; now his friend the Bishop of Hereford would have him address his diocesan conference on the best way of using the educational endow- ments of the diocese. It was, indeed, on the occasion of this last engagement that the first signs of the end, as yet unsuspected by any, came. He had a slight attack of illness, enough to prevent his travelling down to Hereford, and the paper which he had carefully prepared had to
16—2
244 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
be read in his absence. It was the first touch of the disease that, within a year, was to bring the end. But for the moment he speedily recovered, and all the old equable energy was renewed. Often in those last years, and even months, his heart went back to the special work of his lifetime, to ,the ideals of his old calling, to all that an inspector might be and do for the cause of education in his district. At Bath, at Guildford, at West Ham, he addressed meetings of people interested in education whom the inspectors had drawn around them. He had become a kind of educational patriarch, whose jurisdiction extended over the whole country, and who had even won a kind of informal, but very efficient, authority far beyond our shores. Quite suddenly the end came to all this unresting, but always serene and happy, work. Towards the end of June, 1903, he had a sharp attack of his former illness. It turned to jaundice, and he gradually became unconscious, and passed away peacefully on July 14. He was laid to rest in Kensal Green Cemetery on Saturday, July 18. Nearly every educational interest in London was represented at the service in St. Mary's, Padding- ton Green, where during his later years he had frequently worshipped. The service was taken by his old friend the Bishop of Hereford and the Vicar of St. Mary's. Never did the familiar
THE REST OF A WORKER 245
hymn, ' Now the labourer's task is o'er,' recall the memories of a nobler life or record the Christian hope for it with a juster confidence. The master- worker in a great cause was with us no more, but his work, and, we may hope, the spirit of his work, had become a part of the England that is to be.
His life had been singularly happy. There was in it none of that divorce, from which so many suffer, between the body and the soul, between the individual impulse and the public work, between life in the home and life in the world. Unfailing health, a native radiance of spirit, the sense of original vocation for his work, and, above all, the ceaseless interest of the com- panion of his life in all he did — these made his life a perfect harmony. His wife had been a help meet for him. His friends were her friends, his interests were her interests. She knew, with something of his own intimate knowledge, the details of every new educational project on which his mind and heart were set. She worked with him in the cause of women's education, and was, both consciously and unconsciously, his inspira- tion in it. Their tastes and sympathies were so mutually responsive that the friend of the one became almost of course the friend of the other. They had no children of their own, but they both loved children, and they bestowed all the affection which their children would have received upon
246 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
their niece and adopted daughter, who repaid it with an entire devotion. The three did not merely live together in one house : they made one home, and carried it with them into the life of the world. In all their voluntary work, in social life, in their working days and their holidays alike, they were always together. Only death brought parting, and a withdrawal of the visible presence of one of them from that indissoluble bond of affection. Two good and brave women still do their work in the world in the certainty that such shows of things as time and change cannot break it.
Shortly after her husband's death the Prime Minister offered Lady Fitch a pension on the Civil List. She felt, more than anything else, the recognition of her husband's literary eminence by one who was himself a distinguished thinker and writer. Fitch had lived a life of such high conscientiousness and devotion to the work in hand that he could never have hoped to die rich. It is well that the country should feel its respon- sibility towards such men. The Civil List pen- sions cease to be an anachronism when they are so worthily distributed, when they recognise the merit of a career of self-spending in the country's service. In this case the gift was as great an honour to him who offered it as to her who re- ceived it.
THE REST OF A WORKER 247
Sir Joshua Fitch enjoyed a great reputation, and wielded a great and legitimate authority over the whole field of his interests. Outside it he was content to remain unknown, and probably was unknown. Yet he was worth the great world's knowing, for the very reasons which left him to it unknown. The typical Englishman is the official administrator, the man who can put all that is best in him — his intellect, his imagination, his enthusiasm — into the routine work of a lifetime. The work of such men is probably more alive than any other work done on earth. It is not a machine product ; it is warmly human. It is such work that makes England what it is. Yet the men who do it remain comparatively unknown. Fitch was this typical Englishman at his very best. There were no exceptional moments in his life. There were in the stuff of his character none of those eccentric qualities which compel attention. His personality was fused in his work, and was fused equably in its every moment. Men were struck by the hopefulness, the geniality, the thoroughness, the easy, unhasting accomplishment, the steady ex- cellence, amid much variety, of his work. But it was not wonderful, for these were his own personal qualities translated into the only form of expression which they ever needed or desired. Fitch was the typical Englishman in that being and doing
248 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
were for him one thing. He would have dis- trusted the work which had not demanded and secured the heart's alliance with the head and hand. The record of his own work is at once a national possession and a national inspiration.
How it all struck a contemporary will appear from the following reminiscences of one who had known him in many phases of his public service, the present Master of Peterhouse* :
' I think that it was shortly before I settled down as a Professor at the Owens College, Manchester — why I mention this circumstance will immediately appear — that Mr. W. E. Forster, who was then incubating the great Education Act of 1870, of which Sir Joshua Fitch remained to the last a resolute upholder, selected him as one of two special commissioners appointed to report on the educational conditions of some of the great- northern towns ; but, if I remember right, it was not he, but Mr. Bryce, who visited Manchester. Some years later, however, when the Owens College was rising in revolt against the fetters im- posed upon its legitimate advance by its necessary dependence upon the examination system of the University of London, Mr. Fitch and the writer of this letter came into public contact, and, indeed, into what I suppose I ought to describe as con- flict. At a meeting of the Social Science Con-
* Dr. A. W. Ward,
THE REST OF A WORKER 249
gress at Cheltenham in 1878 he held a brief against me for the University of London, for which he always cherished a loyalty with which that rather stony-hearted mother must be allowed to have succeeded in inspiring some of the most generous of her children. I am speaking, of course, of the University of the past, which Mr. Fitch had formerly served as an Examiner in the comprehensive " English " group of subjects for several years — not of the present teaching University, which his endeavours as a member of the Senate were to help to call into life.
' He, or the policy of caution which he repre- sented, was victorious in that first encounter ; but very soon a compromise was approved, and the revolving years have in due course brought with them a complete concession of the academical independence which Manchester had the audacity to claim more than a quarter of a century ago. My contention with my Cheltenham adversary was not an embittered one ; for his sense of justice never deserted him in argument, and I felt then, as I had ample reason for knowing afterwards, that it was not in his nature to refuse sympathy, or even co-operation, in any educational develop- ment which offered greater opportunities of pro- gress without sacrificing the necessary safeguards of efficiency.
' The all but unequalled experience which he
250 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
acquired during the years in which the inspection of training colleges for women was in his hands he readily placed at our service when we ventured on the experiment of connecting day training colleges for men and women with our Northern University College ; and when, at a later date, we took the more novel step of instituting a University diploma for secondary teachers, his aid, both as an adviser and as our first examiner in the theory and practice of teaching, were invaluable. On the whole subject of the train- ing of teachers, Sir Joshua Fitch, by means of his published " Lectures " and mixed educational papers, which show the results of his American as well as home experience, will long remain a standard authority ; and if he has not lived to see a fuller recognition of the value of training for secondary teachers in particular, the lines are now laid down along which the advance must prove irresistible. Sir Joshua Fitch was well aware of the nature of the lordly indifference against which the methods advocated by him have to contend, but will, it is still conceivable, not in the end have to contend in vain.
c In the years — all too few — which followed upon his retirement from regular official work, but which certainly could not be called a period of leisure, I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Joshua more frequently than of old. He took
THE REST OF A WORKER 251
much interest in the responsibilities of his governorship at Girton, and we also met once or twice at St. Paul's, where it is a satisfaction to think that he lived to see the definitive estab- lishment of the girls' school, and to take part in the election of its first head mistress. The higher education of women had no warmer and more constant friend than Sir Joshua Fitch, who on this head was true not only to the most fertile traditions of the University of London, but also to the true Liberalism which was part of his nature. I am not referring to his political sym- pathies, of which he made no secret, but which he was not the man to allow to influence his public work or to affect its spirit — a fact well understood by the Minister who recommended him for the honour that fitly crowned his official career.
1 No better, and at the same time no more pleasing, illustration of Sir Joshua's Fitch's ever- fresh interest in secondary education, and of his appreciation of the fact that the line separating it from primary is a purely formal one, could be furnished than his book on Thomas and Matthew Arnold, one of the last products of his inde- fatigable pen. The last word may have been said — certainly, no more satisfactory, and at the same time no more temperate, judgment has, to my knowledge, yet been pronounced — on some of
252 SIR JOSHUA FITCH
the matters incidentally treated here (the place of classical studies in our secondary, the method of biblical teaching in our primary, schools, and the like) ; but the questions still burn, and it is use- less to stir them at the corners. I therefore prefer to conclude by pointing out that this unpretending volume shows Sir Joshua Fitch to have possessed literary gifts of no common order. ' The account of Thomas Arnold is, to my mind, the best brief summary which we possess of his character and genius, and there never was an eminent man in whom it was less possible to distinguish the one from the other. Sir Joshua Fitch perceives that the dominating qualities in Thomas Arnold were not those of the scholar or even of the educationist — a word which Sir Joshua says Matthew Arnold abominated, but which I can vouch for his having found himself constrained to employ. Thomas Arnold was a statesman at heart and in purpose ; but as he was never made even a Bishop, the legend has grown up which, though it seeks to do justice to many qualities unmistakably possessed by him, has contrived to dwarf what was his real intel- lectual stature. Of Matthew Arnold's personality Sir Joshua writes with the kindliest appreciation, touching his foibles with the gentlest forbearance, and justly extolling the vivifying power which his faith in his ideals exercised even over the
THE REST OF A WORKER 253
rank and file of the profession with which fate half-whimsically connected him. That the biographer was capable of sounding the depths of his brilliant colleague's mind is proved inter alia by a sentence to which, in form as well as in matter, I hardly think Matthew Arnold him- self would have disdained to subscribe :
' " There is in Arnold little of the rather help- less lament over an unforgotten but irrecoverable belief, such as is to be found in * In Memoriam,' where weak faith is seen trying to come to the aid of weaker doubt ; but a sane and manly recognition of the truth that, while some changes in the form of men's religious life are inevitable, the spirit and the power of the Christian faith are sure to survive."
' For the rest, as this volume does not fail to show, great writers with lofty aims, and great statesmen in esse and in posse, must alike suffer from limitations imposed upon them by a resist- less fate. And, albeit such a thought is unlikely to have suggested itself to one so arduous in endeavour and at the same time so modest in self-judgment as the subject of this letter, he is not to be accounted unenviable in life or in death, to whom it was given to perceive the full signi- ficance of the life's task which he was set to perform, and to achieve it within his allotted day/
254 SIR JOSHUA^FITCH
One of the best appreciations of him has been written by one who did not see much of him, but evidently saw him sympathetically and under- stood him well — Mr. Percy Bunting. He says :
' I first came to know Sir Joshua Fitch over thirty years ago. The Wesleyan Methodist Church had appointed a small commission to consider the reform of their schools for ministers' sons, and made me secretary of it. Looking about for skilled advice on the subject, I applied to Mr. Fitch, whom, of course, I knew by reputa- tion as one of the most trusted of our educational experts. He attended our little meeting, and delighted us all, both by his personal interest in our business and by the wisdom of his counsel. He was one of those charming personalities whom to meet was to know and to be friends with. Acquaintance at once took on the colour of friend- ship. His urbanity, his courtesy, his gracious manner were no masks ; they simply displayed at once and frankly the genial warmth of a sincere and pure soul. Ever after that first interview I seemed to know him familiarly, and we often met in public and private. I think of him now as one of the serenest of men, busy — intensely busy — but always at rest, always master of him- self and his work, never hurried or perplexed, clear and methodical, and, withal, entirely devoted. He was inevitably a Liberal by temper, hopeful,
THE REST OF A WORKER 255
firm in his grasp of principles, knowing what he believed and what he wanted done, and entirely given up to it ; so certain that he could freely welcome new ideas and new criticisms ; at ease in his deep faith in knowledge and goodness. Of his great ability and the task he accomplished I am not competent to speak. His memory does not seem to me mournful, for his life and work were complete and rounded, and his graciousness abides in the hearts of those who remain behind/
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS
Lectures to Sunday-School Teachers. Science of Arithmetic. School Arithmetic. Arithmetic for Beginners.
Lectures on Teaching Cambridge Press
Educational Aims and Methods „ ,,
Notes on American Schools and Colleges Macmillan
Thomas and Matthew Arnold Heinemann
,, ,, „ (American Edition) ... Scribner
MAGAZINE ARTICLES, ETC.
London University London Quarterly Review, 1857
Decimal Coinage „ „
Arithmetic Ancient and Modern ,, ,, ,, „
Language and Grammar ... „ ,, „ ,,
English Dictionaries ,, ,, ,, ,,
Children's Literature ,, ,, ,, ,,
Social Science ,, ,, „ 1858
Arctic Explorations ,, ,, „ 1859
Why is a New Code Wanted? 1861
International Exhibition Planet, 1862
Joseph Lancaster Museum, 1863
On Teaching English History ,, ,,
On the Teaching of Arithmetic ,, ,,
The Education of Women Victoria Magazine, 1864
Proposed Admission of Girls to the University Local Ex- aminations Museum, 1865
Educational Endowments Fraser's Magazine, 1869
Charity
Dulwich College „ „ 1873
Charity Schools Westminster Review, 1873
Statistical Fallacies respecting Public Instruction
Fortnightly Review, 1873
256
BIBLIOGRAPHY 257
Unsolved Problems in National Education
Fortnightly Review, 1874 Economic Experiment in the Communal Schools of Ghent
Macmillan's Magazine, 1875 Universities and Training of Teachers
Contemporary Review, 1876 University Work in Great Towns ... Nineteenth Century, 1878
London University Quarterly Review, 1887
Chautauqua Heading Circle Nineteenth Century, 1888
Education Chambers' Cyclopaedia 1889
Women and the Universities ... Contemporary Review, 1890 Contemporary Thought in England
Educational Review, New York, 1891
Memorandum on Free School System in America, France, and Belgium, prepared at the request of the Govern- ment 1891
A Teaching University for London ... Quarterly Review, 1892 Professional Training of Teachers
Educational Review, New York, 1892
Instructions to H.M. Inspectors, with appendices on Thrift and Training of Pupil Teachers, issued by Education
Department 1893
Proposed University for London
Educational Review, New York, 1893
Religion in Primary Schools Nineteenth Century, 1894
The Bible in Elementary Schools ... „ „ ,,
Eeligious Issue in the London Schools
Educational Review, New York, 1895
Education and the State ... Contemporary Review, 1895
Some Flaws in the Education Bill ... Nineteenth Century, 1896
London University Problem „ „ 1897
Creeds in the Primary Schools „ „ „
Eeligious Education in England ... Educational Record, 1899
Primary Education in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter in ' Education in Nineteenth Century,' 1901
Preface to Teachers' Edition of * Life of Stanley ' 1901
Inspection of Secondary Schools
From ' National Education, a symposium,' 1901
Higher Grade Board Schools Nineteenth Century, 1901
Education Problem „ „ 1902
Amendments to Education Bill ... ,, „ „
17
258 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Supplementary Article on Education in ' Encyclopaedia
Britannica.'
Several biographies in * National Dictionary of Biography.' University of London : Sketch of Work and History usyd as
Preface to the Calendar. Preface to ' Elementary Education ' Manual.
LECTUKES AND ADDRESSES.
Professional Training of Teachers 1859
Middle Class Education 1865
York Institute ... 1866
Methods of Teaching Arithmetic 1869
College for Working Women 1872
Yorkshire Union of Mechanics Institutes ... ... ... 1875
Proposal for New University in North of England (Social
Science Congress) 1878
Edgehill Training College ... 1885
Endowments — University of Pennsylvania ... ... ... 1888
Stockwell Training College 1898
Presidential Address, Teachers' Guild 1895
Some Limitations to Technical Instruction 1897
Norwood Technical Institute 1898
Conference of Managers and Teachers of the Guildf ord District 1901
Jubilee of Eussell British School 1902
Hereford Diocesan Conference 1902
British Teachers' Association 1902
Influence of Nature Study on School and Home Life . . . 1902
School Work in Relation to Business 1902
Reports on Yorkshire District, 1864, 1867, 1869.
Schools Inquiry Commission on Grammar Schools and Secondary
Instruction hi Yorkshire. Reports on Lambeth District, 1878, 1882. Reports on Lambeth and Eastern Counties, 1884. Reports on Women's Training Colleges, 1886, 1887, 1888, 1889,
1890, 1891, 1892, 1893.
Report on Technical Education in Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1897. Memorandum on Training of Teachers for Royal Commission on
Secondary Education. The Relations which should subsist between Primary and Secondary
Schools (Royal Commission on Secondary Education).
INDEX
AINGBR, CANON, 92 Alderley, Lady Stanley of, 143 Alford, Eev. Bradley, 240, 241 * American Schools and Colleges,
Notes on,' 69, 164 America, visit to, 69, 164, 165,
166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171,
172
Anderson, Mrs. Garrett, 151 Andrews, Miss, 140 Arnold, Matthew, agreement
with, as to State action, 29,
176, 229, 252, 258 ' Arnold, Thomas and Matthew,'
32, 252
Athenaeum Club, 229 Avebury, Lord, 233, 243
Barkby, W., 11 Beale, Miss, 136, 140 Bedford College, 143, 154 Bertram, Sir George and Lady,
236
Bonet-Maury, M., 210, 211 Bonney, Professor, 240 Borough Road Training College,
8,9 ' Brain and Nervous Pressure in
School,' 138
Bristol, Bishop of 205-207 British and Foreign School
Society, 8, 9
Brooks, Phillips, 169, 170 Browne, Miss Leigh, 150 Bryce, Right Hon. James, 96-
99
Bunting, Mr. Percy, 254 Buss, Miss F. M., 136 Butler, Mrs. J. E., 123
' Charity,' Fraser's Magazine,
212 Charity Organization Society,
212, 213-223
Chautauqua, meeting at, 171 Chautauqua Reading Circles, 172 Cheltenham Ladies' College,
135
Christian conference, 239 Churchmen's Union, 239 Church schools, inspectors for,
32; disadvantages of system,
34, 35
Clough, Miss, 123, 144 College de France, 193 College Hall, 149, 155 College for Working Women, 155 Contemporary Review, 227 Cornwell, Dr., 9 Covington, Prebendary, 240 Cox-Edwardes, Rev. J. C., 199 Crossley, Mr. John, 15
Davies, Miss Emily, 142, 143,
144, 146 Davies, Rev. J. Llewelyn, 117,
240
Diary, objections to keeping a, 20 Doctor of Laws, St. Andrews.
224 Domestic economy, teaching of,
46
259
260
INDEX
Duncombe, Dr. (Dean of York),
93
Durnford, Bishop, 236 Durnford, Captain, 237
Education Bills of 1896, 1902, criticism on, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190
Education, compulsory, 191, 192
Education, Journal of, 228
Education prior to Act of 1870, 23, 24, 25, 26
Education, religious, 185, 186, 187
'Educational Aims and Methods,' 242
Educational Review (New York), 167
Eliot, Dr., 167
Endowed Schools Commission, 67, 72, 87
Endowments, educational, 73, 75
Examinations : Indian Civil Service and London Univer- sity, 91
Examinations, method of con- ducting, 116
Fearon, D. E., 94
Ferry, M. Jules, 210
Fitch, Lady, 13, 14, 169, 229, 245, 246
Fitch, Eev. Thomas, 2
Fitch, Mr. William, 2
Fitch, Joshua Girling : birth, 1 ; family, 1 ; brothers, 2 ; Borough Koad School, 3; study for matriculation, 5 ; Sunday- school teacher, 5 ; assistant- master at Southwark, 5 ; interest in Tractarian Move- ment, 6 ; devotional literature, 7; headmastership at Kings- land, 7; B.A. and M.A. de- grees, 8 ; tutor at Borough Road Training College, 8 ; Vice - Principal and Principal
of College, 9; lectures on method, 11 ; teaching children, 12 ; marriage, 13 ; adoption of niece, 13 ; friends, 15 ; interest in life, 16 ; almoner to Society for Relief of Distress, 19 ; objections to keeping a diary, 21 ; appointment as H.M. In- spector of Schools, 22; re- moval to York, 23 ; descrip- tion of district, 27 ; educational ideal, 28 ; work of inspector, 30, 31 ; reports on Yorkshire district, 36 ; advice to teachers, 41 ; religious teaching in schools, 43, 185 ; discrimina- tion with regard to educational suggestions, 47 ; criticism of teachers, 51 ; responsibility of parents, 56 ; payment of fees, 58 ; need for State action, 60 ; Schools Inquiry Commission, 66 ; report on education in four large towns, 66 ; Assis- tant-Commissioner under En- dowed Schools Act, 67 ; In- spector of Schools in East Lambeth, 67 ; Chief Inspector for Eastern Division, 67 ; In- spector of Training Colleges for Women, 67 ; extension of time of service, 68; retirement, 68 ; visit to America, 69 ; re- port on free school system, 69 ; reports on Endowed Schools Commission, 74-86 ; testimonial on leaving York, 86 ; friends in York, 92, 94 ; examiner at University of London, 102 ; Fellow of Uni- versity and member of Senate, 102; Governor of University College, 102 ; views as to work of a University, 103-113 ; ex- aminer for Indian Civil Ser- vice, 114-118 ; University ex- tension, 120 ; North of England Council for Higher Education
INDEX
261
of Women, 123 ; women's work in the world, 130 ; edu- cation of women, 135-142; Girton College, 143 ; decrees for women at London Univer- sity, 145 ; women's University, 146, 147, 148; address to Post - Office employes, 152 ; Pfeiffer bequest, 153, 154, 155; Holloway College, 155 ; High- school girls and outside teachers for elementary schools, 156, 157 ; Maria Grey Training College, 158 ; Roman Catholic Training College, 159 ; visit to America, 164-172 ; technical instruction, 177-179 ; importance of head as well as hand work, 180 ; savings-banks in schools, 181 ; views on Education Bills of 1894 and 1902, 183-190; free school system in America, France, and Belgium, 190, 191 ; pre- sentation of portrait, 195 ; Departmental Committee on Poor Law schools, 198 ; Com- mittee on Working of Marine and Dockyard Schools, 199; Committee on Greenwich Hospital School, 200; lectures, 202 ; St. Paul's Girls' School, 203-207; help to foreign students, 208 - 211 ; Charity Organization Society, 212-223 ; Doctor of Laws, 224 ; Chevalier of Legion of Honour, 224 ; knighthood, 224 ; University of London Parliamentary election, 225 ; South African War, 226, 227 ; club life, 229 ; holidays, 230 - 238 ; religious views, 239 ; teaching in Sun- day-schools, 242; nature-study exhibition, 243 ; illness and death, 244
Forster, Eight Hon. W. E., 95
Foster, Sir Michael, 225
Foster, Dr. Michael, 236 Free school system, working of in America, France, and Bel- gium, 164 Fry, Miss Isabel, 157
Girls, Church of England High School for, 141
Girls' Public Day School Com- pany, 135
Girton College, 143, 145, 154
Granville, Lord, 23
Green, Thomas Hill, 94
Grey, Mrs. William, 135, 233, 234
Grove, Miss, 149
Hale, Dr. Edward Everett, 165 ' Half-timers,' reply to, 48 Haweis, Eev. H. B., 240 Hereford, Bishop of, 243, 244 Hill, Dr. (Master of Downing),
172
Hobhouse, Lord, 88, 118 Holidays, 230-239 Holloway College, 155 Holmes, Dr. Wendell, 169 Hunter, Sir Eobert, 195
Indian Civil Service Commis- sioners, 116
Indian students, 209, 210 Italian journeys, 233, 234, 235
Jones, Miss H. M., 136 Kenrick, Eev. J., 94
Lady Margaret Hall, 143 Laffan, Eev. E. de Courcy, 240 Lambeth, East, report on, 41 Lancaster, Mr. Joseph, 8 Latham, Miss, 201 Laurent, Monsieur, Professor at
Ghent, 182 Lear, Edward, 231 Lectures on ' Science, Art, and
History of Education,' 137
262
INDEX
Lectures on teaching at Univer- sity of Cambridge, 137
Legion of Honour, Chevalier of, 224
Literature, English teaching of, in schools, 50, 51
' Literature, Value of, in a Busi- ness Life,' 203
Local interest, importance of utilizing, 29, 59
Loch, Mr. C. S., 213-223
Macaulay, Zachary, 13 McCarthy, Kev. E. F. M., 94 Macmillan's Magazine, article
on ' School Savings-Banks,3 182 Magee, Dr., 238 MaWa Vale High School, 140 Manning, Miss E. A., 208, 209,
210 Maria Grey Training College,
154, 158
Mason, Sir Josiah, 95, 96 Merivale, Miss J., 156 Military drill in schools, 228 Mills, Kev. Barton, 240 Monk, Dr., 94 Mundella, Right Hon. A. J.,
153, 198 Murray Butler, Dr., 167
National Gallery, lecture on, 201 National Home Beading Union,
172
National Portrait Gallery, lec- ture on, 201, 203 National Reform Union, 228 Nature-study exhibition, 243 ' Nature Study, Influence of, on
School and Home Life,' 243 Newnham College, 143, 154 Nineteenth Century, 110, 227 Nisbet, Canon, 232 Netting Hill High School, 136, 139
Parents, payment of fees by, 58, 59
Parents, responsibility of, 56, 57 Paris, technical schools in, 178,
179, 180
Parkman, Mr. Francis, 169 Paton, Dr., 172
Pennsylvania, University of, ad- dress before, 75 Pfeiffer, Emily, 153 Pfeiffer, Mr., will of, 153 Pickton, Miss, 14, 169, 212, 230 Post-Office, employes at, 152
Quain, Sir Richard, 145 Quarterly Review, 110, 227 Queen's College, London, 143, 154
Reading-books, need of care in selection of, 37
Reading, importance of, in schools, 41
Religious teaching, importance of, 42
Ripon, Dean of, 239
Roman Catholic Training Col- lege, 159
Ruskin, John, 243
Sabatier, Auguste, 210 Satthianadhar, S., 209 Savile Club, 229 Savings-banks in schools, 181 Scholarships, travelling, 210 School of Medicine for Women,
151, 154
School, Greenwich Hospital, 200 Schools, Endowed, Commission,
67 Schools Inquiry Commission,
66,70
Schools, Poor Law, 198 Schools, Royal Marine and
Dockyard, 199
Schools, voluntary, value of, 189 Shaw Lefevre, Right Hon. J.,
198
Shepard, Rev. J. W., 240 Shirreff, Miss, 135, 233
INDEX
263
Singleton, Eev. K. Corbet, 93
Smith, Dr. Vance, 94
Society for Employment of Women, 152, 155
Society for Relief of Distress, 19
Somerville College, 143, 154
Sorbonne, 193
South African War, 226, 227
Southwark, Bishop of, 156
Speaker, 227
Spectator, 227
Spencer, Lord, 199
Stanley, Lady, of Alderley, 143
State action, object of, 60, 61, 62, 63
Storr, Mr. Francis, 68, 70
St. Hugh's Hall, 143
St. Mary's College, Paddington, 201
St. Paul's School, 205
St. Paul's Girls' School, 204, 206, 207
Strong, Miss, 141
Stuart, Professor James, 124
' Sunday School of the Future,' 5
Sunday-school Teachers, Asso- ciation of, 5, 242
Swallow, Eev. E. D., 89
Swanwick, Miss Anna, 153, 154, 194, 195
Switzerland, travels in, 231, 232
Teachers, advice to, 39, 41, 43,
51, 52, 53, 54 Teachers, conventions of, in
America, 171 Teachers' Guild, address to
members, 40
Technical instruction, 178, 181 Technical schools in Paris, 178,
179, 180
Temple, Dr., 92, 156, 229 Testimonials, dislike to giving,
20 Thorne, Mrs., 151
Times, The, 227
Tractarian Movement, interest
in, 6
Trollope, Adolphus, 234 Tyndall, Professor, 232
University extension, 120, 122,
123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128 University life, value of, 103 University of London, 102, 109,
110, 112, 118, 145, 225 University preachers in America,
170 University, Women's, 146, 147,
148
Vaughan, Cardinal, 159 Voysey, Eev. C., 92
Warburton, Canon, 67 Ward, Dr. Adolphus, 248 Welldon, Dr., 243 Wesleyan schools, 44, 254 Wilks, Emma. See Lady Fitch Wilks. Mr. Joseph Barber, 13 Wilks, Eev. S. CM 13 Women, Council for Higher
Education of, 123 Women, education of, 130 ' Women in National Education,'
161 Women on Boards of Guardians,
160
Women on Consultative Com- mittee of Board of Education,
160 Women's colleges and halls,
155 Women's Training College,
Cambridge, 154, 158 Woodman, Mr., 3 Woods, Miss Alice, 158 Wordsworth, 230
York, 14, 23, 27, 86, 92, 93, 94
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, OUILDFORD.
Telegrams : 4* and 43 Maddox Street,
1 Scholarly, London.' Bond Street, London, W.,
May, 1906.
Mr. Edward Arnold's
List of New Books.
SIR JOSHUA FITCH.
an Account of bf8 %ifc anfc TKKorfc, By A. L. LILLEY, M.A.,
VICAR OF ST. MARY'S, PADDINGTON GREEN.
Large Crown 8vo. With Portrait. 75. 6d. net.
This account of the useful and strenuous life of a distinguished public servant appears at an opportune moment. Everyone who is interested in the present crisis in public education will welcome the biography of one whose life's work was so intimately bound up with the educational history of the last half-century. A man of remarkable versatility and indefatigable energy, Sir Joshua's interests were many and wide. In this way he was brought into contact with the leading men and women of the day, not only in the educational world, but in every branch of useful endeavour. The present volume, therefore, appears with exceptional recommenda- tions, and has been eagerly awaited. The task of producing it has been entrusted to the Rev. A. L. Lilley, into whose hands Lady Fitch has placed all the material at her disposal.
LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W.
2 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
A STAFF OFFICER'S SCRAP-BOOK.
By LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON, K.C.B.
Demy 8vo. With Illustrations, Maps, and Plans. 1 8s. net.
General Sir Ian Hamilton's story of the operations of the Japanese First Army, under Marshal Kuroki, at which he was present as British Attache, is generally recognised as the best and most authoritative account accessible to English readers.
The Seventh Thousand is being rapidly exhausted — a remark- able testimony to the welcome accorded to this fascinating work, which is described by The Times as by far the most inter- esting book on the Russo-Japanese War that has yet appeared from the pen of an eye-witness.
SOME DOGMAS OF RELIGION.
By JOHN ELLIS McTAGGART, Litt.D.,
LECTURER IN MORAL SCIENCES, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Demy 8vo. IDS. 6d. net.
This book attempts to prove, in the first place, that beliefs as to certain matters of fact beyond our empirical experience are essen- tial for religion, and of fundamental importance for human life. Secondly, it is maintained that such beliefs cannot legitimately rest on faith, but only on argument. Reasons are then given for thinking that the ordinary objections to the belief in human immortality are fallacious. It is suggested that the most reasonable form for the doctrine of immortality to take is one which makes each person to have existed for many years before the existence of his present body, and perhaps for all past time. A chapter on Free-Will endeavours to show that Determinism must be accepted, and that its acceptance would have no bad effects on morality.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 3
THROUGH INDIA WITH THE PRINCE.
By G. F. ABBOTT,
KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE HELLENIC ORDER OF THE SAVIOUR; AUTHOR OF 'SONGS OF MODERN GREECE,' 'THE TALE OF A TOUR IN MACEDONIA,' ETC.
Demy Svo. With Illustrations. 125. 6d. net.
1 Though the book is first in the field, it is extremely probable that it will turn out to be one of the best produced as a result of the royal progress. Mr. Abbott writes with knowledge, with point, and with humour, and he is not afraid to be outspoken. ' — Observer.
' Mr. Abbott's work is far more than a mere catalogue of durbars and official receptions. It is a survey of India, a revelation of the soul of the people. He writes with sympathy and with understanding, and the picture is both vivid and lifelike. It is difficult, in a volume of 300 pages, to do justice to a country so varied and multiform as India. But Mr. Abbott has succeeded in a task that might have been deemed well-nigh impossible. He has a genuine descriptive talent, with an occasional fondness for the purple patch, which he may have borrowed from the Orient itself. The reader of this book will discover on every page some characteristic or striking picture. ' ' Through India with the Prince ' ' is one of the most delightful books of travel we have read for some time past.' — Tribune.
SHAKESPEARE AND HIS DAY.
a StufcB of tbe topical Element in Sbafcespeare ant) in tbe Blisabetban 2>rama.
By J. A. DE ROTHSCHILD,
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
Crown Svo. 55. net.
This work was originally written as the Harness Prize Essay of 1901. The author, considering that no field could offer a wealthier fund of Elizabethan remains than the contemporary dramas, has devoted himself almost entirely to the drama as a source of infor- mation, although contributions have occasionally been levied on pamphlets and other writings. The Elizabethan background which is evolved as contemporary allusions are massed together is an achievement equally useful and interesting to the lover of the literature of the period.
4 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
THE AENEID OF VIRGIL.
With a Translation by CHARLES J. BILLSON, M.A.,
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.
2 vols. Crown 4^0. 305. net.
' Mr. Ellison's volumes may safely be recommended to all who love the Aeneid. ' — Spectator.
' Mr. Ellison's version is at once a credit to English scholarship, and a contri- bution to English literature. To read it is to come within measurable distance of appreciating the greatness of Virgil. With a remarkable faithfulness to the original it combines a spontaneity and a felicity of phrase which entitle it to rank as poetry of no mean order.' — Manchester Guardian.
THE ROMANCE OF EMPIRE.
By PHILIP GIBBS,
AUTHOR OF ' FACTS AND IDEAS,' ' KNOWLEDGE is POWER,' ETC.
Crown Svo. With Illustrations. 6s.
' Mr. Gibbs has produced a book of unmistakable fascination and value. Nothing better could be wished for familiarizing youthful readers with the outline and vital spirit of the history of the great self-governing colonies and of British India.' — Outlook.
' Mr. Gibbs has written a book as interesting as novel, which should have a considerable vogue as a prize in the schools of girls and boys. It may equally well take its place in the libraries of people grown to maturity, for it gives within handy compass a nearly complete epitome of the foundation of the British Empire in America, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the South African Peninsula.' — Sir HARRY JOHNSTONE in The Tribune.
SURGICAL NURSING
2lnD tbe principles of Surgery for IRurses. By RUSSELL HOWARD, M.B., M.S., F.R.C.S.,
LECTURER ON SURGICAL NURSING TO THE PROBATIONERS OF THE LONDON HOSPITAL ; SURGEON
TO OUT-PATIENTS, ROYAL WATERLOO HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN AND WOMEN
SURGICAL REGISTRAR, LONDON HOSPITAL.
Crown Svo. With Illustrations. 6s.
This is an exceedingly lucid and comprehensive handbook on the subject, and contains all the most approved methods very clearly arranged.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 5
THE CHURCH AND COMMONWEALTH.
Gbe Visitation Cbarges of tbe IRtgbt IRev* (Beorge IRioDing, 2>.S>,, 3first JBisbop of SoutbwelL
Collected and Edited by his Wife, Lady LAURA RIDDING. Demy Svo. los. 6d, net.
For some time before his death the late Bishop of Southwell had intended to republish in a collected form his Visitation Charges to his Diocese. These Charges are five in number, the last of them, which was to have been delivered at the Synod summoned to meet at Southwell on June 30, 1904, being in the unfinished state in which the Bishop's final illness found it. In preparing them for the press, Lady Laura Ridding has omitted those passages which are of purely local, or of temporary, though public, interest, but in other respects the Charges appear in their original form, and constitute a valuable body of teaching on many of the great Church questions of the day. There is a full synopsis of the subject-matter, which enables the reader to see at a glance the points dealt with under such main headings as The Holy Communion, The Law of the Church, Education, etc.
CONCERNING PAUL AND FIAMMETTA.
By L. ALLEN BARKER,
AUTHOR OF 'THE INTERVENTION OF THE DUKE,' 'WEE FOLK, GOOD FOLK,' 'A ROMANCE OF THE NURSERY,' ETC.
With a Preface by KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN. Crown 8vo. 55.
' One of the most genuine " treats " which has come in our way for a long time in the order of books relating to children. There is no Helen's Babies business or Little Lord Fauntleroy twaddle in this thoroughly human book, brimming over with humour of a rare kind, and with sympathy to match.' — World.
6 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
VALVES AND VALVE GEAR MECHANISMS.
By W. E. DALBY, M.A., B.Sc., M.lNsx.C.E., M.I.M.E.,
PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING, CITY AND GUILDS OF LONDON CENTRAL TECHNICAL COLLEGE.
Royal Svo. With numerous Illustrations. 2 is. net, cloth ; 2os. net, paper.
Valve gears are considered in this book from two points of view, namely, the analysis of what a given gear can do, and the design of a gear to effect a stated distribution of steam. The gears analyzed are for the most part those belonging to existing and well-known types of engines, and include, amongst others, a link motion of the Great Eastern Railway, the straight link motion of the London and North-Western Railway, the Walschaert gear of the Northern of France Railway, the Joy gear of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, the Sulzer gear, the Meyer gear, etc.
' No such systematic and complete treatment of the subject has yet been obtainable in book form, and we doubt if it could have been much better done, or by a more competent authority. The language is exact and clear, the illustra- tions are admirably drawn and reproduced. ' — Times.
A MANUAL OF PHARMACOLOGY.
By WALTER E. DIXON, M.A., M.D., B.Sc. LOND., D.P.H. CAMB.,
ASSISTANT TO THE DOWNING PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, EXAMINER IN PHARMACOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITIES OF CAMBRIDGE AND GLASGOW.
Demy 8vo. 155. net, cloth ; 145. net, paper.
This text-book, which is prepared especially for the use of students, gives a concise account of the physiological action of Pharmacopoeia! drugs. The subject is treated from the experimental standpoint, and the drugs are classified into pharmacological groups. The text is fully illustrated by original tracings of actual experiments and by diagrams.
The author's aim throughout has been to cultivate the reasoning faculties of the student and to subject all statements to experiment, in the hope that pharmacology may thus be learnt like any other science, and consist in something more than the mere committal to memory of many disjointed and often unassociated facts, as it has been too often in the past.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 7
RACES OF DOMESTIC POULTRY.
By EDWARD BROWN, F.L.S.,
SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL POULTRY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY ;
AUTHOR OF ' POULTRY KEEPING : AN INDUSTRY FOR FARMERS AND COTTAGERS,' ' INDUSTRIAL POULTRY KEEPING,' ' PLEASURABLE POULTRY KEEPING,' ETC. „
Crown ^to. With Illustrations. 6s. net.
This important and comprehensive work, by an admitted master of his subject, will be welcomed by all who are interested in poultry- keeping. Chapters I. and II. deal with the origin, history, and distribution of domestic poultry, and with the evolution and classi- fication of breeds ; the next ten chapters are devoted to the various races of fowls ; Chapters XIII. to XV. treat of ducks, geese, and turkeys. The remaining chapters are on external characters and breeding. There are also Appendices on Nomenclature, Judging, etc
A FISHING CATECHISM
AND
A SHOOTING CATECHISM.
By COLONEL R. F. MEYSEY-THOMPSON,
AUTHOR OF ' REMINISCENCES OF THE COURSE, THE CAMP, AND THE CHASE.'
Two volumes. Foolscap Svo. 35. 6d. net each.
Lovers of rod and gun will welcome these valuable handbooks from the pen of an admitted expert. The information given is abso- lutely practical, and is conveyed, for the most part, in the form of Question and Answer. As the result of some fifty years' experience, the author seems to have anticipated every possible emergency, and the arrangement is especially calculated to facilitate easy reference. There are special chapters on fishing and shooting etiquette, and at the end of each book is a chapter dealing with the legal side of the subject.
' The questions are direct, and the answers equally direct ; it is difficult to think of other questions which might have been put, so wide is the range covered by query and reply; and, last and best recommendation of all for a book of this kind, Colonel Meysey-Thompson recognises that no question must be ruled out as too easy, or as being one of the things that every duffer knows.' — County Gentleman.
1 The whole handy, well-printed book is as full of information of the right sort as an egg is of meat. It will delight alike the tyro and the expert, which no book can do that is not thoroughly good.' — Sportsman.
8 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
RECENT ADVANCES IN PHYSIOLOGY AND BIO-CHEMISTRY.
CONTRIBUTORS I
BENJAMIN MOORE, M.A., D.Sc.,
JOHNSTON PROFESSOR OF BIO-CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL.
LEONARD HILL, M.B., F.R.S.,
LECTURER ON PHYSIOLOGY, THE LONDON HOSPITAL.
J. J. R. MACLEOD, M.B.,
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, CLEVELAND, U.S.A. LATE DEMONSTRATOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, THE LONDON HOSPITAL.
M. S. PEMBREY, M.A., M.D.,
LECTURER ON PHYSIOLOGY, GUY'S HOSPITAL.
A. P. BEDDARD, M.A., M.D.,
ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN, LATE DEMONSTRATOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, GUY'S HOSPITAL.
752 pages. Demy 8vo. i8s. net, cloth; 175. net, paper.
This book, which is edited by Mr. Leonard Hill, consists of Lec- tures on Physiological subjects selected for their direct clinical interest, and designed to meet the requirements of advanced students of Physiology. Professor Moore deals with Vital Energy, Ferments, and Glandular Mechanisms ; Mr. Hill himself with the Atmosphere in its Relation to Life, the Metabolism of Water and Inorganic Salts, and the Metabolism of Fat ; Professor Macleod with the Metabolism of the Carbohydrates, and of Uric Acid and the other Purin Bodies, and with Haemolysis ; Dr. Pembrey with the Respiratory Ex- change and Internal Secretion ; and Dr. Beddard with Lymph, Absorption, and the Secretion of Urine.
NEW EDITION.
PRACTICAL PHYSIOLOGY.
By A. P. BEDDARD, M.A., M.D., J. S. EDKINS, M.A,, M.B.,
L. HILL, M.B., F.R.S., J. J. R. MACLEOD, M.B., AND M. S.
PEMBREY, M.A., M.D.
Demy Svo. Copiously illustrated. 125. 6d. net, cloth ; us. 6d. net, paper.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 9
NEW FICTION.
Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
THE LADY OF THE WELL.
By ELEANOR ALEXANDER,
AUTHOR OF 'LADY ANNE'S WALK,' 'THE RAMBLING RECTOR."
'It is a story of vivid imagination and great tenderness. . . . The thought that pervades this romance is really fine, often touching the deepest chords. ' — Morning Post.
' The book is altogether an extremely successful attempt to portray an ex- ceedingly difficult subject, and we may congratulate the author on the mediaeval atmosphere which she has contrived to impart into her story.' — Spectator.
SECOND IMPRESSION.
HYACINTH.
By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM,
AUTHOR OF 'THE SEETHING POT.'
' Of the political novels published in recent years few have compared in interest with " The Seething Pot," in which the various contending forces in the Ireland of to-day are illustrated and impersonated, not merely with considerable literary skill and humour, but with a dispassionateness and self-effacement rare in writers of fiction, and almost unprecedented where Ireland is the scene. Mr. Birmingham continues this illuminating process in " Hyacinth," which must be added to the list of books essential to the comprehension of the Irish character, and in serious interest fully equals its predecessor. ' — Spectator.
' The story is one of remarkable interest.' — Athenceum.
' The faculty of keen observation which made " The Seething Pot" interesting reappears with even a sharper satiric edge.' — Saturday Review.
FOLLY.
By EDITH RICKERT,
AUTHOR OF 'THE REAPER.'
1 " Folly" is a novel of distinguished cleverness.' — Standard. ' Miss Rickert has the gift of endowing her characters with that charm of
personality which adds so much to the reader's pleasure without detracting from
the power of her tale.' — Review of Reviews.
SECOND IMPRESSION.
THE HOUSE OF SHADOWS.
By REGINALD J. FARRER,
AUTHOR OF 'THE GARDEN OF ASIA.'
io Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
THREE LITTLE COOKS.
By LUCY CRUMP. Square crown Svo. With Illustrations by Gertrude M. Bradley. 2s. 6d.
' No child who owns one of those precious possessions — a miniature cooking stove — should be without this book. It contains many good recipes, adapted to the conditions of a toy stove, and also much good advice, which may be followed with advantage by those boys and girls who play at being cooks.' — ChurchTimes.
POLITICAL CARICATURES, 1905.
By F. CARRUTHERS GOULD. Super royal tfo. 6s. net.
NEW AND CHEAPER EDITIONS.
THE REMINISCENCES OF SIR HENRY HAWKINS
(3Baron 3Brampton). Edited by RICHARD HARRIS, K.C.,
AUTHOR OF ' ILLUSTRATIONS OF ADVOCACY,' ' AULD ACQUAINTANCE,' ETC.
Crown Svo. With Portrait. 6s.
In this edition a few of the more technically legal passages have been omitted, but all the dramatic episodes and characteristic anec- dotes remain untouched.
RED POTTAGE.
By MARY CHOLMONDELEY. Crown Svo. 2s. 6d.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books n
ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES ON ECONOMIC QUESTIONS (1865-1893).
WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES (1905).
By the RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT GOSCHEN.
Demy 8vo. 155. net.
' One of those rare and desirable works — an economic treatise based on practical and personal experience, and at the same time interesting and readable. ' — Manchester Guardian.
1 It is written in graphic and incisive language. Its qualities will, we are convinced, appeal to many readers who would be deterred from studying more formal and elaborate treatises, for they will find here complicated facts set forth with great lucidity and directness. . . . They will feel that they are throughout in close contact with the real circumstances of the actual situation.' — Economic Journal.
FINAL RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST.
By the RIGHT HON. SIR HORACE RUMBOLD, BART., G.C.B., G.C.M.G.,
AUTHOR OF ' RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST ' AND ' FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS OF A DIPLOMATIST.'
Demy Svo. 155. net, cloth ; 145. net, paper.
1 He appears to have met and known every remarkable man and woman ot his time who was to be met with in Europe. This last volume is, indeed, like its predecessors, a thoroughly fascinating study.' — Daily Chronicle.
LORD HOBHOUSE:
A MEMOIR.
By L. T. HOBHOUSE, and J. L. HAMMOND,
AUTHOR OF ' MIND IN EVOLUTION.' AUTHOR OF ' C. J. Fox : A STUDY.'
Demy 8vo. With Portraits. 125. 6d. net.
'No more conscientious public servant than the late Lord Hobhouse ever existed, and it is only right that the community on whose behalf he spent laborious days should be able to appreciate his full worth. That end will be agreeably accomplished by the readers of this compact and eloquent memoir.' — A then&um.
12 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
THE LIFE OF JOHANNES BRAHMS.
By FLORENCE MAY.
Two volumes. Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. 2 is. net, cloth; 2os. net, paper.
* There have been many valuable contributions to Brahms literature, but none that has yet appeared is of equal importance with Miss May's volumes.1 — The Times.
* Quite the most complete and comprehensive life of the master which has so far been produced in this country.' — Westminster Gazette.
' Bids fair to remain for many years to come the standard biography in the English language.' — Yorkshire Post.
A FORGOTTEN JOHN RUSSELL.
ffieing ^Letters to a dfcan of Business, 1724*1751.
Arranged by MARY EYRE MATCHAM.
Demy 8vo. With Portrait. 125. 6d. net.
4 A vivacious picture of society, mainly naval, in the reign of the second George. John Russell appears to have been a distant connection of the Bedford family. . . . Miss Matcham is to be congratulated on her judicious editing of this fresh and pleasant volume. Her John Russell has been most tactfully rescued from oblivion.' — Athenaiim.
THEODORE OF STUDIUM :
HIS LIFE AND TIMES. By ALICE GARDNER,
ASSOCIATE AND LECTURER OF NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE ;
AUTHOR OF 'JULIAN THE PHILOSOPHER,' 'STUDIES IN JOHN THE SCOT,' 'ROME THE MIDDLE
OF THE WORLD,' ETC.
Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. IDS. 6d. net.
' Miss Gardner's study of Theodore is a piece of work well worth doing, nor is it necessary in her case to add that it has been done well.' — Outlook.
• We would bear testimony once more to the care, erudition, and skill with which the life of a remarkable man has been written. And the student, both of the political and ecclesiastical history of that period, will be grateful for the material here collected.' — Church Times.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 13
THE GREAT PLATEAU.
3Befng an account of ^Exploration in Central atbet, 1903, and of tbe (Bartofc 3££peoition, 1904*1905,
By CAPTAIN C. G. RAWLING,
SOMERSETSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY.
Demy Svo. With Illustrations and Maps. 155. net, cloth; 145. net, paper.
' Of exceptional value as a record of travel, and its interest is enhanced by an admirable map and many exceedingly fine illustrations.' — Standard.
IN THE DESERT.
By L. MARCH PHILLIPPS,
AUTHOR OF 'WITH RIMINGTON.'
Demy Svo. With Illustrations. 125. 6d. net, cloth ; us. 6d. net, paper.
' A very fine book, of great interest and fascination, that is difficult to lay aside until read at a sitting.' — World.
'There are many that go to the desert, but few are chosen. Mr. March Phillipps is one of the few. He sees, and can tell us what he has seen, and, reading him, we look through his eyes and his sympathies are ours.' — The Times.
TWO YEARS IN THE ANTARCTIC.
3&eii\Q a Barrative of tbe JJritisb Bational Antarctic BjpeWtfoiu By LIEUTENANT ALBERT B. ARMITAGE, R.N.R.,
SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE 'DISCOVERY,' 1901-1904; AND OF THE JACKSON-HARMSWORTH POLAR EXPEDITION, 1894-1897.
Demy Svo. With Illustrations and Map. 155. net, cloth ; 145. net, paper.
'A most entertaining work, written in a plain, straightforward style which at once appeals to the reader. It is very nicely illustrated and furnished with an excellent map.' — Field.
14 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
FLOOD, FELL, AND FOREST.
By SIR HENRY POTTINGER, BART. Two volumes. Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. 255. net.
' Sir Henry Pottinger was one of the pioneers amongst Englishmen who have found in Norway a fascinating field of sport, and to these in particular his volumes will appeal. He is at once picturesque and graphic, and to the sportsman in general, and to the frequenter of Scandinavian homes of sport in particular, we heartily commend the book.' — Badminton Magazine.
THE QUEEN'S POOR.
3Lffe as tbeg ffnD it in Gown anD Country. By M. LOANE.
Crown Svo. 6s.
4 It is a book which is not only a mine of humorous stories, quaint sayings, and all that web of anecdote and quick repartee which sweetens a life at the best limited and austere. It is also a study in which common-sense mingles with sympathy in a record of intimate relationship with the problems of poverty.' — Daily News.
Sir ARTHUR CLAY, Bart., says of this book :— ' I have had a good deal of ex- perience of "relief " work, and I have never yet come across a book upon the subject of the " poor " which shows such true insight and such a grasp of reality in describing the life, habits, and mental attitude of our poorer fellow-citizens. . . . The whole book is not only admirable from a common-sense point of view, but it is extremely pleasant and interesting to read, and has the great charm of humour.'
SHORT LIVES OF GREAT MEN.
By W. F. BURNSIDE and A. S. OWEN,
ASSISTANT MASTERS AT CHELTHNHAM COLLEGE.
Crown 8vo. With Illustrations. 35. 6d.
Special Cheltonian Edition, including plan of Reredos and an Introduction by the Rev. R. Waterfield, M.A. 45.
The Cheltenham College memorial of Old Cheltomans who fell in the South African War takes the form of a reredos in the school chapel, filled with forty-four figures illustrating certain aspects of English history and representative men in different callings of life. It has been felt that an account of these great men would be service- able, not only to those who see these carved figures every day, but to a larger number of readers, who would be glad to have in a com- pendious form biographies of many of the leading men in English history and literature. The list extends from St. Alban to Gordon, and for the sake of convenience chronological order has been adopted. Illustrations are given of eight typical personages.
Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books 15
THE WALLET SERIES OF HANDBOOKS.
The following five volumes are the new additions to this useful series of handbooks, which range, as will be seen, over a wide field, and are intended to be practical guides to beginners in the subjects with which they deal.
Foolscap Svo., is. net per volume, paper ; 2s. net, cloth.
THE MANAGEMENT OF BABIES. By MRS. LEONARD HILL.
ON COLLECTING MINIATURES, ENAMELS, AND
JEWELLERY. By ROBERT ELWARD, Author of ' On Collect- ing Engravings, Pottery, Porcelain, Glass, and Silver.'
MOTORING FOR MODERATE INCOMES. By
HENRY REVELL REYNOLDS.
ON TAKING A HOUSE. By W. BEACH THOMAS.
COMMON AILMENTS AND ACCIDENTS AND
THEIR TREATMENT. By M. H. NAYLOR, M.B., B.S.
The following volumes have been already published :
ON COLLECTING ENGRAVINGS, POTTERY, PORCE- LAIN, GLASS, AND SILVER. By ROBERT ELWARD.
ELECTRIC LIGHTING FOR THE INEXPERIENCED.
By HUBERT WALTER.
HOCKEY AS A GAME FOR WOMEN. With the New Rules.
By EDITH THOMPSON.
WATER-COLOUR PAINTING. By MARY L. BREAKELL
(' Penumbra ').
DRESS OUTFITS FOR ABROAD. By ARDERN HOLT.
16 Mr. Edward Arnold's List of New Books
NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.
COMMON-SENSE COOKERY.
3fot Bngltsb Ibousebol&s, witb awentg Menus worfcefc out in Detail. By COLONEL A. KENNEY-HERBERT,
AUTHOR OF ' FIFTY BREAKFASTS,' ' FIFTY LUNCHES,' ' FIFTY DINNERS,' ETC.
Large crown 8vo. With Illustrations. 6s. net.
The author has so largely rewritten this edition that it is prac- tically a new book. Besides being brought up to date with the very latest ideas on the subject, it is much enlarged, and now contains a number of attractive full-page illustrations.
NEW AND REVISED EDITION.
FOOD AND THE PRINCIPLES OF DIETETICS.
By ROBERT HUTCHISON, M.D. EDIN., F.R.C.P.,
ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN TO THE LONDON HOSPITAL AND TO THB HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN, GREAT ORMOND STREET.
Demy 8vo. With 3 Plates in colour and numerous Illustrations in the text. 1 6s. net, cloth ; 155. net, paper.
ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
HISTORICAL TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE.
By A. T. QUILLER-COUCH (« Q.'),
AUTHOR OF 'THE SHIP OF STARS,' ETC.
Crown Svo. With Illustrations from the Boy dell Gallery. 6s.
The value of this much-appreciated work will, it is believed, be enhanced by the addition of sixteen selected illustrations from the well-known Boy dell collection.
LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, W,
56474
353255
325