greater schoolmaster, life itself. The school of life is the school for which you have to be fitted, and your chief teacher will be the actual experience which you undergo. That education then will be the best which aims at preparing a boy not for examinations, but for life. Examinations do not always test the qualities which will tell in life itself; for examinations after all only test what a certain number of boys know on a certain day after a certain preparation, and we must therefore take their results for what they are worth. I would like to tell those of you who have not got prizes, that besides the report of the examiner there is another report, and that is the report upon yourselves which can be only given by yourselves, and I think it is worth while to make up your minds when you go home that you will consult that little monitor within, and try and examine yourselves about the use you have made of the opportunities afforded you at school for fitting yourselves for the great life that lies before you. It is not the position in which you stand with reference to one another which is important, but it is the progress which you feel you have made in the past, and the genuine desire you have to make more in the future. If a boy will only acquire a capacity for progressing, something will come out of him in the long run.

Your head master has said that boys hate knowledge, but I do not suppose that when he says that about boys he means that in this respect they differ from men. It is the great characteristic of the Englishman, that he loathes ideas, and detests knowledge for its own sake, and only values it for its practical usefulness.

The Englishman is much more given to doing than he is to knowing, and if he knew more I do not think he would do as much. Therefore I shall not sing a pæan in favour of education because I believe it will make you more outwardly successful, for I do not think it will. I do not think that if we take technical education to every cottage, we shall increase English trade in the least. English trade depends upon the capacity of the men at the bottom. Many will not agree with me. I do not wish them to agree. I only tell you my opinions because I think they are just worth considering. Between knowing and doing there is not so great a connexion as is supposed. But for that very reason, I am always anxious that we should not either underestimate or overestimate what is done by education. Really education will not make a boy succeed much better in the world. Most of the men who have succeeded in the past have been men who were not educated, but the men who taught themselves. What education will do for you is to put you in the way of learning for yourselves such things as you want to know. I want to impress upon you that the motive power for everything must come from within. A master is apt to be mainly interested in turning out boys who shall be able to pass the right ` examination at the right moment. This is the danger which has almost swamped elementary education and which threatens all education. The remarks in your report which impressed me most were those final words of the examiner, when he said that he had pleasure in being able to testify that the school was full of life, promise and work. It is the life in the school work

which is after all the great test of its goodness. It is essential that the boys should be on the alert, that they should be ready to be interested, that they should have mental freshness. I regard these qualities in the minds of the boys as really the most important qualities which any education can produce. If boys could learn at school all about everything, that would only leave them dull persons. The object of their education at school is to give boys mental alertness and an eternal curiosity, and its real test is whether it leaves them always saying to themselves, Why? I do not know whether you have ever thought about it, but all the great discoveries of the world have come because some one has asked that question. The records of industry show nothing more clearly than that all real mental skill depends on asking questions. The answer is sure to follow. The real mental capacity is not displayed by the man who answers the question, but by the man who asks it. Discontent arises when men want to get something which they have not, and discontent is only after all the power of asking questions, of being intellectually on the alert, of going about the world with our eyes open. If your education, though it may go but a little way, has that result upon your minds it will assuredly be most productive. The real success in life is the success that makes for happiness, because that is what all men desire, and the power to spend our leisure time to advantage will do much to make our lives happy. The real joy of life is to feel that we are learning to take a broader view of things, that we are growing into a bigger world, that we are not a

mere echo of the people about us. We must think for ourselves, ask ourselves questions, and set ourselves. to discover the answers. Thus we shall gain such joy and pleasure as is supplied in scarcely any other way.

If England is to continue to exist and to go forward, it must be because its individual citizens develop more and more the power of forming a right judgment; and that power depends on the capacity for seeing into what is essential with regard to any question that comes before us. It helps us to come not only to a plausible conclusion but to a true one, and the development of this great quality comes in proportion as we acquire the mental habit of looking at things as they really are and laying hold of their essential points.

To-day is St. James's Day, and we must all have thought of the appropriateness of the lesson in the Church's service to the occasion which brings us together. It speaks of the mother of Zebedee's children, and tells us of her ambitions and aspirations for her sons. I expect there are many persons present saying of the boys in whom they are interested, "May he succeed," "May he prosper," " May his life be fruitful ". Our thoughts must run in those directions as we look at our boys, standing in all their youthful resoluteness, with unclouded eyes looking to the future, but I would remind you that it is not success that makes the man, but his power of enduring for righteousness' sake. I can desire nothing better for you boys than that you should try to cultivate within yourselves that clearness of vision, which can penetrate through the difficulties of life, and carry the soul into that region where discontent is unknown. May this be the result of your training at Magdalen College School.

XIII.

SUCCESS IN LIFE.

FROM A SPEECH AT THE PRIZE GIVING OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SCHOOL, MARYLEBONE ROAD, 8TH MAY, 1898.

THE qualities that make for success stand entirely by themselves. I cannot say what is necessary to success in life. Sometimes things are required which are repugnant to one's better nature; and I, for one, do not feel interested in how people get on. I cannot tell you how to get on nor even advise you to do so. I do not even think that education helps people to get on. I am sure that you will not get on without a certain amount of industry; but I cannot tell you what kind of education will ensure success. The education you get at school will not qualify you for it. You come to school to learn, not how to get on in life afterwards, but how to spend the leisure moments when you are not occupied in trying to get on. When you leave school and go into some business or trade you are set to your work and have to do it; you pick up the way of doing it by your own powers of observation. You cannot be taught at school any patent method of doing whatever your work may be after you leave school. Your training at school if it is of any good should be a training of your qualities. There can be no more useless notion