e lines and
in the direction" of that larger reform which the enthusiasts of
education have symbolized by the title of "The Golden Ladder."[*]

[Footnote *: Happily for Education, Mr. Fisher's Bill is now an
Act.]

III

_OASES_

My title is figurative, but figures are sometimes useful. Murray's
Dictionary defines an oasis as "a fertile spot in the midst of a
desert"; and no combination of words could better describe the
ideal which I wish to set before my readers.

The suggestion of this article came to me from a correspondent
in Northumberland--"an old miner, who went to work down a mine
before he was eight years old, and is working yet at seventy-two."
My friend tells me that he has "spent about forty years of his
spare time in trying to promote popular education among his fellow
working-men." His notice was attracted by a paper which I recently
wrote on "The Golden Ladder" of Education, and that paper led him
to offer some suggestions which I think too valuable to be lost.

My friend does not despise the Golden Ladder. Quite the contrary.
He sees its usefulness for such as are able to climb it, but he
holds that they are, and must be, the few, while he is concerned for
the many. I agree. When (following Matthew Arnold at a respectful
distance) I have urged the formation of a national system by which
a poor man's son may be enabled to climb from the Elementary School
to a Fellowship or a Professorship at Oxford or Cambridge, I have
always realized that I was planning a course for the exceptionally
gifted boy. That boy has often emerged in real life, and the
Universities have profited by his emergence; but he is, and always
must be, exceptional. What can be done for the mass of intelligent,
but not exceptional, boys, who, to quote my Northumbrian friend,
"must be drilled into a calling of some kind, so as to be able to
provide for themselves when they grow up to manhood"? When once
their schooling, in the narrow sense, is over, must their minds be
left to lie fallow or run wild? Can nothing be done to supplement
their elementary knowledge, to stimulate and discipline their mental
powers?

The University Extension Movement was an attempt to answer these
questions in a practical fashion, and my friend does full justice
to the spirit which initiated that movement, and to the men--such
as the late Lord Grey--who led it. But I suppose he speaks from
experience when he says: "University Extension, as it is,