will
never become established in working-class villages. Forty-five to
fifty pounds is too big a sum to be raised in three months, and
is also considered too much to be paid for a man coming to lecture
once a week for twelve weeks, and then disappear for ever like a
comet." My friend uses an astronomical figure, I a geographical one;
but we mean the same thing. The idea is to establish Oases--"fertile
spots in the midst of deserts"--permanent centres of light and
culture in manufacturing districts. "The Universities teach and
train ministers of religion, and they go and live in their parishes
among their flocks all the year round. Why not send lecturers and
teachers of secular subjects in the same way? A system something
similar to the Wesleyan or Primitive Methodists' ministerial system
would answer the purpose. The country might be divided into circuits
of four or five centres each, and a University man stationed in
each circuit, to organize Students' Associations, give lectures,
hold classes, and superintend scientific experiments, as the case
may be."

This is a good illustration. The Church professes to place in each
parish an official teacher of religion and morality, and most of
the Nonconformist communities do the same. To place an official
teacher of culture (in its widest sense) in every parish is perhaps
a task beyond our national powers as at present developed; but to
place one in every industrial district is not conceivable only,
but, I believe, practicable. The lecturer who comes from Oxford
or Cambridge, delivers his course, and departs, has no doubt his
uses. He is like the "Hot Gospeller" of an earlier age, or the
"Missioner" of to-day. He delivers an awakening message, and many
are the better for it; but if culture is to get hold of the average
lads and young men of an industrial district, its exponent must be
more like the resident minister, the endowed and established priest.
That he should live among the people whom he is to instruct, know
them personally, understand their ways of thinking and speaking,
is at least as important as that he should be a competent historian
or mathematician or man of letters. If the State, or voluntary
effort, or a combination of the two, could secure the permanent
presence of such a teacher in every district where men work hard,
and yet have leisure enough to cultivate their intellects, a yawning
gap in our educational system would be filled.

It would not be polit