lf?'
What answer was given? Strange to say the answer was also very
decidedly in the affirmative.

The young fellows were anxious to improve themselves. Now, mark the
difference between these working lads and the boys from the public
schools. Had such a question been put to the latter their answer would
have been a contemptuous stare, or a contemptuous laugh. Improve
themselves? They were already improved. They were so far improved that
nine-tenths of them were contented with the moderate amount of
knowledge necessary for the practice of their professions. If one
became a solicitor, a doctor, a schoolmaster, a barrister, a
clergyman, it was sufficient for him, in most cases, just to pass the
examinations. Then, no further improvement for the rest of their
natural life. But these others, who had everything to gain, whose
ambitions were just awakening, who were just beginning to understand
that there was every inducement to improve themselves, joined the
classes, and began to work with as much zeal as they showed in their
play.

What they learned concerns us little. It may be recorded, however,
that they learned everything. Practical trades were taught; technical
classes were held; there was a School of Science in which such
subjects as chemistry, physics, mathematics, mechanics, building, were
taught. There was a School of Art, in which wood modelling, carving,
and other minor arts were taught, as well as painting and drawing.
There was a Commercial School for Arithmetic, Book-keeping, Shorthand,
Typewriting; French, German, etc., were taught; there were Musical
Classes, Elocution Classes, a School of Engineering, a School of
Photography. Enough; it will be seen that everything a lad might
desire to learn he could learn and did learn.

But the Polytechnic was only one of many such institutions. In London
alone there existed, in the year 1893, between two and three hundred,
large and small; there were nearly fifty branches of the University
Extension Scheme; the Continuation classes were held in many Board
Schools, while of special clubs, mostly for athletic purposes, the
number was legion. As for the numbers enrolled in these associations,
already in 1893, when those things were all young, one finds 13,000
members of the Regent Street Poly, 4,000 at the People's Palace; the
same number at the Birkbeck; the same at the Goldsmiths' Institute; at
the City of London College, 2,500; and so on. Of the Athletic Clubs
the C