I trust that at some future day, when we get our new buildings—it is impossible to do more than we do till we get them—more facilities for research may be provided, and even an extension of time allowed for it if necessary. I see no reason why some of the 1851 exhibition scholarships should not be awarded to students of this college, but to be eligible they must have published a research. Research should naturally form part of the work of the teachers in training who are not brought up here merely to effect an economy in the teaching staff.
Such, then, in brief, are some of our normal-school attributes. I think any one who knows the facts must acknowledge that the organization has justified itself not only by what it has done, but also by the outside activities it has set in motion. It is true that with regard to the system of examining school candidates by means of papers sent down from London, the department was anticipated by the College of Preceptors in 1853, and by Oxford and Cambridge in 1858; but the action of 1861, when science classes open to everybody, was copied by Oxford and Cambridge in 1869. The department's teachers got to work in 1860, but the so-called "University Extension Movement" dates only from 1873, and only quite recently have summer courses been started at Oxford and Cambridge.
The chemical and physical laboratories, small though they were in the department's schools, were in operation long before any practical work in these subjects was done either at Oxford or Cambridge. When the college laboratories began, about 1853, they existed practically alone. From one point of view we should rejoice that they are now third rate. I think it would be wrong of me not to call your attention to the tenacity, the foresight, the skill, the unswerving patience, exhibited by those upon whom has fallen the duty of sailing the good ship "Scientific Instruction," launched, as I have stated, out upon a sea which was certain, from the history I have brought before you, to be full of opposing currents.
I have had a statement prepared showing what the most distinguished of our old students and of those who have succeeded in the department's examinations are now doing. The statement shows that those who have been responsible for our share in the progress of scientific instruction have no cause to be ashamed.
Conclusion.—I have referred previously to the questions of secondary education and of a true London University, soon, let us hope, to be realized.
Our college will be the first institution to gain from a proper system of secondary education, for the reason that scientific studies gain enormously by the results of literary culture, without which we can neither learn so thoroughly nor teach so effectively as one could wish.
To keep a proper mind-balance, engaged as we are here continuously in scientific thought, literature is essential, as essential as bodily exercise, and if I may be permitted to give you a little advice, I should say organize your athletics as students of the college, and organize your literature as individuals. I do not think you will gain so much by studying scientific books when away from here as you will by reading English and foreign classics, including a large number of works of imagination; and study French and German also in your holidays by taking short trips abroad.
With regard to the university. If it be properly organized, in the light of the latest German experience, with complete science and technical faculties of the highest order, it should certainly insist upon annexing the School of Mines portion of our institution; the past history of the school is so creditable that the new university for its own sake should insist upon such a course. It would be absurd, in the case of a nation which depends so much on mining and metallurgy, if these subjects were not taught in the chief national university, as the University of London must become.
But the London University, like the Paris University, if the little history of science teaching I have given you is of any value, must leave our normal college alone, at all events till we have more than trebled our present supply of science teachers.
But while it would be madness to abolish such an institution as our normal school, and undesirable if not impossible to graft it on the new university, our school, like its elder sister in Paris, should be enabled to gain by each increase in the teaching power of the university. The students on the scientific side of the Paris school, in spite of the fact that their studies and researches are looked after by fourteen professors entitled Maîtres de Conférences, attend certain of the courses at the Sorbonne and the Collége de France, and this is one of the reasons why many of the men and researches which have enriched French science hail from the École Normale.