The composition of the Education Department was very simple in 1872 when I trod the corridors. At that time elementary education pure and simple was controlled from Whitehall. Science and art were the care of another establishment, which we knew as “South Kensington.” The Montague and Capulet retainers never met; only they bit their thumbs when the other house was mentioned. When--in the later ’seventies--we began to clash, science and art were considered pastimes for retired officers, who had exchanged the sword for an H.B. pencil, and all sorts of majors and captains used to be mixed up with the study thereof. They used to examine in drawing, and they conducted examinations in May and December with a code of regulations of their own composing. They even invented an envelope with a fastening that reminded one of Rob Roy’s purse--(“the simplicity of the contrivance to secure a furred pouch, which could have been ripped open without any attempt on the spring, &c.”)--and when, as occasionally happened, we were appealed to for help in superintending their examinations at the training colleges, we danced in fetters of red-tape. It used to be told of one of the best known of the Whitehall officials, F. T. Palgrave, of _Golden Treasury_ fame, that a school manager once interviewed him on some grievance, and, getting little satisfaction, enquired whether he might ask whom he had the honour of addressing. “Oh, certainly,” said he, “my name is Francis Palgrave.” The visitor thanked him, but explained that he rather wished to know the official’s rank: for instance, was his opinion final? “Not at all,” replied Palgrave airily; “I am what they call a Senior Examiner: above me are the three Assistant Secretaries, Mr. A., Mr. B., and Mr. C.: above them is the Secretary, Sir Francis Sandford: above him the Vice-President, Mr. Forster: above him the Lord President, Lord Ripon: and above him, _I believe_, the Almighty.” I served the Department, or Board, in one capacity or another and with some interval for more than thirty-five years. In all that time I never saw a Lord President, and I should often have found it hard to tell the name of the reigning potentate if I had been asked suddenly. He was always a peer: I dimly remember two dukes, two marquises, some earls, and a viscount. Barons were nothing accounted of. It was said that when Greville, the diarist, sometime Clerk of the Council, had attended his first Council meeting, some one asked a Cabinet Minister whether he had noticed that they had a new clerk: and the noble lord replied, “Not I; when the tall footman puts coals on the fire, do you suppose I notice whether it is Charles or James?” And the remark being repeated to Greville induced him to form a low estimate of the statesman.