It is natural, in considering the phenomenon of a great nation wholly without any stable principles to guide it in art, to ask what has the State done during sixty years in the matter of public education? Ask rather, what it has left undone! Certainly our rulers cannot be charged either with negligence or parsimony in this respect. Five years before the accession of Queen Victoria not a shilling of money was voted by Parliament towards elementary education. In 1833, for the first time, a grant of £20,000 was made for that purpose; at the present day the vote annually made for Education, Science, and Art exceeds ten millions. Even this is not enough to satisfy some people, as was made plain by the question addressed by an elector to a candidate for a Scottish constituency at a recent election. "Is Maister Wilson," asked this enthusiast, "in favour of spending £36,000,000 a year on the Airmy, and only £12,000,000 on eddication? That's to say, twelve millions for pittin' brains into folks' heads, and thirty-six millions for blawin' them oot." [Illustration: _From a Photograph_} {_by F. Frith & Co., Reigate._ MANCHESTER TOWN HALL. During the present reign most of our leading towns have built handsome and commodious Town Halls. That of Manchester, designed by Mr. Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., is a well-known example. It was opened in 1877. Its clock-tower is 285 feet high; the interior of the hall is decorated with historical paintings by Ford Madox Brown.] A generation has grown up under universal compulsory education, and it is possible already to calculate some of the effects of that far-reaching measure on the material prosperity, moral character, and literary habits of our people. In regard to the first two, statistics go to show that, notwithstanding an increase of nearly 35 per cent. in the population since the introduction of compulsory education in 1871, there had been a decrease between that year and 1894 of nearly 25 per cent. in the number of paupers, from 1,079,391 to 812,441. The convictions for crime showed a corresponding diminution from 12,953 to 9,634, or rather more than 25 per cent.; while, during a similar period, the number of "juvenile offenders" had been reduced to the enormous extent of over 71-1/2 per cent. [Sidenote: The Predominance of Fiction.]