Other agencies now fairly at work in this enterprise remain to be mentioned. Before the Universities had sent their resident representatives to the East End of London, and to the slums of other great cities, they had actively identified themselves with the encouragement and the testing of secondary teaching throughout the land. The Oxford and Cambridge middle class examinations began to be held during the early sixties in the chief towns of provincial England. Very soon afterwards, there were organized successively the Higher Schools Examination Board, conducted by the two Universities, and the University Extension Lectures which presently will be examined here with some detail. But by this time the fresh appliances for elementary and secondary education, both directly or indirectly growing out of the legislation of 1870, had changed the physical, not less than the intellectual, aspect of the whole country. In the city as in the suburbs, in the provinces not less than in the metropolis, the whole landscape was thickly dotted with new piles of buildings, in all cases constructed with marked regard to convenience and health, substantial always, in some cases really handsome. These were the new Board Schools, some for the most elementary instruction of the rising generation, some for higher grade teaching, or for imparting to older children the rudiments of scientific and technical knowledge. In the former case the buildings were surrounded with gravel playgrounds, furnished with swings, parallel bars, and other gymnastic appliances, all used under the direction of an expert teacher, who alternately with the drill sergeant came on duty during play hours. The structures annexed to the actual class-rooms of more advanced pupils were furnished within as laboratories and work rooms. Here the pupils were apprenticed to the initial duties of the chemist, the gasfitter, the electrician, or of any other vocation they were destined in after life to follow. One result of this new start in the State schools was the stimulus of a competition that produced a perceptible increase of efficiency in the private schools not necessarily identified with any religious denominations. These private schools still exist; and by the greater elasticity of their system, and special opportunity of encouraging individual originality in the learners they are the salutary and indispensable adjuncts of the State institutions. The generally superannuated and often inefficient dominie, alternating between slumber over the text book from which he was supposed to teach, and unprovoked aggressions with his cane upon the knuckles or any other available part of the persons of his nearest pupils, is now replaced by a master in the prime of life and energy, who, if not a graduate in a University, has the certificate from one of the many examining bodies which attest his fitness for the place. Almost imperceptibly to-day, the elementary school matures into the secondary school.