Formerly, there was no profession of science at all. At Cambridge there were chairs of Mathematics, of Chemistry, and of other branches. But there was no profession of any branch of science. No man set up a laboratory and said “I am a chemist by profession”; there were none of the great Schools for Physical Science, such as now exist at Cambridge, at South Kensington, at Newcastle, and at other places; no young men began by “going in” for science, as they do at present. That profession which offers the noblest prizes of fame and name, together with a sufficiency of income, has been created in all its numerous branches within the last sixty years. The British Association made the world familiar with the claims and the work of the new science. Such men as Humphry Davy, Faraday, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and so many others, who will be accounted the chief luminaries of this age, planted firmly the claims of science in the minds of the people, and raised the position of science to the same level as that of Latin and Greek scholarship. All these physicists, electricians, zoologists, biologists, chemists, and the rest have come into existence during the Queen’s reign. The teaching of science at our Universities and Schools, the multiplication of new Colleges in all the Colonies, as well as at home, have created places for these students and a demand for their teaching: they have also created a demand for new books, which only these teachers were able to supply. Formerly, again, the position of teacher in a school, except when one was Headmaster of Eton, Harrow, or Winchester, was one of curious contempt. The reason for this contempt was simple: it was the connection between a schoolmaster and his floggings. That connection has now ceased. At a few schools, the Head exercises the old business with the birch: it is regarded as a custom or a usage rendered venerable by antiquity. “I was swished,” said a young fellow the other day, “nineteen times when I was at school. I have always regretted that I didn’t make it twenty.” But the assistant masters have no power of inflicting personal chastisement.