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Education in Great Britain has just been undergoing a careful scrutiny. The Educational Section of the British Association has been listening to papers and addresses on a wide range of topics, which have then become the subject of general discussion. Some of these topics are the same as those Americans are accustomed to; others are strikingly unfamiliar. On both sides of the Atlantic there is complaint of the want of coordination between secondary school and college. But in the United States it takes the form of an outcry against the tyranny of the college. In Great Britain there is protest against the "un-natural ascendancy" enjoyed by secondary education. In the very process of leading democracy to higher levels, education makes efforts to adjust itself to the ideals of the institution for which it ostensibly sets the ideals. In the United States this is shown of late by the emphasis put upon vocational training. Democracy is willing to be educated, but it is inclined to prescribe its own courses.

Great Britain's Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone's administration has received a severe blow, and, though it has now come back again in its old shape, its prestige is seriously diminished. The Irish University bill now deceased may be dismissed with a very brief epitaph. Nobody was in favor of it with the exception of the Ministry and their thick-and-thin admirers, and nobody will weep over its remains. The only real question was whether the party ties of the majority were strong enough to stand the strain of so unpopular a measure, and that question has been decided in the negative. Gladstone's normal majority is between 80 and 90; some 35 Irish Roman Catholics deserted on this occasion to the enemy; and the supplement necessary to convert the majority into a minority was derived from the ranks of the discontented Radicals.

Scholar Sidney Lee has returned to England convinced that the American way of choosing college professors is better than the English, and has manfully made his avowal of conversion in the newspaper "London Times." Towards that variety of the merit system, which prevails at the English universities, his attitude is one of courteous ridicule. No man of high professional standing likes to answer an advertisement and put himself in public competition with a score of nobodies, and no modest person wishes to draw up the list of his own qualifications; while canvassing for the endorsement of distinguished acquaintances is the most distasteful task that can be set a scholar.