name of Louis Napoleon inspired in Germany then. There were many still alive who remembered the ravages of the French, under the first Napoleon, and the thought that more terrible times might be in store for the Fatherland lay like a stone on the heart of every good German, for none but mediocrities had for many years guided the fortunes of the State, and the country had not yet awakened to its power.

Even the common people talked of nothing but Louis Napoleon, and I remember hearing an old washerwoman as she was wringing out the linen saying to her crony, 'Oh, if only something human would happen to him!' This was a curiously significative expression, as wishing for his death, and yet attributing something supernatural to him.

During this summer the Empress Dowager of Russia, the widow of the Emperor Nicholas, came to live at the Neue Palais for several weeks. A vast apartment had been prepared for her, as she came with an enormous suite. There were four maids of honour, who were dressed in black cashmere on workdays, and in French grey on birth and feast days. These young ladies had each of them several maids, who all slept on the floor, as did nearly all the other servants. There was a tradition that after these Imperial visits all the rooms had to be gutted and entirely renewed.

The Empress Dowager was the sister of the Regent (later Emperor William the First), and had been very beautiful. She still looked most distinguished and dignified. She was extraordinarily thin, but tall and erect, with deep-set eyes and very delicate straight features not unlike her mother, Queen Louise. She generally wore a plain black dress and a black lace scarf over her head, and loose light-brown Swedish leather gloves on her long narrow hands. On birthdays, however, she appeared in white, as splendid an apparition as a woman of her advanced age could be. Folds of costly lace enveloped her head and descended low down upon the rich white silk of her dress. Large pearls were fastened in her hair, and priceless pearl drops hung in her ears. Ropes of pearls encircled her neck, her arms, her waist. The only bit of colour was the pale-brown Swedish gloves, without which no well-bred woman of that day would have thought herself dressed. White was very little worn then, and never by old ladies; the Empress's appearance was therefore most surprisingly fascinating to the unaccustomed eye.

When we returned to Berlin the Princess continued to live her quiet, retired, and yet so well-filled life. Her mornings were passed in painting and attending to her correspondence, for she wrote almost daily to her parents. Just before luncheon she took a short drive with the Prince, and another in the afternoon. She seldom went to the theatre or opera, and always retired very early. Though almost a child still in years, she was even then a very remarkable character.

She had great decision and a wonderful grasp of the situation, also a great power of adaptation. Her disposition was a very affectionate one, and has perhaps in later years been misused by those in whom she reposed too much confidence. She loved England and everything English with a fervour which at times roused contradiction in her Prussian surroundings. I was, perhaps, the only one who entirely sympathised in her patriotic feelings, but I was too young and inexperienced to reflect that it would be unwise to give them too much scope.

It was a great sorrow to me when I had to part from a Princess to whom I was so deeply attached, and I always remembered the two years I spent in her constant vicinity and intimacy as some of the happiest in my life.

WALBURGA PAGET.

1909

THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM

THE withdrawal of the Education Bill does not imply that no further attempt should be made to secure a settlement; and a calm review of the position and of the possibilities of the future is not out of place.

First of all let me say that the voting at the Representative Church Council must not be taken as conclusive against the possibility of an amicable solution. Mr. Runciman, in his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the 4th of December, attached importance not to the resolution which was supported by a majority of the meeting, but to the amendment moved by the Bishop of Salisbury, and which made demands far in excess of terms provisionally agreed upon between the Government and the Archbishop.

It is well known that the House of Laymen, as it is called, is by no means representative of the ordinary Anglican layman in this country. I will undertake to say that if the English county councils were consulted, which are largely made up of Church of England gentry, their vote would be for settlement on lines much nearer those indicated by the Government. The House of Laymen is much more in sympathy with the English Church Union than it is with the legal established order of the Church of England. The ordinary layman cares very little for the special ecclesiastical and sacerdotal doctrines of the High Church. He does value the final supremacy of the State and of the Crown in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil. If, therefore, points of agreement can be arrived at between the various shades of lay opinion on this matter of education, we shall probably get the acquiescence of high ecclesiastical dignitaries whose position has familiarised them with public business, and who are able therefore to recognise human affairs as they are and not as ecclesiastics would wish them to be. Let us now examine the points which are most important in trying to arrive at a settlement.

First, what is to be the attitude of the State towards the teaching of religion? At present that attitude is one of neutrality. Every local authority may if it pleases have secular schools, and they may give as much time or as little as they please to the teaching of the Bible and of religion, with such fulness or limitation as they please, subject to the prohibition of using creeds and formularies and to

respecting the obligatory hours of secular instruction. No one proposes that the law should be altered so as to impose on the local authority the obligation to give various types of religious teaching according to the wishes of the parents.

The Anglican as well as the Roman Catholic would resent handing over the teaching of his faith to a municipal authority.

The arguments generally accepted which make this unreasonable and impracticable apply equally as to the reasonableness of entrusting to hundreds of local authorities the power to lay down and provide a scheme of what I may call municipal Christianity. Nevertheless, such is the general agreement of English people on the broader aspects of this question that in fact we have established in nearly every locality a scheme of Bible teaching, varying no doubt in fulness from the hymn, prayer, and Scripture reading of Huddersfield, which occupies perhaps ten minutes, to the full and elaborate syllabus of such places as London, Manchester, and Liverpool. On the whole, we may say that the prevalent type is one involving a full and reverent study of the Bible and the drawing therefrom of the broadest and most general elements of Christian teaching, avoiding those points on which Churches differ and aiming at that simplicity which is suitable for children of tender years. Of course this general teaching given at the public expense operates as a preference and is contrary to the principle of religious equality, and as such is challenged not only by the Bishop of Birmingham and by those who have joined him in his new league of religious equality, but it was also challenged by Sir Alfred Cripps in the resolution supported by a majority at the Church meeting. That resolution declared that a peaceful settlement of the education question is only possible on a basis of all-round tolerance and equality, irrespective of creed, and without distinction between denominationalists and undenominationalists.' And Sir Alfred denounced the 'exclusive and universal endowment of Cowper-Templeism,' which was at the basis of the whole compromise. Lord Halifax also condemned Cowper-Temple teaching. The Bishop of Birmingham said: In the State all kinds of religious teaching must be impartially treated. He was prepared to fight the establishment of a new religion based on whatever happened to be the current opinion among the teachers of the time.

Other quotations might be given, but it is clear that the motion which found favour with the Representative Church Council denounced not only the extension but the existence of general Bible teaching at the public expense and led up to a State system of secular schools.

And here let it be observed that the clause in the Government Bill, section 1 (2 b), making general Bible teaching for three-quarters of an hour compulsory, on the demand of any parent, was not a proposal put forward by the Government and imposed on the Archbishop, but

represented a demand by the Archbishop and by those who were acting with him, and accepted by the Government. The same principle appears, as a matter of contract, to be granted to the former managers of transferred schools in Mr. McKenna's Bill and was also included in the Bishop of St. Asaph's Bill.

What therefore Sir A. Cripps and his supporters were attacking was not the proposal of the Government, but the proposal of the great majority of the bench of Bishops.

What is more, my whole experience of the history of the management of education since the passing of the Act of 1870 satisfies me that those elected in the interest of Church of England education have invariably supported a scheme of Bible teaching in the Board schools and have co-operated in drawing up a syllabus; and since the Act of 1902, the Conservative and Church of England representatives on county councils have done the same. Personally I entirely agree with the contention of the Bishop of Birmingham that the State should treat all religions impartially. I would not only not establish a new religion, but I would disestablish those existing religions which are now established.

But if we are asked to bring about this secular equality in the interest of the Church of England, let us make sure that the members of the Church of England really desire it.

Let the Bishop of Birmingham and the Bishop of Manchester invite their friends on the education committees of those two cities to bring forward a motion to this effect, and let us see how many vote for it.

Very few of the Church advocates have been consistent in this matter.

The present Bishop of Manchester, when Bishop of Coventry and chairman of the Birmingham School Board, is reported to have discouraged the voluntary system of religious teaching which he found in use; and he not only took an active part in establishing a syllabus of Bible teaching, but he poured contempt on those who urged that a general system of common Bible teaching was undesirable and impracticable.

On the other hand, the newly appointed Archbishop of York preached a series of three sermons in St. Paul's at the beginning of the year 1906, before the introduction of Mr. Birrell's Bill, in which he strongly supported that general Bible teaching should not be put in any position of superiority over denominational teaching, and those sermons were at the time evidently intended as the manifesto of the clerical party, and as such were reprinted verbatim in the Guardian and School Guardian, the organ of the National Society. Now Dr. Lang is said to be co-operating with the Archbishop of Canterbury on the lines of Mr. Runciman's Bill.

After all, in practical politics, if a claim is put forward on behalf