II.

THE SCHOOL BOARDS: WHAT THEY CAN DO, AND WHAT THEY MAY DO.


An electioneering manifesto would be out of place in the pages of this
Review; but any suspicion that may arise in the mind of the reader
that the following pages partake of that nature, will be dispelled,
if he reflect that they cannot be published[1] until after the day
on which the ratepayers of the metropolis will have decided which
candidates for seats upon the Metropolitan School Board they will
take, and which they will leave.

[Footnote 1: Notwithstanding Mr. Huxley's intentions, the Editor took
upon himself, in what seemed to him to be the public interest, to send
an extract from this article to the newspapers--before the day of the
election of the School Board.--EDITOR of the _Contemporary Review_.]

As one of those candidates, I may be permitted to say, that I feel
much in the frame of mind of the Irish bricklayer's labourer, who bet
another that he could not carry him to the top of the ladder in his
hod. The challenged hodman won his wager, but as the stakes were
handed over, the challenger wistfully remarked, "I'd great hopes of
falling at the third round from the top." And, in view of the work
and the worry which awaits the members of the School Boards, I must
confess to an occasional ungrateful hope that the friends who are
toiling upwards with me in their hod, may, when they reach "the third
round from the top," let me fall back into peace and quietness.

But whether fortune befriend me in this rough method, or not, I should