nd give full scope to its expression. A high level of
excellence is seen in the publications of the Book Room, and our
people when supporting it are also helping important Connexional
funds, to which the profits are given.

[Illustration: The North House, Leys School, Cambridge.]

While increasing care has been taken with the training of the
ministry, lay education has not been neglected. Kingswood School,
founded by Wesley, continues, as in his day, to give excellent
instruction to ministers' sons. In 1837 a Methodist school, Wesley
College, was opened at Sheffield, and a few years later one at
Taunton, well known as Queen's College. The Leys School at Cambridge,
under the head-mastership of Dr. Moulton, was opened in 1874, and has
shown "the possibility of reconciling Methodist training with the
breadth and freedom of English public school life." There are in
Ireland excellent colleges at Belfast and Dublin.

In 1875, a scheme for establishing middle-class schools was adopted,
resulting in the opening of such schools at Truro, Jersey, Bury St.
Edmunds, Woodhouse Grove, Congleton, Canterbury, Folkestone,
Trowbridge, Penzance, Camborne, and Queenswood; all report
satisfactorily.

Elementary education, which has made such great progress during the
Queen's reign, engaged the anxious attention of our authorities long
before the initiation of the School Board system, under which the
average attendance in twenty-five years increased almost fourfold.
Methodism has been in the forefront of the long battle with
ignorance.

The establishment of "week-day schools" in connexion with this great
Church owed its origin to the declaration of the Conference in 1833.
that "such institutions, placed under an efficient spiritual control,
cannot fail to promote those high and holy ends for which we exist as
a religious community." The object was to give the scholars "an
education which might begin in the infant school and end in heaven,"
thus subserving the lofty aim of Methodism, "to fill the world with
saints, and Paradise with glorified spirits"; a more ambitious idea
than that expressed by Huxley when he said, "We want a great highway,
along which the child of the peasant as well as of the peer can climb
to the highest seats of learning."

[Illustration: Queen's College, Taunton.]

In 1836 the attention of the Conference was directed to education in
general, and especially to Wesleyan day schools; the Pastoral Address
of 1837