Great

for

expressive crucifix, were all the work of the scholars, as were the lace curtains and the chairs. A fine piece of work also was a lovely head of the Mater Dolorosa, repoussé in high relief in sheet iron, the work of a lad who was now in Vienna. Even a pair of tongs that the director picked up were designed with true artistic feeling, and the whole of the fittings of the room were a study of excellent work, thoroughly artistic in design, and of exactitude in execution, and proved that the Galicians are not neglecting their talented citizens, but are developing their talents and turning them to most excellent service to themselves and the State.

From this Trades School I passed through the town to the well-situated, handsome building of the Technical College or Polytechnic, a school containing four trade sections, viz. engineering, architecture, machinery, and chemistry, and with a small school of mining and geodesy.

The approach to the handsome building is very effective, being up a wide flight of steps, and within all is well organised. The great hall is decorated with allegorical pictures by Mayteyko; powerful work, symbolic of study and the industries. The library is an excellent room, provided with parquet floor and oak tables and containing about 20,000 volumes in many tongues. In the common room of the professors I noticed one of the latest works

on auto-motors.

There are about 425 students attending this school; 290 in expenditure the engineering school, thirty-four studying architecture, ninetyeducation. nine machine construction, seventy-seven chemistry, and twentyone mining and geodesy. The salaries of the Professors amount to 116,000 gulden per annum, i.e., say £9,300 a year. The first cost of the building was 1,500,000 gulden, say £120,000, provided by the State, and the State keeps it up. The Professors are of course all men holding a degree, or diplomas of proved technical skill. Each year there is a specially organised excursion for outside study, but the engineers go once or twice weekly to study factories, bridges, &c.; and for surveying, fourteen days in the year are given to wider excursions.

Many of the pupils have gone to Russia as directors of factories, especially of sugar factories, and one is in a responsible position in Peru. The poorer as also the clever pupils are assisted by scholarships; of these the province, that is the Galician Diet, gives 10,000 gulden, each scholarship being worth about 150 to 200 gulden, .e., from £12 to £16 per annum. There is also a Hilfsverein or aid society that gives 36,000 gulden, and this has a house where the students live and pay only 3 gulden a month, students live Say five shillings. There is also a kitchen in the schools, where for 6 or 7 gulden a month other students can get dinners and suppers; this was started by the students, the school gives the room and material; the students buy all eatables and cook them, and divide the cost; it works out to about the price stated, or say fourpence a day; and for this sum the student gets for dinner soup, meat, and sweets; for supper, soup.

How

cheaply.

I happened to visit the kitchens and dining hall at dinner time,

and the food was good, of the Austrian order, and well-cooked. The pupils are the children of the poorer officials, shopkeepers, and peasant proprietors, and about 20 per cent. are Jews.

I found the school was well organised with good class and lecture rooms, but the room for organic chemistry was small and dark, though forty students worked here, but most of the rooms were of the ordinary type, and I did not expect to find anything of exceptional interest, as most of the work is theoretical and not practical, but at last I was shown into the instruction room and laboratory for ceramic work, and here I found an excellent example of immediately productive technical work.

The conductor of this section of the school is Herr Edmund Krzen, and he is a most enthusiastic teacher.

As he explained to me whilst I was looking over his work, the object of the school is to make a better type of article than those now in commercial use. They had samples of the natural clay or earth sent to them from all parts of Galicia, and they experimented upon it to find the best way to use it and what articles it was most fitted for.

aid to

Another object in view was to produce more cheaply, and Herr A valuable Krzen showed me a French pot that cost 16 kreutzers, whereas commercial he showed me what certainly looked a better article, manu- output. factured by their methods, that could be sold at 4 kreutzers.

In what he termed his library he had some thousands of pieces of every type of pottery, and examples of all varieties of clay. The students come here wholly for practical work for three or four years for six weeks in the year; and every type of pottery is studied, from roof tiles, water pipes, and from common bricks up to artistically painted plaques, and art vases in rich gold and bronze, and art tiles.

Sacks of the earth or clay are sent from very varied districts; these are labelled, and a map marked showing the spot from whence they came; experiments are then made in various types of work, and the district is informed as to the value of the earth sent and the most productive and economical way of utilising it. The instructor had six ovens and a muffle oven, and the whole staff of this apparently very useful little school consisted of himself, one assistant or workman, and a labourer. The potter's wheel was used, and the old method of modelling with the hand which one sees still amongst the Arabs is used if necessary or desirable, a good example of this work being done at the moment I was there.

Another local interest for which there is a department for study is that of petroleum and of the yellow and blond wax found in Galicia. The work of this department also bears upon the paraffin and kerosene industry. The professor in this branch lectures upon deep shaft sinking, &c.

The languages studied are Gerinan, French, English, and Italian. This school, with the exception of the pottery school, was more of the type of our own technical schools and university colleges, and was not so interesting in regard to the work I was doing as the art trade schools.

How the funds are

raised.

But the whole of the work being done in this town of but 130,000 inhabitants made me ask the questions: First, how the funds were raised for this well-organised education? and, secondly, did the people resent the levying of the taxes needed to pay for it, as people in England often protest against the School Board rates? Here, again, through the kind help of my friend Mr. Maslowski, I obtained from Dr. Bobrzynski, the President of the School Board, or, rather, of Public Instruction in Galicia, the following

statement.

The Volksschulen in Galicia are entirely free; and, further, the scholars are assisted with free books, free school material, and in some cases free clothing.

The cost of the buildings, and of the up-keep of the buildings, such as rent, fittings, lighting, heating, is raised in the school districts from the inhabitants-from properties or domains, i.e., the land-unless special funds are forthcoming for the purpose. The tax is levied in proportion to the amounts paid in general

direct taxes.

The salaries of the teachers are charged, in the first place, to the endowment, if any, of the school, or paid out of any voluntary contributions which the institution may receive. Any further sum, which the above-mentioned sources may be insufficient to provide, is levied from the commune or district in which the school is situate, and the educational needs of which it meets, but the maximum limit of the communal or district contribution is 6 per cent. of the amount paid by that district in direct taxes to the State. [In Urban Districts the maximum limit is 9 per cent.] Further, if over and above these contributions more is required to meet the cost of the school, the balance is levied from the funds of the province.

These school taxes are levied as an additional tax at the same time as the State taxes, but I was elsewhere informed that the inhabitants do not know what amount is really collected for the school-rates, but simply the amount they have to pay as a whole; in fact one well-informed inhabitant told me the school taxes only amounted to three kreutzers in the gulden, ie., 3 per cent., and probably this is so in some districts, but it will be seen the tax can amount to 9 per cent. The taxes are called in by a Coleta being sent to the inhabitants stating what sum in all has to be paid for State taxes, but for what this sum is levied is not stated. But even where the school tax stands at the higher percentage the ratepayers appear, at least in Lemberg, to be getting a highly useful and remunerative return for their money, and the individual citizen is certainly pecuniarily benefited by the expenditure.

purposes

The Rector of the Polytechnic, Herr Gustave Bisanz, who had so courteously received me, kindly gave me also a list of the other educational establishments in Lemberg. These were, in addition to his own handsome establishment, the High Trades School, the University, a Forest School, an Agricultural School situated in an adjoining village, five Gymnasien, one Realschule, and nine Volksschulen.

inhabitants,

As an example of how widespread the knowledge of other Polyglotic tongues is in Lemberg I may perhaps mention that before leaving the town I was honoured with a call from the burgomaster, who chatted at first in French; of course, he spoke Polish and German, and ere he left ran on into excellent English. M. Casimir Skrzynski also spoke excellent English, as did Mlle. Maslowski, and yet my visit was chronicled as the rare occasion of an Englishman's visit to Lemberg. In England, in a moderate sized provincial town, the mayor and local editor would hardly converse in four tongues. I left Lemberg much impressed with its advanced position in education, electric trams, &c., the more so as I was informed by M. Maslowski that the whole work had been done since 1866; before that date the town was unlit, unsewered, unpaved. The Lembergers may well be proud of their fine schools and handsome Parliament House, that looks out over a well-laid-out park and very beautiful gardens,

CHAPTER VI.

BRESLAU-SILESIA.

commercial

From the capital of Galicia I broke off my examination of A great education under Austrian rule, returning into Austrian territory centre. later on in Bohemia, and journeyed on to the busy manufacturing capital of Silesia, a town of 400,000 inhabitants. The artistic arrangement of the new streets, the monuments, and handsome business premises and shops, led me to expect equivalent educational establishments. Silesia comes under Prussian jurisdiction, and here my letters of introduction from Dr. Bosse, the Minister of Instruction, stood me in good stead, and I found all in Breslau glad to give me all information, saving in one curious instance, which stood out clearly as the only case in any country in which I have been refused facilities for seeing and studying school work.

Until quite lately the Prussian system has been to have centres for technical education, and to expect the students to leave their home centres and come to these educational centres to study; but they have seen that the Austrian plan of taking the schools to the towns in those trade centres, however small the towns may be, is an excellent system, and many of the Prussian professors say plainly the Austrian system is the best, and "we are copying it."

Breslau is of course an old and a great industrial centre; all the towns around it, such as Oppeln and Liegnitz, are full of industry, and the whole way from the Austrian frontier to Breslau is between busy towns, where very numerous factory shafts show plainly the immense industrial output of the district; and in this district are several building, machine, and

Designing of placards.

mining schools, with their accompanying apprentices' and workmen's classes.

The principal trades of Breslau are in coal, iron, machinery, manufacture of chemicals, spinning, weaving, and furniture manufacturing; it also produces largely those fancy nicknacks that fill our bazaars in England.

At

To educate its people technically and commercially, I found it possessed a building, or, as we should term it, an architectural school, with 400 pupils, an engineering or machine school with 100 pupils, a trade continuation school with 1,100 students, an art and an art trade school under one head; a Hundfertigkeit school, ie., a school for young beginners in handicrafts; a commercial school with 300 students, and an Innungsfach school, ie, a school to teach advancement in the trades followed within the town, even to such a trade as haircutting. this school 600 pupils were working, and there is also an agricultural school for the surrounding district at which seventy men are being trained. The Royal Art School I did not go over, but amidst well-known classical reproductions of sculpture and painting hanging on the walls of corridors and staircases were examples of the posters of all nations, the English certainly not holding their own for striking, combined with artistic, effect. One show-bill was the advertisement of a work on Treasures of Sculpture, a nude figure holding an Apollo, a remarkably clever and artistic bill. Another poster was a most effective showbill for pianos, &c., somewhat of the new grotesque school, but with good drawing. Another bill was French, of the Renaissance Theatre, Paris; another of the Estey organs in black and white. America was represented by the "Century Magazine" show-bill, and England by the Fitzroy Pictures of the Seasons, imitating Mr. Walter Crane's style.

This profitable branch of art, which has of recent years attracted increasing attention in England, is being carefully studied in many art schools abroad. I have before me a placard which I saw in an architectural and engineering exhibition held at Prague in 1898. The design is a most striking, eye-catching one, yet full of artistic feeling. Within a semi-circular rosegrown arch, indicating subjects illustrated by the exhibition, are two figures, one seated, the other descending a flight of marble steps, bearing a banner and emblems of engineering skill, the whole worked out in an effective combination of contrasted colours.

As the designing of artistic posters is to-day an important part of commercial technical art training, to which much attention is paid in England, let me describe a bill, which I also have before me, produced in Naples for the Sicilian railways; for in the north of England in September, 1899, I had a proof that this work is going out of England. My eye rested upon a strikingly picturesque show bill of some scenery; I thought at first it was foreign; castles and ruined arches, with peeps of lake scenery between them, were artistically grouped, and I called my friend's attention to the cleverness of the bill, and its contrast to the