and I was pleased to find that my eight months' absence had attracted so much attention.

There is no part of Anglesey so repulsive to the well regulated mind as is Fleet Street in the City of London. There is nothing in the work of an Elementary School so dull as the proceedings in the Law Courts. And on going the usual rounds to attend Sessions and Assizes I found that the necessity of paying one's own travelling expenses, instead of charging them to the Treasury, was a distinct falling off.

This lasted till after Easter. About that time I got notice from the Education Department that I should be required to attend at the Office for the preparation and issue of notices under the Act of 1870, and with some hesitation, for this was neither a permanent billet, nor a road to the Woolsack, I accepted the call.

The Department, having accumulated sufficient information about school supply and deficiency, was now to send to every parish in England and Wales a Statutory Notice containing their Lordships' decision. It was my duty to advise on the issue of these notices to my former district. This occupied, with occasional intervals, about two months.

I have always since been glad that I had this opportunity of seeing the inner working of the machinery, and in after years I found it of great service. It brought me face to face with officials who signed only initials to their minutes addressed to the outdoor staff, and were disposed, if there was any dispute, to shelter themselves behind the shield of "my Lords.' my Lords." When one knew that " my Lords" was J. B., or B. J., and that J. B. was only old Brown, and B. J. only young Benjamin Jones, one felt less down-trodden than when one supposed J. B. and

B. J. to be possessed of the inner confidence of the VicePresident.

There were some other Inspectors of Returns summoned for similar work. Several of these rose to more important. positions in the public service, but the only man that attained to distinction was one already well known to me, the late Henry Traill, whose comments on his district inspector, and on the Office generally, were our daily delight. We assembled in a decayed mansion in Parliament Street, now entirely destroyed. I suppose it stood in front of the new Foreign Office. Our hours were those of the permanent staff: we began at I I A.M. with a margin of at least half an hour. About one P.M. there was a generous interval for lunch. The man who stayed till Big Ben struck five might have had a final half-hour of quiet work. Of course there was no night work. This was better than rushing about the country in Welsh cars, catching the 8.30 A.M. train, and sitting up after midnight to make up Reports.

For the most part our work was to transcribe our recommendations from the Reports which we had sent in. When these were done, we conferred with the Senior Examiner of each area, who had to sign each notice. It was trivial work for those who had already gone thoroughly into the details.

It must be understood that the examiners-whose existence as an unexamined but nominated body of Civil Servants occasionally excites the wrath of Radical M.P.'s -never examined children. Nec examinati, nec examinantes, is their proud motto, and I think they would add sed sicut angeli in caelo. But they examined our Reports and the correspondence of the Office. There were similar officials in the old India Office. James Mill

was an examiner ; but in the National Biography Charles Lamb and John Stuart Mill are styled "clerks," and probably they were of lower rank. Our examiners were appointed by the Lord President, and in answer to those carping Radicals it is alleged that high academical distinction already earned renders further examination unnecessary. I think there were exceptions, but certainly many were men of remarkable ability, and in some cases this was combined with practical aptitude for affairs. If this latter qualification were conspicuously wanting, I suppose some hint was dropped that in another career there would be more scope for obvious abilities, which, &c., &c. "The stage, or the army, or something very superior in the licensed victualling way," suggested Mr. Sampson Brass. The fittest survivors rose by degrees to be Assistant Secretaries, and until recently one of this select body was chosen to be Secretary when a vacancy

occurred.

The examiners were of two orders, senior and junior, and between the juniors and the younger inspectors intermittent war smouldered and raged. The indoor man was shocked at the irregular habits of the outdoor man ; the outdoor man was disgusted by the pedantry and ignorance of details shown by the indoor official. But no blood was shed, and on both sides advancing years brought toleration. Of late years a much better tone has prevailed throughout the Office. The machinery

had been oiled.

There was another class of officials, in some respects the most meritorious: these were the clerks. They were appointed in the ordinary way of the Civil Service, and rose to great eminence in their class. I imagine they worked with reasonable diligence during office hours,

and if they spent some part of the time on the Civil Service Co-operative Store, and similar toys, that is better than writing poetry on office paper in office hours; which was the crime laid at the doors of the examiners. During the thirty-five years of my correspondence with the Office I think I saw only three of these excellent men, but I knew by name and high repute many more. Their mission in life was to keep the examiners in the straight path, and at times they treated both them and the younger inspectors much as a caddie treats a beginner at the game of golf; or, to put it more respectfully, as an old sergeant treats a newly-joined subaltern. Their merit was accuracy and trustworthiness; their foible was pedantry. In a treatise blending the Politics with the Ethics, Aristotle would have said that the virtue of a Civil Servant's life was Orderly Method; its Defect is Muddle; and its Excess is Red Tape. As a rule the higher branches of the service lean to the Defect, and the lower to the Excess. The critic of Ministerial and official disasters would do well to bear this in mind when he is seeking a victim to denounce.

Among the three clerks whom I met, there was one who gave me some remarkable information. It was in my early days, and I had recently met an angry Welshman on the church side, who complained that his party did not get fair-play. There was a certain Welshman, whom we may call Jones, highly placed in the Red Tape and Sealing Wax Office, discovered by Anthony Trollope. Jones was strong on the chapel side, and according to my complainant, when there was any special controversy about schools raging at the Education Department, Jones got access to the correspondence, and put his party in possession of the case for the other side. I had declared

that the story was absurd Jones had no access to the portfolios of another Office; also it would be dishonourable, and it would be a breach of etiquette, and so on. Now, finding that the clerk whose room I was visiting had a pile of portfolios on his table, it suddenly occurred to me to ask "Suppose Mr. Jones of the Red Tape Office sent to you for one of these files, would you let him. have it?"

:

"Certainly they have a right to see our files, and we have a right to see theirs."

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I made no further enquiry, and I did not communicate the result to my Welsh acquaintance. He might have replied that there was what logicians call "an distributed middle" in the story; but that if it is found (1) that A. B. is improperly using private information; and (2) that A. B. has access to documents containing that information, one may reasonably assume (3) that A. B. went to the private documents for his private infor

mation.

With the aid of all these officials, and in spite of many obstacles offered by an army of lesser servants, Called "writers" and "boys," who hid, or lost, documents of vital importance with the easy unconcern of a slavey in lodgings, we made rapid progress. Once, when I complained that the progress was not sufficiently rapid, I was taught a valuable lesson: "you must remember that in a Government office it doesn't do to make mistakes: it is better to go slow than to go wrong.'

Difficult cases arose at times, and these were referred to the higher officers; on one or two occasions the direction of the Vice-President was taken, and general rules were made. But, as a rule, it was straightforward filling of forms; Form A, if the parish supply was complete;

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