Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/175

P versity work, German, of which he read much, Bohemian, Italian, and Swedish; he belonged to a small society for intellectual discussion, which included some of the most promising among the younger members of the university, and he was president of the Union debating society. Intending to enter the medical profession, he read anatomy and physiology at Oxford for about two years after taking his degree, employing himself also in private tuition. In Easter term 1854 he was elected a fellow of Oriel, and soon after, being attacked by pleurisy, gave up his intention of becoming a physician, on the advice of his doctors. In the following year he was appointed lecturer on English literature, and shortly afterwards professor of modern history at King's College, London. He obtained the prize for a poem on a sacred subject at Oxford in 1857 with a poem on the death of Jacob, and about that time became a contributor to the ‘Saturday Review.’ He was editor of the short-lived ‘National Review’ in 1862–3. Believing that his religious opinions were not in harmony with those held by the authorities at King's College, he proposed to the principal, Dr. Richard William Jelf [q. v.], to resign his professorship without making the cause of his resignation public, but was persuaded by Jelf to retain office, and did so until 1865. For several years he travelled much in Europe, applying himself when abroad to the study of foreign languages, and in 1865 visited Australia, and remained there about a year. From 1869 to 1871 he lectured on modern history at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Finding that his eyesight was suffering, he resolved to emigrate in 1871, and to engage in sheep-farming in South Australia. He landed in Australia in December, and his health was much strengthened by his new mode of life. On 6 Dec. 1872 he married, at Gawler, Edith Lucille, daughter of Philip Butler of Tickford Abbey, Buckinghamshire. About a year after his marriage he gave up farming, and, leaving South Australia, became in 1874 lecturer on history at the university of Melbourne. He resigned this post in 1875, and was appointed to the head-mastership of the Ladies' Presbyterian College, which he resigned in 1877, on account of the dislike with which the patrons of the college regarded his advocacy of a policy with reference to the land question contrary to their own (The Age, 4 June 1894). He took a deep interest in the public affairs of the colony; from this time onwards contributed freely to its newspapers; and in 1877 unsuccessfully contested the representation of Boroondara in the liberal interest. Having been appointed by the minister of education to inquire into, and report on, the state of education in Victoria, and the best and most economical mode of rendering it completely free, he drew up an exhaustive report, issued in the spring of 1878, advocating several changes of system, some of which have since been adopted. For this report, which involved much labour, he received a fee of 1,000l. He was in the same year elected member of the legislative assembly for Castlemaine. He advocated an advanced liberal policy, specially with regard to a progressive taxation of landed estates. Being chosen to accompany Mr. (afterwards Sir) Graham Berry on his unsuccessful mission to England to request the intervention of the home government in a difficulty between the houses of the legislature, he left Australia on 27 Dec. and returned in June 1879. He was re-elected for Castlemaine in 1880, and was minister without portfolio in the Berry administration from the August of that year until July 1881, when he was offered the agent-generalship of Victoria; but the ministry being then on the point of being turned out, he did not think that it would be honourable to take the office, and accordingly declined it. He was elected in 1883 for the East Bourke boroughs, for which he sat until the general election in April 1892, when he did not contest the seat. On the formation of the Gillies and Deakin administration, in February 1886, he became minister of education, and held that office until November 1890.

His official duties were congenial to him, and he performed them zealously, introducing many changes into the system of education in the colony. Working in opposition to the general colonial tendency, he set himself to separate primary from secondary education, and to this end founded two hundred scholarships, admitting the holders of them to pass from primary to high schools. He tried, though without success, to make the compulsory clauses of the Education Act as operative as like provisions in Switzerland, reduced the limit of compulsory attendance at school from fifteen to thirteen years of age, and the statutory amount of attendances from forty to thirty days a quarter. He largely raised the pay of certificated teachers, though he made some saving in that direction by employing teachers of inferior quality in very small schools. Believing strongly in the importance of technical education, he procured liberal endowments for technical schools, and increased their number; and, having obtained the assistance of an expert from England, he reorganised