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392 were engaged in the education of Chinese girls. Taking a more prominent position, and striking out a new path, Dr. Legge came forward as an educational reformer. During the preceding administration he had closed his Anglo-Chinese College as an acknowledged failure in the line of religious Anglo-Chinese education. He now set to work, with the support of Sir H. Robinson, to convert all the Government Schools, which had hitherto been conducted in the interest of religious education, into professedly secular institutions. To begin with, the Government Gazette announced (January 21, 1860) the formation of a new Board of Education for the management of the Government Schools. Dr. Legge was thenceforth, though Bishop Smith retained the nominal chairmanship, the presiding spirit of this Board and ruled it with the ease and grace of a born bishop. In the absence of Bishop Smith, and after obtaining the resignation of the missionary Inspector of Schools (Rev. W. Lobscheid), the new Board took up (July 3, 1860) Dr. Legge's plan of merging the Inspectorate of Schools in the Headmastership of a grand Central School, which was to become the centre of secular education, and delivering the Government Schools from the bondage of St. Paul's College and its Bishop. It was essentially a non-conformist liberation scheme which preferred secularism to episcopalianism. Sir H. Robinson approved (January 9, 1861) this plan of Dr. Legge, which Sir J. Bowring had previously refused to take up. The Legislative Council also endorsed the scheme (March 25, 1861) and sanctioned the purchase and enlargement of premises (in Gough Street). These were forthwith filled with some 200 Chinese boys, by the amalgamation of three existing Government Schools which thus constituted the new Government Central School. A Headmaster and Inspector of Schools, who was to be kept for some years in the leading strings of the Board, was procured (February 18, 1862) in the person of Mr. (subsequently Dr.) F. Stewart, from Scotland, with the approval of Bishop Smith. Dr. Stewart thenceforth laboured, for the next sixteen years, as the faithful disciple of Dr. Legge, to maintain the reign of secularism in the sphere of