Among the best schools of the kind in Belgium are those of Ghent and Verviers, in both of which the instruction is free. The only conditions imposed upon students, who must be more than twelve years of age, are that they shall be able to write correctly and know the four simple rules of arithmetic. There are also in Belgium apprentice schools or workshops for apprentices, managed principally by the manufacturers of the different towns, who send work to be done in them. Throughout the whole of France there is likewise a movement in favour of technical education, and among the subjects which it is generally agreed must be taught, theoretically and practically, weaving takes a front place. At such towns as Rheims, Rouen, Lille, Lyons, Elbeuf, and Amiens, weaving-schools have been opened with success, and enjoy the benefit of government aid. In the first two named, what are known as the 'Industrial Societies' have provided, for the use of the manufacturers generally and also of the weaving students, large collections of patterns of cloth of all materials, arranged systematically in books. At Rheims the collection dates back to the year 1800, and is both interesting and useful, as shewing the various patterns and materials in use during this century. In Germany technical education is much more fully developed than in either France or Belgium, every town having its _Gewerbe_ or trade-school, giving practical instruction.
At Chemnitz a new Gewerbe school is nearly completed, which puts all others into the shade. Its cost will be more than eighty thousand pounds, and it will accommodate between six and seven hundred students, presided over by a staff of nearly forty professors. It possesses a library of nine thousand volumes, upon which is spent three hundred pounds a year, out of an annual grant of seven thousand pounds from the government. In noticing the polytechnic schools, or technical universities which exist in nearly every important town in Germany, the commissioners incidentally mention having seen in the one at Aix-la-Chapelle a number of packing-cases, which they were told contained models of English patent machines, sent as a present by the English government, at the request of the Prince Imperial of Germany. This of course gives rise to a suggestion that the government might regard home claims with equal favour. The best polytechnic in Austria is undoubtedly that of Vienna, which has no fewer than one thousand two hundred students. The Textile Industries Department of its museum is very complete, comprising specimens of almost every manufactured article in its various stages from the raw material up to the finished piece of goods. In a similar museum at Berlin there are models of almost every machine used in either the cotton or woollen trade. Not only are there models of machines now in use, but also of those which have been long since superseded. The obvious advantage of this variety is that the students see what have been the improvements gradually made in machinery, and it enables them to study the principle upon which the different machines have been worked. The best schools, Chemnitz and Reutlingen for example, have a great assortment of hand-looms, such as treadles, machines, and jacquards--in order to produce patterns, simple and figured, in every material. None of the schools confine their teaching to the manufacture of one class of goods only. Although each devotes most attention to the material and style of cloth chiefly manufactured in the district in which it is situated, yet all teach other branches of weaving; which is thought a material advantage.