and that the era of universal examinations had as yet only very partially set in either west or east; it is also true that the efforts to recast on an undenominational basis those nonconformist academies which in the previous period had done much to preserve the love of learning and to enlarge its boundaries were, speaking generally, not crowned with success. But they did much by adhering to and improving on their inherited tradition of breadth of curriculum, and by defying the inevitable charges of shallowness of purpose and dissipation of energy when fostering the study, on the one hand, of history and literature and, on the other, of applied science. Such a scheme was that set on foot, in 1783, by Dr. Thomas Barnes, with the support of the newly established Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester—a society whose history was at a later date to be so intimately
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