riority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated." In speaking of a pupil of this character, he once said, “I would stand to that man hat in hand;" and it was his feeling after the departure of such an one that drew from him the most personal, perhaps the only personal praise, which he ever bestowed on any boy in his Sermons. (See Sermons, vol. iii. pp. 352, 353.)'

1) The subjoined letters will best show the feeling with which he regarded the academical success esor failures of his pupils :

1. To a pupil who had failed in his examination at the University:

"I hardly know whether you would like my writing to you; yet I feel strongly disposed so far to presume on the old relation which existed between us, as to express my earnest hope that you will not attach too much importance to your disappointment, whatever it may have been, at the recent examination. I believe that I attach quite as much value as is reasonable to university distinctions; but it would be a grievous evil if the good of a man's reading for three years were all to depend on the result of a single examination, affected as that result must ever in some degree be by causes independent of a man's intellectual excellence. I am saying nothing but what you know quite well already; still the momentary feeling of disappointment may tempt a man to do himself great injustice, and to think that his efforts have been attended by no proportionate fiuit. I can only say, for one, that as far as the real honour of Rugby is concerned, it is the effort, an hundred times more than the issue of the effort, that is in my judgment a credit to the school, inasmuch as it shows that the men who go from here to the University do their duty there; and that is the real point, which alone to my mind reflects honour either on individuals or on societies; and if such fruit is in any way traceable to the influence of Rugby, then I am proud and thankful to have had such a man as my pupil. I am almost afraid that you will think me impertinent in writing to you; but I must be allowed to feel more than a passing interest in those whom I have known and valued here; and in your case this interest was renewed by having had the pleasure of seeing you in Westmoreland more lately. I should be extremely glad if you can find an opportunity of paying us a visit ere long at Rugby."

2. To a pupil just before his examination at Oxford :

"I have no other object in writing to you, than inerely to assure you of my hearty interest about you at this time, when I suppose that the prospect of your examination is rising up closely before you. Yet I hope you know me better than to think that my interest arises merely from the credit which the school may gain from your success, or that I should be in a manner personally disappointed if our men were not to gain what they are trying for. On this score I am very hard, and I know too well the uncertainties of examinations to be much surprised at any result. I am much more anxious, however, that you should not overwork yourself, nor unnerve your mind for after exertion. And I wish to say that if you would like change of air or scene for a single day, I should urge you to come down here, and if I can be of any use to you, when here, in examining you, that you may not think that you would be utterly losing your time in leaving Oxford, I shall be very glad to do it. I am a great believer in the virtues of a journey for fifty miles, for giving tone to the system where it has been overworked."

3. To a pupil who had been unsuccessful in an examination for the Ireland scholarship:

"I am more than satisfied with what you have done in the Ireland; as to getting it, I certainly never should have got it myself, so I have no right to be surprised if my pupils do not."

4. To a pupil who had gained a first class at Oxford:

"Your letter has given all your friends here great joy, and most heartily do I congratulate you upon it. Depend upon it, it is a gift of God, not to be gloried in, but deeply and thankfully to be prized, for it may be made to minister to His glory and to the good of His Church, which never more needed the aid of the Spirit of wisdom, as well as of the Spirit of love."

5. To another, on the same :—

"I must write you in one line my heartiest congratulations, for I should not like not to write on an occasion which I verily believe is to no one more welcome than it is to me. You, I know, will look onwards and upwards-and will feel that God's gifts and blessings bind us more closely to His service."

This being his general view, it remains to unfold his ideas of school-instruction in detail.

1. That classical studies should be the basis of intellectual

teaching, he maintained from the first. "The study of language,' ," he said, "seems to me as if it was given for the very purpose of forming the human mind in youth; and the Greek and Latin languages, in themselves so perfect, and at the same time freed from the insuperable difficulty which must attend any attempt to teach boys philology through the medium of their own spoken language, seem the very instruments, by which this is to be effected." But a comparison of his earlier and later letters will show how much this opinion was strengthened in later years, and how, in some respects, he returned to parts of the old system, which on his first arrival at Rugby he had altered or discarded. To the use of Latin verse, which he had been accustomed to regard as "one of the most contemptible prettinesses of the understanding," "I am becoming," he said, "in my old age more and more a convert." Greek and Latin grammars in English, which he introduced soon after he came, he found were attended with a disadvantage, because the rules which in Latin fixed themselves in the boys' memories, when learned in English, were forgotten. The changes in his views resulted on the whole from his increasing conviction, that "it was not knowledge, but the means of gaining knowledge which he had to teach;" as well as by his increasing sense of the value of the ancient authors, as belonging really to a period of modern civilization like our own: the feeling that in them, "with a perfect abstraction from those particular names and associations, which are for ever biassing our judgment in modern and domestic instances, the great principles of all political questions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, are perfectly discussed and illustrated with entire freedom, with most attractive_eloquence, and with profoundest wisdom." (Serm. vol. iii. Pref. p. xiii.)

From time to time, therefore, as in the Journal of Education, (vol. vii. p. 240,) where his reasons are stated at length, he raised his voice against the popular outcry, by which classical instruction was at that time assailed. And it was, perhaps, not without a share in producing the subsequent reaction in its favour, that the one Head-master, who, from his political connexions and opinions, would have been supposed most likely to yield to the clamour, was the one who made the most deliberate and decided protest against it.

2. But what was true of his union of new with old elements in the moral government of the school, applies no less to its intellectual management. He was the first Englishman who drew attention in our public schools to the historical, political, and philosophical value of philology and of the ancient writers,

as distinguished from the mere verbal criticism and elegant scholarship of the last century. And besides the general impulse which he gave to miscellaneous reading, both in the regular examinations and by encouraging the tastes of particular boys for geology or other like pursuits, he incorporated the study of Modern History, Modern Languages, and Mathematics into the work of the school, which attempt, as it was the first of its kind, so it was at one time the chief topic of blame and praise in his system of instruction. The reading of a considerable portion of modern history was effected without difficulty; but the endeavour to teach mathematics and modern languages, especially the latter, not as an optional appendage, but as a regular part of the school business, was beset with obstacles which rendered his plan less successful than he had anticipated ; though his wishes, especially for boys who were unable to reap the full advantage of classical studies, were, to a great extent, answered.'

What has been said, relates rather to his system of instruction, than to the instruction itself. His personal share in the teaching of the younger boys was confined to the general examinations, in which he took an active part, and to two lessons which he devoted in every week to the hearing in succession every form in the school. These visits were too transient for the boys to become familiar with him; but great interest was always excited, and though the chief impression was of extreme

1) The instruction in modern languages passed through various stages, of which the final result was that the several forms were taught by their regular masters, French and German in the three higher forms, and French in the forms below. How fully he was himself awake to the objections to this plan will appear from the subjoined letter in 1840, but still he felt that it yet remained to be shown how, for a continuance, all the boys of a large public school can be taught modern languages, except by English masters, and those the masters of their respective classical forms. Extract from a letter to the Earl of Denbigh :

"I assume it certainly, as the found ition of all my view of the case, that boys at a public school never will learn to speak or pronounce French well under any circumstances. But to most of our boys, to read it will be of fir more use than to speak it; and, if they learn it grammatically as a dead language, I am sure that whenever they have any occasion to speak it, as in going abroa I, for instance, they will be able to do it very rapidly. I think that if we can enable the boys to read French with facility, and to know the grammar well, we shall do as much as can be done at a public school, and should teach the boys something valuable. And, in point of fact, I have heard men, who have left Rugby, speak with gratitude of what they have learnt with us in French and German.

"It is very true that our general practice here, as in other matters, does not come up to our theory; and I know too well that most of the boys would pass a very poor examination even in French Grammar. But so it is with their mathematics; and so it will be with any branch of knowledge that is taught but seldom, and it is felt to be quite subordinate to the boy's main study. Only I am quite sure that if the boy's regular masters fail in this, a foreigner, be he who he may, would fail much more.

"I do not therefore see any way out of the difficulties of the question, and I believe sincerely that our present plan is the least bad, I will not say the best, that can be adopted; discipline is not injured as it is with foreign masters, and I think that something is taught, though but little. With regard to German, I can speak more confidently; and I am sure that there we do facilitate a boy's after study of the language considerably, and enable him, with much less trouble, to read those many German books, which are so essential to his classical studies at the university."

fear, they were also struck by the way in which his examinations elicited from them whatever they knew, as well as by the instruction which they received merely from hearing his questions, or from seeing the effect produced upon him by their answers. But the chief source of his intellectual as of his moral influence over the school, was through the Sixth Form. To the rest of the boys he appeared almost exclusively as a master, to them he appeared almost exclusively as an instructor; it was in the library tower, where he heard their lessons, that his pupils became first really acquainted with him, and that his power of teaching, in which he found at once his main business and pleasure, had its full scope.

It has been attempted hitherto to represent his principles of education as distinct from himself, but in proportion as we approach his individual teaching, this becomes impracticable-the system is lost in the man-the recollections of the Head-master of Rugby are inseparable from the recollections of the personal guide and friend of his scholars. They will at once recall those little traits which, however minute in themselves, will to them suggest a lively image of his whole manner. They will remember the glance, with which he looked round in the few moments of silence before the lesson began, and which seemed to speak his sense of his own position and of theirs also, as the heads of a great school; the attitude in which he stood, turning over the pages of Facciolati's Lexicon, or Pole's Synopsis, with his eye fixed upon the boy who was pausing to give an answer; the well known changes of his voice and manner, so faithfully representing the feeling within. They will recollect the pleased look and the cheerful "Thank you," which followed upon a successful answer or translation; the fall of his countenance with its deepening severity, the stern elevation of the eyebrows, the sudden Sit down" which followed upon the reverse; the courtesy and almost deference to the boys, as to his equals in society, so long as there was nothing to disturb the friendliness of their relation; the startling earnestness with which he would check in a moment the slightest approach to levity or impertinence; the confidence, with which he addressed them in his half-yearly exhortations; the expressions of delight with which, when they had been doing well, he would say that it was a constant pleasure to him to come into the library.

His whole method was founded on the principle of awakening the intellect of every individual boy. Hence it was his practice to teach by questioning. As a general rule, he never gave information, except as a kind of reward for an answer, and often withheld it altogether, or checked himself in the very act of uttering it, from a sense that those whom he was addressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy to entitle them to receive it. His explanations were as short as possible-enough to dispose

of the difficulty and no more; and his questions were of a kind to call the attention of the boys to the real point of every subject, to disclose to them the exact boundaries of what they knew or did not know, and to cultivate a habit not only of collecting facts, but of expressing themselves with facility, and of understanding the principles on which their facts rested. "You come here," he said, "not to read, but to learn how to read ;" and thus the greater part of his instructions were interwoven with the process of their own minds; there was a continual reference to their thoughts, an acknowledgment that, so far as their information and power of reasoning could take them, they ought to have an opinion of their own. He was evidently working not for, but with the form, as if they were equally interested with himself in making out the meaning of the passage before them. His object was to set them right, not by correcting them at once, but either by gradually helping them on to a true answer, or by making the answers of the more advanced part of the form serve as a medium, through which his instructions might be communicated to the less advanced. Such a system he thought valuable alike to both classes of boys. To those who by natural quickness or greater experience of his teaching were more able to follow his instructions, it confirmed the sense of the responsible position which they held in the school, intellectually as well as morally. To a boy less ready or less accustomed to it, it gave precisely what he conceived that such a character required. "He wants this," to use his own words, "and he wants it daily-not only to interest and excite him, but to dispel what is very apt to grow around a lonely reader not constantly questioned—a haze of indistinctness as to a consciousness of his own knowledge or ignorance; he takes a vague impression for a definite one, an imperfect notion for one that is full and complete, and in this way he is continually deceiving himself."

Hence, also, he not only laid great stress on original compositions, but endeavoured so to choose the subjects of exercises as to oblige them to read and lead them to think for themselves. He dealt at once the death blow to themes (as he expressed it) on "Virtus est bona res," and gave instead historical or geographical descriptions, imaginary speeches or letters, etymological accounts of words, or criticisms of books, or put religious and moral subjects in such a form as awakened a new and real interest in them; as, for example, not simply "carpe diem," or, "procrastination is the thief of time;" but, "carpere diem jubent Epicurei, jubet hoc idem Christus." So again, in selecting passages for translation from English into Greek or Latin, instead of taking them at random from the Spectator or other such works, he made a point of giving extracts, remarkable in them

1) See Appendix B.