inquiring mind seeking truth, yet not finding it-the horrible sight of good deliberately rejected, and evil deliberately chosen -the grievous wreck of earthly wisdom united with spiritual folly I believe that it has been, that it is, that it may beScripture speaks of it, the experience of others has witnessed it; but I thank God that in my own experience I have never witnessed it yet; I have still found that folly and thoughtlessness have gone to evil; that thought and manliness have been united with faith and goodness." And in the case of boys his experience led him, to use his words in a letter to a friend, "more and more to believe in this connexion, for which divers reasons may be given. One, and a very important one, is, that ability puts a boy in sympathy with his teachers in the matter of his work, and in their delight in the works of great minds; whereas a dull boy has much more sympathy with the uneducated, and others to whom animal enjoyments are all in all." "I am sure," he used to say, "that in the case of boys the temptations of intellect are not comparable to the temptations of dulness;" and he often dwelt on "the fruit which he above all things longed for,-moral thoughtfulness,—the inquiring love of truth going along with the devoted love of goodness."

But for mere cleverness, whether in boys or men, he had no regard. "Mere intellectual acuteness," he used to say, in speaking (for example) of lawyers, "divested as it is, in too many cases, of all that is comprehensive and great and good, is to me more revolting than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be almost like the spirit of Mephistopheles." Often when seen in union with moral depravity, he would be inclined to deny its existence altogether; the generation of his scholars, to which he looked back with the greatest pleasure, was not that which contained most instances of individual talent, but that which had altogether worked steadily and industriously. The university honours which his pupils obtained were very considerable, and at one time unrivalled by any school in England, and he was unfeignedly delighted whenever they occurred. But he never laid any stress upon them, and strongly deprecated any system which would encourage the notion of their being the chief end to be answered by school education.

He would often dwell on the curious alternations of cleverness or dulness in school generations, which seemed to baffle all human calculation or exertion. "What we ought to do is to send up boys who will not be plucked." A mere plodding boy was above all others encouraged by him. At Laleham he had once got out of patience, and spoken sharply to a pupil of this kind, when the pupil looked up in his face and said, "Why do you speak angrily, sir?—indeed I am doing the best that I can." Years afterwards he used to tell the story to his children, and said, "I never felt so much ashamed in my life—that look and that speech I have never forgotten." And though it would of course happen that clever boys, from a greater sympathy with his understanding, would be brought into closer intercourse with him, this did not affect his feeling, not only of respect, but of reverence to those who, without ability, were distinguished for high principle and industry. "If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority 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.) a

The subjoined letters will best show the feeling with which he regarded the academical successes or 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 allots have been attended by no proportionate fruit. 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;

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

and that is the real point, which alone to my mind reflects honour either on individuals or on societies; and if such a 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 merely 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 that 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."

Latin languages, in themselves sc perfect, and at the same time freed from the insuperable difenly which must attend any attempt to teach boys philology through the medium of their own spoken language, seen 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. 13.)

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 outery, 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.

This Essay also is inserted in the volume of his Miscellaneous Works, p. 348.

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.

* 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, Chairman of the Trustees of the School:

"I assume it certainly, as the foundation 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 far 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 abroad 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.