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 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. The library tower, which stands over the great gateway of the school-buildings, and in which he heard the lessons of his own. form, is the place to which his pupils will revert as the scene of their first real acquaintance with his powers of teaching, and with himself.

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 impracticablethe system is lost in the man-the recollections of the Headmaster of Rugby are inseparable from the recollections of the

"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 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 be lieve 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."

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 and to disclose to them the exact boundaries of what they knew or did not know. With regard to younger boys, he said, "It is a great mistake to think that they should understand all they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory should act vigorously, independent of the understand

ing-viras a MAZ C200 Dy recclect a thing unless he understands it.” Bu a proporate to their advance in the school be tried to entrare in them a hatit not only of collecting facts, but of expressing themselves with facility, and of understanding the principles on which their facts rested. “You come here,” be sud 204 to read, bet to learn how to read;" and this 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 slike 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 a death blow to themes (as he expressed it) on "Virtus est bona res," and gave instead historical or geographical descriptions, imaginary speeches or letters, etymo

gical 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 themselves, from such English and foreign authors as he most admired, so as indelibly to impress on the minds of his pupils some of the most striking names and passages in modern literature. "Ha, very good!" was his well-known exclamation of pleasure when he met with some original thought; "is that entirely your own, or do you remember anything in your reading that suggested it to you?" Style, knowledge, correctness or incorrectness of statement or expression, he always disregarded in comparison with indication or promise of real thought. "I call that the best theme," he said, “which shows that the boy has read and thought for himself: that, the next best, which shows that he has read several books, and digested what he has read; and that the worst, which shows that he has followed but one book, and followed that without reflection."

The interest in their work which this method excited in the boys was considerably enhanced by the respect which, even without regard to his general character, was inspired by the qualities brought out prominently in the ordinary course of lessons. They were conscious of (what was indeed implied in his method itself) the absence of display, which made it clear that what he said was to instruct them, not to exhibit his own powers; they could not but be struck by his never concealing dif<ficulties and always confessing ignorance; acknowledging mistakes in his edition of Thucydides, and on Latin verses, mathematics, or foreign languages, appealing for help or information to boys whom he thought better qualified than himself to give it. Even as an example, it was not without its use, to witness daily the power of combination and concentration on his favourite subjects which had marked him even from a boy; and which a See Appendix B.

especially appeared in his illustrations of ancient by modern, and modern by ancient history. The wide discursiveness with which he brought the several parts of their work to bear on each other; the readiness with which he referred them to the sources and authorities of information, when himself ignorant of it; the eagerness with which he tracked them out when unknowntaught them how wide the field of knowledge really was. In poetry it was almost impossible not to catch something of the delight and almost fervour, with which, as he came to any striking passage, he would hang over it, reading it over and over again, and dwelling upon it for the mere pleasure which every word seemed to give him. In history or philosophy, events, sayings, and authors, would, from the mere fact that he had quoted them, become fixed in the memory of his pupils, and give birth to thoughts and inquiries long afterwards, which, had they been derived through another medium, would have been forgotten or remained unfruitful. The very scantiness with which he occasionally dealt out his knowledge, when not satisfied that the boys could enter into it, whilst it often provoked a half-angry feeling of disappointment in those who eagerly treasured up all that he uttered, left an impression that the source from which they drew was unexhausted and unfathomed, and to all that he did say gave a double value.

Intellectually, as well as morally, he felt that the teacher ought himself to be perpetually learning, and so constantly above the level of his scholars. “I am sure,” he said, speaking of his pupils at Laleham, “that I do not judge of them or expect of them, as I should, if I were not taking pains to improve my own mind." For this reason, he maintained that no schoolmaster ought to remain at his post much more than fourteen or fifteen years, lest, by that time, he should have fallen behind the scholarship of the age; and by his own reading and literary works he endeavoured constantly to act upon this principle himself. "For nineteen out of twenty boys," he said once to Archbishop Whately, in speaking of the importance not only of information, but real ability in assistant masters, (and his remark of course applied still more to the station which he occupied himself,) "ordinary men may be quite sufficient, but