the twentieth, the boy of real talents, who is more important than the others, is liable even to suffer injury from not being early placed under the training of one whom he can, on close inspection, look up to as his superior in something besides mere knowledge. The dangers," he observed, "were of various kinds. One boy may acquire a contempt for the information itself, which he sees possessed by a man whom he feels nevertheless to be far below him. Another will fancy himself as much above nearly all the world as he feels he is above his own tutor; and will become self-sufficient and scornful. A third will believe it to be his duty, as a point of humility, to bring himself down intellectually to a level with one whom he feels bound to reverence, and thus there have been instances, where the veneration of a young man of ability for a teacher of small powers has been like a millstone round the neck of an eagle."

His practical talent as a scholar consisted in his insight into the general structure of sentences and the general principles of language, and in his determination to discard all those unmeaning phrases and forms of expression, by which so many writers of the last generation and boys of all generations endeavour to conceal their ignorance. In Greek and Latin composition his exceeding indifference to mere excellence of style, when unattended by anything better, made it difficult for him to bestow that praise, which was necessary to its due encouragement as a part of the school work, and he never was able to overcome the deficiency, which he always felt in composing or correcting verse exercises, even after his increased conviction of their use as a mental discipline. But to prose composition in both languages he had from the first attached considerable importance, not only as the best means of acquiring a sound knowledge of the ancient authors, but of attaining a mastery over the English language also, by the readiness and accuracy of expression which it imparted. He retained too himself that happy facility for imitating the style of the Greek historians and philosophers, for which he was remarkable in youth, whilst his Latin prose was peculiar for combining the force of common Latinity with the vigour and simplicity of his

I

own style-perfectly correct and idiomatic, yet not the language of Cicero or Livy, but of himself.

In the common lessons, his scholarship was chiefly displayed in his power of extempore translation into English. This he had possessed in a remarkable degree from the time that he was a boy at Winchester, where the practice of reading the whole passage from Greek or Latin into good English, without construing each particular sentence word by word, had been much encouraged by Dr. Gabell, and in his youthful vacations during his Oxford course he used to enliven the sick-bed of his sister Susannah by the readiness with which in the evenings he would sit by her side, and translate book after book of the history of Herodotus. So essential did he consider this method to a sound study of the classics, that he published an elaborate defence of it in the Quarterly Journal of Education, and, when delivering his Modern History lectures at Oxford, where he much lamented the prevalence of the opposite system, he could not resist the temptation of protesting against it, with no other excuse for introducing the subject, than the mention of the Latin style of the middle-age historians. In itself, he looked upon it as the only means of really entering into the spirit of the ancient authors; and, requiring as he did besides, that the translation should be made into idiomatic English, and if possible, into that style of English which most corresponded to the period or the subject of the Greek or Latin writer in question, he considered it further as an excellent exercise in the principles of taste and in the knowledge and use of the English language, no less than of those of Greece and Rome. No one must suppose that these translations in the least resembled the paraphrases in his notes to Thucydides, which are avowedly not translations, but explanations; he was constantly on the watch for any inadequacy or redundancy of expression-the version was to represent, and no more than represent, the exact words of the original; and those who, either as his colleagues or his pupils, were present at his lessons or examinations, well know the accuracy with which every shade of meaning would be reproduced in a different shape, and the rapidity, with which he would pounce on any mistake of grammar or construction,

however dexterously concealed in the folds of a free translation.

In the subject of the lessons it was not only the language, but the author and the age which rose before him; it was not merely a lesson to be got through and explained, but a work which was to be understood, to be condemned or to be admired. It was an old opinion of his, which, though much modified, was never altogether abandoned, that the mass of boys had not a sufficient appreciation of poetry, to make it worth while for them to read so much of the ancient poets, in proportion to prose writers, as was usual when he came to Rugby. But for some of them he had besides a personal distaste. The Greek tragedians, though reading them constantly, and portions of them with the liveliest admiration, he thought on the whole greatly overrated; and still more, the second-rate Latin poets, but whom he seldom used; and some, such as Tibullus and Propertius, never. "I do really think," he said, speaking of these last as late as 1842, "that any examiners incur a serious responsibility who require or encourage the reading of these books for scholarships; of all useless reading, surely the reading of indifferent poets is most useless." And to some of them he had a yet deeper feeling of aversion. It was not till 1835 that he himself read the plays of Aristophanes, and though he was then much struck with the "Clouds," and ultimately introduced the partial use of his Comedies in the school, yet his strong moral disapprobation always interfered with his sense of the genius both of that poet and Juvenal.

But of the classical lessons generally his enjoyment was complete. When asked once whether he did not find the repetition of the same lessons irksome to him, "No," he said, "there is a constant freshness in them: I find something new in them every time that I go over them." The best proof of the pleasure which he took in them is the distinct impression which his scholars retained of the feeling, often rather implied than expressed, with which he entered into the several works; the enthusiasm with which, both in the public and private orations of Demosthenes, he would contemplate piece by piece "the luminous clearness" of the sentences; the affectionate familiarity

which he used to show towards Thucydides, knowing as he did the substance of every single chapter by itself; the revival of youthful interest with which he would recur to portions of the works of Aristotle; the keen sense of a new world opening before him, with which in later years, with ever-increasing pleasure, he entered into the works of Plato;-above all, his childlike enjoyment of Herodotus, and that "fountain of beauty and delight which no man," he said, “can ever drain dry,” the poetry of Homer. The simple language of that early age was exactly what he was most able to reproduce in his own simple and touching translations; and his eyes would fill with tears, when he came to the story which told how Cleobis and Bito, as a reward for their filial piety, lay down in the temple, and fell asleep and died.

To his pupils, perhaps, of ordinary lessons, the most attractive were the weekly ones on Modern History. He had always a difficulty in finding any work which he could use with satisfaction as a text book. "Gibbon, which in many respects would answer the purpose so well, I dare not use." Accordingly, the work, whatever it might be, was made the groundwork of his own observations, and of other reading from such books as the school library contained. Russell's Modern Europe, for example, which he estimated very low, though perhaps from his own early acquaintance with it at Winchester, with less dislike than might have been expected, served this purpose for several years. On a chapter of this he would engraft, or cause the boys to engraft, additional information from Hallam, Guizot, or any other historian who happened to treat of the same period, whilst he himself, with that familiar interest which belonged to his favourite study of history and of geography, which he always maintained could only be taught in connexion with it, would by his searching and significant questions gather the thoughts of his scholars round the peculiar characteristics of the age or the country on which he wished to fix their attention. Thus, for example, in the Seven Years' War, he would illustrate the general connexion of military history with geography, by the simple instance of the order of Hannibal's successive victories; and then, chalking roughly on a board

the chief points in the physical conformation of Germany, apply the same principle to the more complicated campaigns of Frederick the Great. Or, again, in a more general examination, he would ask for the chief events which occurred, for instance, in the year 15 of two or three successive centuries, and, by making the boys contrast or compare them together, bring before their minds the differences and resemblances in the state of Europe in each of the periods in question.

Before entering on his instructions in theology, which both for himself and his scholars had most peculiar interest, it is right to notice the religious character which more or less pervaded the rest of the lessons. When his pupils heard him in preaching recommend them " to note in any common work that they read, such judgments of men and things, and such a tone in speaking of them as are manifestly at variance with the Spirit of Christ," (Serm. vol. iii. p. 116,) or when they heard. him ask "whether the Christian ever feels more keenly awake to the purity of the spirit of the Gospel, than when he reads the history of crimes related with no true sense of their evil," (Serm. vol. ii. p. 223,) instances would immediately occur to them from his own practice, to prove how truly he felt what he said. No direct instruction could leave on their minds a livelier image of his disgust at moral evil, than the black cloud of indignation which passed over his face when speaking of the crimes of Napoleon, or of Cæsar, and the dead pause which followed, as if the acts had just been committed in his very presence. No expression of his reverence for a high standard of Christian excellence could have been more striking than the almost involuntary expressions of admiration which broke from him whenever mention was made of St. Louis of France. No general teaching of the providential government of the world could have left a deeper impression, than the casual allusions to it, which occurred as they came to any of the critical moments in the history of Greece and Rome. No more forcible contrast could have been drawn between the value of Christianity and of heathenism, than the manner with which, for example, after reading in the earlier part of the lesson one of the Scripture descriptions of the Gentile world, "Now," he