tions. Still it is not without interest to dwell on these years, the profound peace of which is contrasted so strongly with the almost incessant agitations of his subsequent life, and “to remain awhile" (thus applying his own words on another subject)" on the high ground where the waters which are hereafter to form the separate streams" of his various social and theological views, "lie as yet undistinguished in their common parent lake."

It was a period indeed on which he used himself to look back, even from the wider usefulness of his later years, almost with a fond regret, as to the happiest time of his life. His situation supplied him exactly with that union of retirement and work which more than any other condition suited his natural inclinations, and enabled him to keep up more uninterrupted than was ever again in his power the communication which he so much cherished with his friends and relations. Without undertaking any directly parochial charge, he was in the habit of rendering constant assistance to Mr. Hearn, the curate of the place, both in the parish church and workhouse, and in visiting the villagers thus uniting with his ordinary occupations greater means, than he was afterwards able to command, of familiar intercourse with his poorer neighbours, which he always so highly valued. Bound as he was to Laleham by all these ties, he long loved to look upon it as his final home; and the first reception of the tidings of his election at Rugby was overclouded with deep sorrow at leaving the scene of so much happiness. Years after he had left it, he still retained his early affection

for it, and till he had purchased his house in Westmoreland, he entertained a lingering hope that he might return to it in his old age, when he should have retired from Rugby. Often he would revisit it, and delighted in renewing his acquaintance with all the families of the poor whom he had known during his residence; in showing to his children his former haunts; in looking once again on his favourite views of the great plain of Middlesex-the lonely walks along the quiet banks of the Thames-the retired garden, with its field and shrubbery, which lay behind his house, and which had been the scenes of so many sportive games and serious conversations—the churchyard of Laleham, then doubly dear to him as containing the graves of his infant child whom he buried there in 1832, and of his mother, his aunt, and his sister Susannah, who had so long formed almost a part of his own domestic circle, and whom he lost within a few years after his departure to Rugby.

His general view of his work as a private tutor is best given in his own words in 1831, to a friend who was about to engage in a similar occupation.

"I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always happened to be fond of it, and if I were to leave Rugby for no demerit of my own, I would take to it again with all the pleasure in life. I enjoyed, and do enjoy, the society of youths of seventeen or eighteen, for they are all alive in limbs and spirits at least, if not in mind, while in older persons the body and spirits often become lazy and languid, without the mind gaining any vigour to compensate for it. Do not take your work as a dose, and I do not think you will find it nauseous. I am sure you will not, if your wife does not, and if she is a sensible woman, she will not either, if you do

not. The misery of private tuition seems to me to consist in this, that men enter upon it as a means to some further end; are always impatient for the time when they may lay it aside; whereas if you enter upon it heartily as your life's business, as a man enters upon any other profession, you are not then in danger of grudging every hour you give to it, and thinking of how much privacy and how much society it is robbing you; but you take to it as a matter of course, making it your material occupation, and devote your time to it, and then you find that it is in itself full of interest, and keeps life's current fresh and wholesome by bringing you in such perpetual contact with all the spring of youthful liveliness. I should say, have your pupils a good deal with you, and be as familiar with them as you possibly can. I did this continually more and more before I left Laleham, going to bathe with them, leaping and all other gymnastic exercises within my capacity, and sometimes sailing or rowing with them. They I believe always liked it, and I enjoyed it myself like a boy, and found myself constantly the better for it."

In many respects his method at Laleham resembled the plan which he pursued on a larger scale at Rugby. Then, as afterwards, he had a strong sense of the duty of protecting his charge, at whatever risk to himself, from the presence of companions who were capable only of exercising an evil influence over their associates; and, young as he was, he persisted in carrying out this principle, and in declining to take any additional pupils as long as he had under him any of such a character, whom yet he did not feel himself justified in removing at once. And in answer to the request of his friends that he would raise his terms, "I am confirmed in my resolution not to do so," he writes in 1827, "lest I should get

the sons of very great people as my pupils whom it is almost impossible to sophronize." In reply to a friend in 1821, who had asked his advice in a difficult case of dealing with a pupil,

"I have no doubt," he answers, "that you have acted perfectly right; for lenity is seldom to be repented of; and besides, if you should find that it has been ill bestowed, you can have recourse to expulsion after all. But it is clearly right to try your chance of making an impression; and if you can make any at all, it is at once your justification and encouragement to proceed. It is very often like kicking a football up hill; you kick it onwards twenty yards, and it rolls back nineteen; still you have gained one yard, and thus in a good many kicks you make some progress. This, however, is on the supposition that the pupil's fault is axparia and not nania; for if he laughs behind your back at what you say to him, he will corrupt others, and then there is no help for it, but he must go. This is to me all the difference: I would be as patient as I possibly could with irresolution, unsteadiness, and fits of idleness; but if a pupil has set his mind. to do nothing, but considers all the work as so much fudge, which he will evade if he can, I have made up my resolution that I will send him away without scruple; for not to speak of the heartless trouble that such an animal would give to myself, he is a living principle of mischief in the house, being ready at all times to pervert his companions ; and this determination I have expressed publicly, and if I know myself I will act upon it, and I advise you most heartily to do the same. Thus, then, with Mr., when he appeared penitent and made professions of amendment, you were clearly right to give him a longer trial. If he be sincere, however unsteady and backsliding, he will not hurt the principles of your other pupils; for he will not glory in his own misconduct, which I suppose is the danger: but if you have reason to think that the impres

sion you made on him was only temporary, and that it has since entirely gone away, and his own evil principles as well as evil practices are in vigour, then I would advise you to send him off without delay; for then taking the mischief he will do to others into the account, the football rolls down twenty-five yards to your kick of twenty, and that is a losing game."

“ Έχθιστη ὀδύνη πολλὰ φρονέοντα πὲρ μηδένος κρατέειν,” he writes, "must be the feeling of many a working tutor who cannot open the eyes of his pupils to see what knowledge is, I do not mean human knowledge only, but wisdom.""

"You could scarcely conceive the rare instances of ignorance that I have met with amongst them. One had no notion of what was meant by an angle; another could not tell how many Gospels there are, nor could he, after due deliberation, recollect any other names than Matthew, Mark and Luke; and a third holds the first concord in utter contempt, and makes the infinitive mood supply the place of the principal verb in the sentence without the least suspicion of any impropriety. My labour, therefore, is more irksome than I have ever known it; but none of my pupils give me any uneasiness on the most serious points, and five of them staid the sacrament when it was last administered. I ought constantly to impress upon my mind how light an evil is the greatest ignorance or dullness when compared with habits of profligacy, or even of wilful irregularity and riotousness."

"I regret in your son," he says, (in writing to a parent,) "a carelessness which does not allow him to think seriously of what he is living for, and to do what is right not merely as a matter of regularity, but because it is a duty. I trust you will not think that I am meaning any thing more than my words convey, or that what I am regretting in your son is not to be found in nineteen out of every twenty young men of his age; but I conceive that you would wish me to form my desire of what your son should be, not according to the common standard, but according to the