UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 A NAERATIVE -ESSAY 
 
 yikral ^trmatiott, 
 
 CHIEFLY EMBODIED IN 
 
 THE ACCOUNT OF AN ATTEMPT TO GIVE A LIBERAL 
 EDUCATION 
 
 CHILDKEN OF THE WORKING CLASSES. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. S. HAWTEEY, A.M., 
 
 ASSISTANT-MASTEE, ETON. 
 
 LONDON" : 
 HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND 0. 
 
 32, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1868. 
 
 5 2 4 2 8
 
 LONnoN: 
 
 UABT S. SIOKEBBT, PBINTBB, 4a, WALBBOQK, 
 UANSION HOUSE. B. 0.
 
 
 O 
 
 IGiV 
 A NAREATIVE-ESSAY 
 
 ITikral ^trntniim. 
 
 S2 Many are speaking and writing aboiit Education, 
 '^ — some with authority. The Education of every 
 % class of the community, and its bearing on the 
 ^ national character and the future prosperity of 
 England, is under discussion. 
 
 First, how to promote and extend the Educa- 
 tion of the lower classes, and make it tell on 
 °° the arts and manufactures of the country. 
 ^ Secondly, how to supply to the middle class a 
 
 CO . 
 
 ^ better Education than has hitherto been within 
 
 ^ their reach, and what is the character of the 
 
 Education that shall be most serviceable to them. 
 
 Thirdly, what changes and developments shall 
 
 be made in the system of Education given to the 
 
 wealthier classes of the country. 
 
 These subjects are all now under discussion, 
 
 ^ and the essays and speeches bearing upon them 
 
 5 are read and thought over by those who are 
 
 ^ interested in the progress and well-being of their 
 
 country. 
 
 a2
 
 As a coiitril)utioii towards the discussion of the 
 foregoing questions, I give, in the following pages, 
 not a theory as to what ought to he done, but a 
 narrative of what has been done, — a narrative 
 — somewhat detailed — of an attempt to give a 
 liberal Education to boys of the working class. 
 
 The School to which I allude is not unknown 
 by name to friends among whom have been circu- 
 lated, from time to time, narratives printed with 
 a view of elucidating the moral system there 
 pursued. 
 
 This School, taking its rise from a very small 
 beginning twenty-one years ago, has been devel- 
 oping to the present time, and has been, and still 
 is, a source of veiy great hope, interest, and 
 happiness to those connected with it. 
 
 This mode of approaching a subject, w^hich may 
 be called the " topic of the day," will, I trust, 
 commend itself to many minds. A valued col- 
 league of the writer's (Hany Dupuis), when he 
 was leaving Eton for a sphere of parochial work, 
 said to him, " We don't want essays on Educa- 
 tion — WT have plenty of them. Tell us what you 
 have done, and how you have done it." 
 
 Harry Dupuis is no more ; but others may 
 share the feeling he expressed, and consider the 
 narrative, at this juncture, not ill-timed. For 
 even if it seems that the accidental circumstances 
 surrounding St. Mark's School are too excej^tional 
 to allow it to be a model, in every respect, for
 
 schools of the poorest class, I hope it may suggest 
 some hmts to those engaged at this moment in 
 the establishment of middle-class schools. 
 
 I need not say a word about moral training 
 here. I have written so fully on this subject in 
 all the educational tracts and stories above alluded 
 to, that it would be superfluous to say more. 
 
 It is only necessary for me to premise that the 
 power of sympathy — " the contact of human 
 living soul with human living soul " — is pre- 
 supposed in all that may be said about intellectual 
 culture in the present Narrative-Essay. 
 
 The first detail I shall go into is about church. 
 By all means, where the opportunity allows, take 
 the boys to a service in church daily. We have 
 always begun the day by going to church. In 
 fact, the church is the first place of meeting each 
 morning for the boys coming from their various 
 homes. And here we have taken a useful hint 
 from the custom of public schools. Instead of 
 the school children being formed two and two, 
 and put into their seats in church like sheep into 
 a pen, — that is, instead of the string of boys 
 being passed into a seat till it is full, upon which 
 the next seat is opened and filled in like manner, 
 — each boy at the beginning of the school-time 
 has his place in church allotted to him. 
 
 This is the first instance I have to name of a
 
 principle that pervades the whole of our system, — 
 the individualiziug each boy, and so creating a 
 sense of individual responsibility. 
 
 In each boy's place hangs a little bag con- 
 taining his hymn-book, prayer-book, and Testa- 
 ment, these remaining for his daily use in 
 church ; and, as the united cost of the three 
 books only amounts to the sum of sixpence, the 
 expense of a separate set of books for use in 
 church is not more than parents of the working 
 class are willing to afford. 
 
 Each boy, then, on coming independently from 
 his own home, enters church and goes at once 
 to his own place. We take the precaution in 
 arranging the places in church to intermingle in 
 order the elder and the younger boys. A number 
 of veiy little boys together are apt to be fidgety, 
 and the trust that is implied in placing a little 
 boy on either side of an elder boy begets trust- 
 w^orthiness. 
 
 With this precaution, and a few distinct rules 
 of conduct, such as would suggest themselves to 
 any watchful parent, the boys are very much left 
 to themselves ; we trust to the force of public 
 opinion, general habit, and a prevalent wish to do 
 right, for good and reverent behaviour. It does 
 boys much more good to see the Masters trying to 
 get good to themselves by following the prayers 
 and lessons, than to be kept in order by a Master's 
 eye looking about and resting on them, his own
 
 attention being manifestly distracted thereby. It 
 is better even that instances of misconduct should 
 occur and not be seen or noticed, than that the 
 eye of the Master should be on the watch. And 
 it is obvious, that a decent reverence of manner, 
 produced by habit and the force of opinion and 
 good feeling, is far more valuable than the most 
 punctilious behaviour, the consequence of being 
 closely watched. 
 
 The daily morning service thus conducted is an 
 incalculable blessing to the School : it has a 
 gradual, quiet, but most sensible effect on the 
 whole tone and bearing of the boys. The service 
 is shortened ; it does not take more than from 
 fifteen to seventeen minutes. We have only one 
 lesson, that from the New Testament, and each 
 boy having his prayer-book, hymn-book, and 
 Testament, the burst of young fresh voices as they 
 read the alternate verses with the officiating 
 Minister, or sing the hymn (for the whole School 
 learn to sing by note), is animating and helpful to 
 one's own devotions. So is the stillness during 
 the reading of the lesson, each boy following it on 
 the pages of his own Testament. 
 
 It is a comfort to think that these boys by ear 
 and eye, and without the irreverent familiarity en- 
 gendered by using the Holy Scriptures as a school- 
 book, are getting day by day additional acquaint- 
 ance with the Word of God, at least with that 
 part of it most suitable for the reading of Christian
 
 boys. Three times a year in the course of the 
 daily morning service do they go through the 
 Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. 
 
 Now, as I am persuaded that most of what it is 
 the present fashion to call distressing doubts about 
 the very fundamentals of Christianity arises from 
 want of reading reverently and regularly the 
 Gospels, I prize this method, whereby an acquaint- 
 ance with the facts, the words, the spirit of the 
 Gospels is being very quietly and gradually, but 
 steadily, imparted year by year to our boys. 
 
 The reader of the morning lesson is one of 
 themselves. Good readers with distinct articula- 
 tion are chosen for the duty. Of course, if the 
 boys were affected and read with self-conscious- 
 ness, this would not answer. But in good Eng- 
 lish schools of a manly character, and where hard 
 work is done, boys are not affected or self-con- 
 scious. It is delightful to observe how free they 
 are from this fault ; I am certain all good School- 
 masters will heartily agree in this statement. 
 
 That being the case, there is a very great charm 
 in the reading of the Gospel lesson simply and re- 
 verently by a young boy with a clear fresh voice. 
 The whole congregation seems to feel it. 
 
 To the objection sometimes urged that a service 
 in church takes so much out of the daily school- 
 hours, it inay be replied, that it is an admirable 
 and powerful incentive to good reading for the 
 boys of a school to hear a chapter, which they are
 
 following with their eyes, well read by one of them- 
 selves. Especially it is useful to boys in the 
 lower divisions who do not often come in contact 
 with those of the upper division, out of which the 
 readers in church are naturally selected : they see 
 the result of the rules and the method of teaching 
 that are applied to themselves, and this makes 
 them attend to those rules and do their best. 
 
 I repeat emphatically what I said many years 
 ago,* that the reading of the Psalms, by the boys 
 of a school, verse about with the officiating Cler- 
 gyman, and their following with their eyes on 
 their books the lesson which is being read by a 
 good reader from among themselves, will do more 
 to teach good reading than the same amount of 
 time spent in common reading lessons, or at least 
 it admirably supplements those lessons. But this 
 is altogether a minor consideration. 
 
 It is desirable that the boys should have plenty 
 of room allowed them. A little expense which 
 may make them feel that they are thought of, and 
 that their comfort is attended to, will not be 
 thrown away. Each of our boys has a separate 
 kneeling cushion provided for him. The silent 
 effect of arrangements that make boys feel that 
 in the house of God boys and Masters are all one 
 — that, one beside the other, they are praying 
 to and praising Him who is ^equally and infinitely 
 above both — is to engender a tone and feeling in 
 
 * See "Account of St. Mark's School, 1857," pages 4:2, 43.
 
 10 
 
 reference to Divine worship just and true, and of 
 the highest value to the boys. 
 
 When I think of the number of newly -built or 
 restored churches which there are throughout the 
 country, many of them close to the school and 
 parsonage, I cannot but regret that they are not 
 thus utilized on week-days, and that the Clergy- 
 man of the parish has not the opportunity of 
 meeting each morning the boys and girls of his 
 Parochial School in his church. 
 
 In our church the seats on one side of the 
 centre aisle are appropriated during the week-days 
 to the boys ; the opposite side is sufficient for the 
 girls and the other attendants at the daily service. 
 
 I now leave this, the most important part of my 
 whole subject, with one concluding remark : I 
 have heard the heads of establishments say of 
 different social arrangements, that such or such 
 {e. g., the appointments of their dinner-table or 
 the like) were the key-stone of the discipline and 
 good order of their house. I say that the daily 
 quarter of an hour in church is the key-stone of 
 the moral tone of our School. 
 
 On leaving church for school the boys fall into 
 rank in different divisions under their respective 
 Masters. For it is a feature of our system, de- 
 rived immediately from the Public School system, 
 that each Master has a separate division of the 
 School, for which he is responsible. It cannot
 
 11 
 
 be expected that a Master will work with energy 
 and hope, if he has not full credit for the success 
 of his work. The system, therefore, of having a 
 set of Assistants or Monitors, with a Head Master 
 exercising a general superintendence over the 
 whole School, I have long given up as unsatis- 
 factory. 
 
 Each Master is wholly responsible for the tuition 
 and discipline of his division. Parents look to 
 him and communicate with him, and the credit 
 for the good discipline and progress of his division 
 is wholly his own. 
 
 I most strongly recommend that at any school 
 where there is more than one Master this system 
 should be adopted. I am happy to say that the 
 Committee of the Windsor National School, in- 
 stead of having one Head Master to superintend 
 a staff of Junior Assistants and paid Monitors, 
 have appointed two Assistant Masters in addition 
 to the Head Master, each to be responsible for a 
 division of the School ; each Master probably to 
 have two " standards " out of the six under his 
 tuition and superintendence ; and the school-room 
 is being divided that each Master may have a 
 separate compartment for his division. 
 
 It may be mentioned here that the last week 
 of each school-time is devoted to an examination 
 in the work of the preceding half. As soon as 
 the examination is finished the boys separate for 
 the holidays ; and when the result of the exami-
 
 12 
 
 nation is made out, the new school-list is printed, 
 in which the meritorious of each division are 
 placed in three classes according to merit, followed 
 by the unclassed, if any — those who have taken 
 a high class entitling themselves thereby to be 
 placed in a higher division the following school- 
 time. 
 
 This system is very efficacious in giving tone to 
 a school. The assurance that industry and pro- 
 gress will be rewarded by accelerated promotion 
 gives a healthy stimulus to exertion ; indeed, 
 what stimulus can be more healthy than the wish 
 on the part of a boy for an advancement, (which 
 does not necessitate the keeping back another,) 
 into a higher division of the School, where he 
 will do harder lessons and associate with more 
 advanced boys. 
 
 This, of course, is none other than the system 
 pursued (with perhaps certain varieties of detail) 
 in most public, and good Grammar Schools. My 
 reason for naming it here is that it has been found 
 capable of application in a day-school for children 
 of tlie working class, and has been of incalculable 
 benefit to the school. 
 
 An observation of our former Inspector, Mr. 
 Bellairs, is very much in point. It is, indeed, so 
 very flattering, that I should hesitate to repeat it 
 here, if it did not give a most valuable testimony in 
 favour of the system of divisions which I advocate. 
 
 He had begun his inspection at the bottom of
 
 13 
 
 the School, and worked up, taking division after 
 division, to the top ; when it was over, he said that 
 the School reminded him of nothing so much as of 
 a paper mill, where one sees the rough rags put in 
 at one end ; and each step of the process refines 
 and purifies the material, till the clean white paper 
 comes out at the other end. 
 
 The sense of trust and responsibility will make 
 a good Master out of an imperfect one. To call 
 upon him to take now this class and now that, at 
 the bidding of another, without his having either 
 responsibility or credit, will go far to spoil a good 
 one. 
 
 While we have been talking over these matters, 
 we will suppose the boys have been walking from 
 church to school. 
 
 When they get to school, what do they find 
 there ? In the first place, plenty of oxygen. The 
 Government requires eighty cubic feet of pure air 
 for each child. We give them four hundred. So 
 that we never, even at the end of a long day, see 
 any symptom of the presence of carbonic acid in 
 the pale face, drawn features, and languid eye. 
 
 As they enter, each boy hangs his cap and 
 over-coat on his own peg ; those who come from 
 a distance, and do not return to their homes till 
 the evening, drop their dinner-bags into the large 
 basket which the matron holds to receive them, 
 giving her a kindly greeting as they pass on to 
 their covered playground — (a grand refuge in wet
 
 14 
 
 weather). Here a short inspection takes place to 
 see they are all tidy ; after which they ascend by 
 the diiferent staircases to their several compart- 
 ments of the great School. 
 
 Here again we seek to educate them to a sense 
 of individual responsibility by giving each boy a 
 locker (which, by the way, does not lock ) ; in this 
 he keeps and takes care of all his books, paper, 
 pens, and school requisites : this plan we adopt 
 even with the little boys, that they may early 
 learn to take care of their own property and to 
 respect that of their neighbours. Dr. Keate used 
 to say that a boy's bureau was his castle ; so we say 
 of the locker. It is poor training to take charge 
 of a boy's slate, book, pen, &c., to give them out 
 for the lesson, and then take them back. It may 
 look very orderly, but it is not good education. 
 Let the boys be treated as moral agents, not as so 
 many parts of a great educational mill which is 
 to be kept in good working order. 
 
 Another provision that works well is to have a 
 large tablet suspended in the compartment occu- 
 pied by each division, on which there is a weekly 
 register kept of the industry, conduct, and progress 
 of each boy ; a box of large printed letters and 
 figures, with a pot of paste and a brush, and the 
 help of one or two of his division, enables each 
 Master weekly to add on to the previous record the 
 result of the current week ; this register the boys 
 always have before their eyes. Any person inter-
 
 15 
 
 ested in them, such as the Clergyman of the 
 parish, or the promoters of the School, can, at a 
 glance, tell how the boys are getting on. Every 
 week that they continue free from a blemish for 
 inattention, irregularity, and the like, makes 
 them all the more anxious to keep free from 
 blemish the next week. And, as they see their 
 marks for school and home lessons groiv weekly, they 
 are all the more anxious they should keep on 
 growing. 
 
 It is pleasant, when a half holiday at Eton allows 
 me to do so, to go to the School and see who 
 deserves a shake of the hand or a pat on the 
 back for his sustained good conduct and industry 
 through the school-time. Weekly reports are 
 also sent home, and much valued ; and the 
 periodical meeting of parents, when the final re- 
 sult of the weekly register and of the examina- 
 tion at the end of the school-time is given out, 
 is a most festive and happy day with us. 
 
 At the end of the covered playground we have 
 a row of warm baths, and all boys must either be 
 washed all over at home at least weekly, or have 
 a bath at school. Practically, the baths at 
 school are a real delight and enjoyment to all, 
 and a great source of health. I am afraid to 
 say how much the rate of mortality was decreased 
 at the Hanwell District School by the introduction 
 of soap and warm water. 
 
 But of all the arrangements at St. Mark's,
 
 16 
 
 none is more valuable, morally or socially, than 
 the provisions for the boys' retiring closets. So 
 valuable are they, that I hope no reader of these 
 pages who is building a school, or altering school 
 premises, will omit to come and see, or make 
 inquiries about what Mr. Street has done for us 
 in this respect. 
 
 We now come to the vexata questio, the chief 
 subject of discussion in all the daily speeches and 
 essays one meets with on Education. By what 
 studies shall we inform boys' minds, and culti- 
 vate their intellects ? Of course, all agree that 
 the foundation of Eeading, Writing, and Arith- 
 metic must be first laid. Of these, I have not 
 much to say. But, as I wish to be useful, I will 
 say a few words on each of these heads. 
 
 I. Beading. — The rule for attaining the art of 
 clear, articulate Beading is a very short one — 
 
 FINISH YOUR WORDS. 
 
 Do not let the last consonant be divided from its 
 own word and tacked on to the next following, — 
 for instance, do not let the words " dwelt in " be 
 read as though they were written " dwel tin." 
 Expression, force, and propriety in Beading must 
 be gained by a general quickening of the faculties. 
 — (See Appendix A.) 
 
 II. For Writing, a short, good rule, which we
 
 17 
 
 owe to Mr Harris, the old Writing Master at Eton, 
 is, 23oint the knuckle of your fore-finger to the 
 ceiling. A pleasant occasional exercise is to ba- 
 lance a halfpenny on the knuckle of the fore-finger ; 
 if it does not slip off till the end of the copy, 
 let it then slip into the writer's pocket. — (See 
 Appendix B.) 
 
 III. Arithmetic. — Prolonged experience teaches 
 me that explanation of principles in teaching 
 Arithmetic may he easily overdone. I have erred 
 myself in overdoing explanation again and again. 
 G-ive out the rule ; let them write it out, learn it, 
 and do a number of examples by it. An occa- 
 sional pithy and pointed explanation of a principle 
 is all very good, especially when accompanied by 
 some practical illustration. 
 
 For instance, — a square of ginger-bread or a 
 plate of apples is admirably useful to illustrate 
 the definitions and fundamental rules of vulgar 
 fractions, especially if the " parts into which the 
 unit is divided" are at the close of the lesson 
 shared amongst the members of the class; but 
 lengthened explanations children cannot follow. — 
 (See Appendix C.) 
 
 Any account of the Education given at St. 
 Mark's School would be very incomplete without 
 a reference to Music. I will here, then, intro- 
 duce parenthetically what I have to say. Singing 
 by note is taught as part of the school business to
 
 18 
 
 every boy. All that I said in the *' Account of 
 St. Mark's School," pubhshcd m 1856, I endorse 
 now. 
 
 As to the intellectual, moral, and social benefit 
 of the study, I am fortunate in being able to leave 
 to others less prejudiced than myself to say if 
 they think that the experiment has been a success. 
 
 The CoUege of Eton, in instituting a choir 
 of their own for their chapel services, have done 
 me the honour to take their choristers from St. 
 Mark's, and have endowed the School with twelve 
 choral scholarships. Simultaneously with this 
 step, they have appointed as their organist, and 
 as the head of the music at Eton, the Rev. G. L. 
 Hayne, Mus. D., Oxon., himself an old Etonian. 
 
 Now, Dr. Ha}Tie is in daily intercourse with 
 these choristers, and he can therefore, better 
 than any one else, measure them musically, 
 mentally, and morally. To him with confidence 
 I leave it to say if he thinks that the result of our 
 having made music at St. Mark's a study, not a 
 pastime, is good. 
 
 To resume : — The foundation of reading, writ- 
 ing, and arithmetic being well laid, what next ? 
 Is it to be History ? Geography ? the knowledge 
 of common things ? an insight into the interesting 
 discoveries of our age ? My experience tells me, 
 No. These are not mental cultivators. These are 
 not what dig, plough, harrow the brain. These 
 are rather of the nature of seeds which, when
 
 19 
 
 thrown into ground previously prepared, take root, 
 grow, and bear fruit. Then what is the mental 
 cultivator that is to prepare the ground ? Lan- 
 guage, I should say undoubtedly. Is it to be 
 English or Latin ? I answer, both. 
 
 Our Schoolmasters having been trained at St. 
 Mark's and Culham Training Colleges, there is 
 naturally far more attention paid to the study of 
 English with us than at regular classical schools. 
 English words are analysed, their formation and 
 meaning traced, synonymous words are examined 
 and distinguished, metaphorical sentences are put 
 into common language : the analysis of sentences 
 also is a favourite exercise, and the boys seem to 
 get a very intelligent knowledge of the structure 
 of language thereby. 
 
 Eeading lessons, as in schools for their class and 
 age, form a prominent item in the work of each 
 day, and through their reading lessons they get 
 an extensive acquaintance with good English au- 
 thors ; for not only are School Beading Books now 
 very good, and improving every year, but AUman, 
 (by his circulating library for schools,) and other 
 enterprising publishers, enable us to put standard 
 authors into our boys' hands, such as " The Tales 
 of a Grandfather," "Bobinson Crusoe," "The Fool 
 of Quality," (that grand old book full of generosity 
 and chivalry, without a shadow of modern flip- 
 pancy,) Shakespear, of course, and Sir Walter 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 Scott's Poems and Novels,* the sentiment and 
 romance of which form a good antidote to the 
 slang and flippancy in which much of the modern 
 writing which comes within the reach of school- 
 boys is steeped. 
 
 Speaking of these matters, I cannot omit to 
 record the great benefit which Mr. Warbnrton 
 conferred upon the School when he was our In- 
 spector. He not only told us that we should find 
 the learning — with perfect accuracy — good and 
 choice pieces of English to be spoken with great 
 care, good articulation, and proper emphasis, a 
 valuable educational exercise — but he further 
 found time, amidst his avocations as Queen's 
 Inspector, to gather for us and copy with his own 
 hand a long manuscript of most choice pieces 
 of English,— " The Battle of the Nile," "The 
 Mining Adventure in Peru," " Physical Geogra- 
 phy," " St. Peter's Chapel in the Tower," " Ma- 
 terial Progress," "The Earl of Warwick," &c., culled 
 from such writers as Macaulay, Dr. Arnold, S. T. 
 
 * It may not be amiss to remind my readers that Sir 
 Walter Scott's Novels may be liad for sixpence each complete 
 work ; of course, they are in paper covers ; but if before the 
 book is given out as a reading book a few holes are stabbed in 
 it with a bookbinder's awl, as near the back as possible, (for 
 there is very little margin,) and a bit of strong carpet-thread or 
 wax-end be drawn in and out through the holes tightly, the book 
 will never fall to pieces, and will last, as a reading book, as 
 long as if it were bound.
 
 21 
 
 Coleridge, Soutliey, and his own poor brother, will 
 fix him for a long time in our memories. 
 
 We found his words most true. His pieces of 
 English, in style most beautiful, and breathing 
 manly and heroic sentiments, have been a precious 
 possession to the School. I can testify that this 
 most kind act of his has done the School the 
 greatest good both intellectual and moral ; and I 
 would venture to suggest that if he would add 
 other pieces to those which he has selected for 
 us, and were to publish them in a book, he would 
 be conferring a benefit on other schools which is 
 now confined to ourselves. 
 
 I trust all this will satisfy Professor Seeley that 
 English is not overlooked, but neither am I dis- 
 posed to forego Latin. At least, we have begun it 
 with our lads at St. Mark's School, three years 
 earlier than the age which he names (fourteen) 
 for beginning Latin ; and, I cannot help seeing, 
 with the best result. 
 
 Shall I be called a " Philistine " if I urge that 
 Latin is a fine thing for " evening lessons ? " 
 There is something very definite in committing to 
 memory a page of accidence, and in a Latin 
 exercise or translation, VN^hich has to be done, 
 written out fair, examined, have its faults marked 
 and corrected. I have never been able to make 
 English such a good old-fashioned lesson as this — 
 boys cannot always be learning choice bits of 
 poetry, and to be told to look over so many pages
 
 22 
 
 of s}Tionymes, or of history, geography, &c., is not 
 detiiiitc Hkc a Latin exorcise. 
 
 But, besides this, I am persuaded that the in- 
 flections of Latin give quite a new view of the 
 reahty of concords. And, as an instrument for 
 cultivating the mental faculties, what can be 
 better than an exercise that requires a simul- 
 taneous effort to get number, gender, case, tense, 
 mood, person, all right together. To an educated 
 person all this seems to come intuitively, but it 
 should not be forgotten that to get each of them 
 right requires a separate mental effort when a boy 
 is constructing a Latin sentence. 
 
 The boys like their Latin lesson ; they are 
 interested and animated by it ; a little know- 
 ledge of Latin they find a great help in pulling 
 English words to pieces ; and they analyse the 
 structure of sentences in the English fashion all 
 the better from parsing their Latin lesson. 
 
 With regard to grammar. "Whether they first 
 read the progressive sentences in their elementary 
 Latin-books and build up for themselves (under 
 the teacher's guidance) laws, rules of construction, 
 or take the law at the hands of those who have 
 travelled over the ground before them, and trace 
 its action in the structure of the sentences framed 
 for them, and subsequently in those authors 
 whose writings they may read, is a question which 
 I do not think worth fighting about. 
 
 What is wanted is that their knowledge of
 
 23 
 
 language slionld be systematic, drawn up in 
 orderly array, under well-defined rules wliicli they 
 can apply. And it is not less valuable surely, 
 as an intellectual exercise, than the arrangement of 
 stones, or flowers, or insects, in classified order. 
 
 It is but a little way that we go in Latin, but 
 every step seems to be valuable, per se. Of course, 
 we do not touch verses, that is beyond us. But 
 finding, as we do in familiar intercourse with these 
 boys, that ready discernment, quickness of ap- 
 prehension and thought, the power of taking in 
 and estimating what is said, of reading a glance 
 of the eye, seeing the point of a joke, or detecting 
 covert irony : — in a word, a general mental acumen 
 is developed by their study of language, I feel 
 disposed to say, if Latin, so far as we go at St. 
 Mark's, gives this mental activity, why should not 
 the good effect of the exercise go on if the boys 
 were able to advance yet further ? What if in 
 addition to getting mood, tense, person, number, 
 gender, case of a sentence, all right, they were still 
 further required to bring out the sentence subject 
 to metrical rules and the rhythm and poiiit of 
 verse ? 
 
 Are we quite sure that the Remove and Fourth- 
 form boy is not deriving intellectual profit from 
 that "worry and torture of brain" which makes 
 him knit his brow, bite his pen, and turn from 
 Gradus to Dictionary and back again from 
 Dictionary to Gradus ? Especially as it is an
 
 24 
 
 exercise that is enlivened, I contend, from time 
 to time, with pleasurable emotion. Who cannot 
 call to mind his looking back on a couplet which 
 he hoped was rather good, and the thought 
 arising, " I wonder what my tutor will say to that 
 verse ? " 
 
 How long this work should continue, at what 
 time, if a boy does not become a good composer, 
 verse -making should be given up, I do not pretend 
 to say. But this I do say, before we give up 
 verses as mental cultivation and training, let us 
 see that we have something to put in their place 
 that will do intellectually the same or more 
 good. 
 
 Mr. Farrar, I suppose, will answer with an un- 
 hesitating voice, " Science will do it." And very 
 beautiful is the posy of scientific flowerets which he 
 gathered from the fields of modern discovery, and 
 presented to his charmed audience at the British 
 Institution. With such art and grace were they 
 entwined, that I could not but ask myself, How 
 much of his power in running down verses does 
 Mr. Farrar owe to his having worked at verses ? 
 
 Is he not somewhat in the position of a Swiss 
 mountaineer who, having by hard labour reached 
 some Alpine eminence, now luxuriates in the 
 charms of his high position, and despises, flings 
 away the good staff which helped him to sur- 
 mount the rugged difficulties of the ascent, and 
 enabled him to crown the height ?
 
 25 
 
 In like manner those brilliant speeches of 
 Mr. Lowe, with which he is shaking the country's 
 traditional opinions about Education, are not their 
 wit, vivacity, and power due to that intellectual 
 training which he would bring into disrepute ? 
 
 His enthusiastic audiences, who are exulting in 
 his slashing cuts and telling hits, do not reflect 
 that his sword was sharpened and his arrow 
 pointed by that very engine the cumbrous inu- 
 tility of which they are laughing at. 
 
 My reason for not using science, I ought rather 
 to say scientific informatioup as an instrument of 
 intellectual Education, I have stated above. In- 
 ordinary hands it is not a good instrument for 
 cultivating the mental faculties. 
 
 I have on all occasions" expressed my contempt 
 and abhorrence of that species of mental training 
 which was in vogue in our advanced, sharp 
 National Schools some fifteen to twenty-five years 
 ago, — a training which consisted in putting into 
 minds not prepared to receive them — and wholly 
 incapable of digesting and assimilating them — the 
 facts of geography and history, and crude morsels 
 of scientific and miscellaneous knowledge. 
 
 I got a lesson when I was a very young school- 
 boy, which I have never forgotten. We had 
 taken a wood-pidgeon's nest, and brought home 
 in pride a fine, vigorous, young bird nearly fledged, 
 
 * See " Account of St. Mark's School, 1857," pages 27, 28, and 
 " Eeminiscences of a French Eton," page 74.
 
 26 
 
 It was our ambition to rear it. We went out and 
 bought some beans, dry liorse beans, opened its 
 beak, and slipped one and another and another of 
 the beans down its gullet. Thinking that we had 
 given it a good meal, we left it for the night to 
 digest its food. The next morning we hurried to 
 see our bird ; the result may be anticipated. It 
 was lying at the bottom of its cage with an ex- 
 tended crop, dead. We had given it food which it 
 was not able to digest, and so had killed it. 
 
 When I have listened to a National School- 
 master giving to school-children crude morsels of 
 scientific and miscellaneous Imowledge, which 
 they gulped down, indeed, but were clearly unable 
 to digest, "It is hcans," I have said to myself, 
 " that he is cramming down their throats : instead 
 of nourishing them, he is intellectually killing 
 them." 
 
 If, during these last twenty and more years, St. 
 Mark's has sent out into the world young men 
 able and intelligent, fitted to be good and useful 
 men, it is because this practice I reprobate is 
 there eschewed ; the aim of the School being not 
 so much to impart knowledge as to develope the 
 boys' faculties, and to teach them how to learn. 
 
 Now, in answer to the cry for science, which 
 resounds in the present day, I fear a recurrence 
 in schools of a higher rank to the bad system 
 which has been of late years wisely abandoned in 
 schools for the lower class.
 
 27 
 
 Another danger to be apprehended is this, that 
 boys, finding that they are to be released from 
 severer study on the ground of its being dis- 
 tasteful, more and more will find severe study 
 distasteful, and that thus our English boys will 
 lose some of that mental vigour which they now 
 have, and take with them into the affairs of 
 life the weakness which belongs to discursive and 
 superficial men. 
 
 To follow out one subject in which the learner 
 feels interest is a splendid Education. " One 
 subject thoroughly," says Professor Tulloch, most 
 wisely. 
 
 What man is there of any class more worthy 
 of respect than the mechanic, who, after his hours 
 of toil, takes up a study or pursuit by wiiich he 
 may educate himself — be it a branch of mathema- 
 tics or philology, — engineering, drawing, flowers, 
 stones, or beetles. And the inquiring mind and 
 persevering spirit which the artisan shows in thus 
 educating himself is met with in other classes 
 and in different conditions of life. 
 
 I recollect being once for some days wind-bound 
 in one of the least interesting spots I remember 
 to have visited, — the island of Alderney. 
 
 Among the few families that were to be found 
 on the island, I had the pleasure of meeting a 
 lady who had turned the dull island into a para- 
 dise of beauty and interest. Folio after folio she 
 showed me containing treasures of beauty in form
 
 28 
 
 and colour, such as I had no idea existed on 
 earth. In fact, she hved in a world of beauty 
 and order; her knowledge was extensive and 
 accurate, her conversation was as instructive as it 
 was charming and animated. I found she was 
 in correspondence with men of European cele- 
 brity. How was all this brought about ? Why, 
 she had gone to the bottom of sea-iceed ! 
 
 Another vision of past days now comes up before 
 my mind. I was in abookseller's shop inPaternoster 
 Row. An old pupil accosted me. We kept together 
 a good part of the day, talking of old days and 
 many things. I found he was in quest of books, 
 learned, rare, old, to assist him in disentangling 
 some intricate point of historical geography. 
 He accompanied me to the station, and then 
 left me to return to his quarters. He was in the 
 Grenadier Guards and was stationed at the Tower. 
 
 My old pupil has since risen to an exalted 
 position in the country, deservedly honoured, 
 admired, I might add, beloved by a large circle 
 of friends. When I hear him extolled by those 
 who know him, I think of the day when I watched 
 the young officer of the Guards returning to the 
 Tower to meet the learned books he had ordered, 
 which were to help him in his careful search after 
 truth. 
 
 Here are instances of the highest and most 
 valuable kind of Education ; but the Alderney lady, 
 the young Guardsman, the Manchester artisan,
 
 29 
 
 are not common types of their several classes. 
 They are exceptional cases. They re-appear, at 
 intervals, as Eton or other public schools-hoys, 
 hut these are just the boys who give us no trouble 
 or anxiety ; they would make themselves under 
 any system. "We get great credit, indeed, and 
 praise for their success, but it is credit which we 
 only partially deserve : on the other hand, we 
 deserve a great deal of credit in cases where we 
 get little or none. I mean in the case of boys of 
 no intellectual or moral power, whom, by care, and 
 patience, and fellow-feeling, we have led to use self- 
 control ; whose weak or dormant faculties we have 
 called out, and whom we send out into the world 
 not indeed to shine, but to stand on a higher 
 intellectual and moral level than they would have 
 reached had they not passed through our hands. 
 
 Now, it is these last that form the bulk of 
 humanity ; it is for them, and not for exceptional 
 cases, that we must legislate and form our plans. 
 And it is for the mass that I fear, when I hear 
 the cry that boys should be freed from the severer 
 labour of studying language if it is distasteful, 
 and therefore, it is said, unprofitable, and should 
 learn, instead, something about the wonders which 
 science has achieved within the present century. 
 
 Suppose them freed from verse-making, and from 
 learning about ye and civ and allowed, instead, 
 to learn about the electric telegraph, the light- 
 ning conductor, the electric light, the Davy
 
 30 
 
 Safety Lamp, chloroform, and vaccination, (for 
 these — deprived of the poetic imagery with which 
 he surrounds them — are the subjects whicli 
 Mr. Farrar puts in the place of the idol worshipped 
 in the shape of classics,) would there not be a 
 great danger of the boys becoming less vigorous- 
 minded than they are ? 
 
 Certain of them I grant might, and doubtless 
 would, educate themselves by botany, chemistry, 
 electricity, and the like. But it will be those who 
 have an inquiring mind, and a decided love for the 
 science which they take in hand. But how will it 
 be with the mass ? Will their becoming acquainted 
 with a string of scientific results stand them 
 instead of the mental training they now get ? 
 
 Am I satisfied with the training we now give 
 to boys through our own subjects ? By no means. 
 But do not let us therefore begin on another tack ; 
 let us try to do, what we do, better. 
 
 And notwithstanding the imperfection of our 
 teaching and the idleness of the boys, what are 
 the intellectual characteristics of the pupils which 
 the public schools of England turn out ? Is not 
 their apprehension quick, and discernment ready 
 and correct ? Do they not take in, w^eigh, and set 
 at its true value what is said, with a perfectly 
 marvellous quickness and unerring instinct ? If 
 an observation is just, in good taste, well-timed, 
 do they not feel that it is so, and respond ? If 
 not, do they not detect the weakness or fallacy
 
 31 
 
 instantly, and . eschew it ? Will they tolerate 
 verbiage ? Have they not a fine sense of the 
 ridiculous ? 
 
 When Mr. Hullah was giving singing lessons at 
 Eton, he made two observations on the charac- 
 teristics of his Eton class which showed his 
 penetration. Eirst, that they seemed all one, 
 bound together as by a three-fold cord ; compared 
 to them, his other classes appeared encircled by 
 a rope of sand. 
 
 His second observation was, that, in teaching 
 them, he was baffled by the quickness of their ap- 
 prehension. Before he had finished his sentence, 
 he felt that they had hold of it, and had time to 
 become distracted and inattentive, while he was 
 adding such further explanation as he commonly 
 gave to his classes. 
 
 And as we trace them on in life, I cannot but 
 think that we see these intellectual characteristics 
 of public school-boys developing themselves. Who 
 shall say how much the quick appreciation of 
 practical good sense v/hicli characterizes the 
 House of Commons, its intolerance of humbug, 
 its admirable instincts, and the other kindred 
 qualities in which the country feels both pride and 
 confidence, are due to the large number of public 
 school-men which it contains ? 
 
 Look, on the other hand, at those wiio have not 
 been under the training of our public schools, nor 
 have formed themselves, by some study or pur-
 
 S2 
 
 suit, of a solid, vigorous character, but, instead, 
 have dabbled in science, — men who have left the 
 beaten track of classics and mathematics for the 
 flowery meads of scientific discovery. They are 
 not a numerous class, and are still rather un- 
 English. But here and there they may be found. 
 I dare say most people have one or two specimens 
 of the class before their mind's eye. If so, they 
 can say whether I overdraw their characteristics 
 in describing them as self-complacent and self- 
 conscious ; wanting in manliness, in vigour of 
 mind, and in sound judgment ; mouthy-talkers, 
 without the sense to know that they are dull ; even 
 in their own subjects apt to be hazy, and when 
 talking of one scientific subject, to confound and 
 jumble it with another : a public school-man may 
 very possibly be profoundly ignorant of both ; but 
 he honestly says so, while the sciolist indulges in 
 grandiloquent twaddle about what he does not 
 understand. 
 
 I leave it to English parents to say into which 
 of these two types of men they would like to see 
 their sons grow up. 
 
 But are public school-men to be profoundly 
 ignorant about the various interesting and marvel- 
 lous discoveries which modern science is daily 
 making, and their application to the comforts and 
 conveniences of life ? Is the choice of necessity 
 to be between ignorance and sciolism ? By no 
 means.
 
 S3 
 
 In advocating the study of language as the best 
 means of educing the mental powers, — of doing 
 the work of digging and harrowing the brain, I 
 have said only half my say. A mind educated by 
 classics alone is only half educated. There is a 
 book the study and understanding of which will 
 make the education complete. No one who is 
 master of that book can ever be a sciolist, and 
 he will be mentally prepared by it to survey 
 and firmly to grasp all branches of natural 
 science : he will find it a master-key that unlocks 
 aU such knowledge. His mind, imbued with 
 that book, will deal with scientific subjects in a 
 manner in which, without the knowledge of that 
 book, it never would have done : — and that book 
 is Euclid. 
 
 But are we met in limine with a difficulty ? 
 Is this first step, the mastery of Euclid, so difiicult 
 a step, that it cannot be taken by the average of 
 our school-boys ? Is it necessary that they shall 
 give up the attempt ? must they be satisfied with a 
 humbler and more incomplete and unsatisfactory 
 acquaintance with natural science ? 
 
 Mr. Wilson inserts, in his very interesting 
 essay on a Liberal Education, a note, over which 
 I have thought much since reading it. He writes 
 as follows : — " The extreme repulsiveness of 
 Euclid to almost every boy is a complete proof, if, 
 indeed, other proofs were wanting, that the 
 ordinary methods of studying geometry at pre-
 
 34 
 
 paratory and public schools are wholly erroneous." 
 Mr. Wilson speaks with deserved weight and 
 authority. But I must say that the extreme re- 
 pulsiveness of Euclid to almost every boy is not a 
 fact which has come under my own observation. 
 
 And holding as I do most firmly that a man is 
 not perfectly educated unless to classical study he 
 adds the mastering of Euclid ; — and that any one 
 who has mastered Euclid has hereby the best of 
 all preparations for a profitable study of all 
 branches of natural science, I feel almost bound 
 to speak, — to say what my experience is, — and to 
 add some hints that I hope may be useful. 
 
 It was in the year 1836 that I began to teach 
 Euclid at Eton, and I have been teaching it ever 
 since. Among the brightest and most interesting 
 hours of my life have been those that I have spent 
 in initiating boys, even boys of very weak mental 
 power, into the knowledge of Euclid. I make 
 this statement because I think it stands to reason 
 that this would not have been the case if the 
 study had proved repulsive to our pupils. 
 
 The first steps to many minds, I grant, are 
 difficult, — to some, very difficult. But the teacher 
 is cheered on by the thought that the more 
 difficult the appreciation of geometrical reasoning 
 is to a boy's mind, the more does that mind 
 stand in need of Euclid ; the more good is he 
 doing to the boy in trying to make him understand 
 it.
 
 35 
 
 In looking back through years of experience, I 
 feel borne out in saying that at Eton we do not 
 find Euclid, as a rule, a repulsive study. 
 
 Boys of very low mental calibre have taken to 
 it, have been interested in it, attracted by it, and 
 have said to me again and again, "It's the best 
 thing we do at Eton." 
 
 The Euclid hour is always a bright one. 
 Whether we are taking the first steps with feeble 
 pupils ; or breaking fresh ground with a more ad- 
 vanced class ; or, recapitulating, we are linking on 
 proposition to proposition ; or, reversing the opera- 
 tion, we are tracing a proposition backward, 
 through those on which it depends, to lirst 
 principles ; or lastly, are setting the class to work 
 their brains on riders and exercises, — every 
 phase of Euclid teaching is pleasant in the retro- 
 spect. 
 
 Of course, I have had my disappointments — what 
 Master has not ? — in boys not using the personal 
 effort necessary to reproduce what they have 
 learned. Many have done so, and many a time I 
 have had to thank them for giving me a satis- 
 faction, one of the greatest a teacher can have, 
 that of finding that pupils retain and have made 
 their own what he has taught them. 
 
 But, whether the boys of a class be studiously 
 disposed or otherwise, I cannot call to mind any 
 to whom Euclid could rightly be said to be a repul- 
 sive study. If ever I say to a class, ''What shall 
 
 c 2
 
 36 
 
 we have to-day ? " I am sure the cry will be, 
 
 "Euclid."- 
 
 And turning from my experience of Etonians to 
 boys of a totally different class and station. 
 
 I have now fresh in my recollection the heart- 
 felt pleasure of a weekly evening meeting through 
 last school-time with a party of St. Mark's school- 
 boys, whom Mr. Blythe (the Head Master of the 
 School) sent to me for a weekly lesson in Euclid. 
 They were boys of ages ranging from 12 to 15. 
 I took them through the third book of Euclid : 
 we only used enunciation books. I set before 
 them what had to be proved, and left them to 
 find out the demonstration, helping them if 
 necessary by giving the figure, and referring them 
 to the propositions on which the proof depended. 
 I do not know that there was a demonstration 
 that they did not make out for themselves. Each 
 would look keenly at the black board where the 
 figure was drawn, and give me a nod when he had 
 made out the demonstration. Then came the 
 comparing notes, and great was the fun and 
 hearty the laughter if one made a slip, or assumed 
 what he had no right to do. The school-time 
 was cro^vned by as beautiful a Euclid-paper from 
 
 * May I take the observation that has been made to me 
 more than once by a Cambridge tutor, " that in looking over 
 Examination papers, it is refreshing to come on an Eton man's 
 Euclid," as a corroboration of my assertion that Euclid is not 
 found repulsive by our Eton pxipils 1
 
 37 
 
 almost every one of them as I ever looked 
 over. 
 
 It was only last night that one of them, who 
 is leaving school, came with his father, to give 
 me (according to om* custom) his photograph and 
 take leave. His manly workman father stood 
 beside him, and the tears found a channel for 
 themselves down his furrowed cheeks, tears of 
 thankfulness at the thought of what St. Mark's 
 had done for his son. 
 
 Nor were the boys who formed this evening class 
 more than good boys of average ability. The 
 very boy who took leave yesterday (he will not 
 be angry with me for saying so), Avlien he be- 
 gan Euclid, used to jumble the data and qucesita 
 in admired confusion in his brain. I thought at 
 one time (good boy as he always was) he would 
 never master Euclid, but I found him last school- 
 time as sharp and clear-headed as any of the party. 
 He would " spot " the false step in the reasoning 
 as quickly as any one of them. 
 
 And not only is the Euclid lesson an interest 
 full of charm, whether with my Etonian pupils, or 
 with mechanics' children at St. Mark's. It forms 
 a bond of firm friendship in after life. How often, 
 amidst the mountains and valleys of Switzerland, 
 do I find my hand grasped, and, looking up, 
 I see an animated face, radiant with pleasant 
 memories ! " What, don't you know me ? I am one 
 of your old fMva-Tat," — alluding to a long and
 
 38 
 
 growing list that used to hang up in the mathe- 
 matical school of " the Initiated," that is, of those 
 who understood and could apply the fourth pro- 
 position of the first book. These were my iJ^varat,, 
 The Platonic motto " /i^^Set? dyecofMerp'nTo^ elairco" stand- 
 ing at the head of the list, shut out the inofanum 
 vuJgus ; and hearty, nay, vehement sometimes, 
 were the struggles to get into it. 
 
 All this I feel to be very outspoken ; but the 
 matter in discussion is too interesting and im- 
 portant for me to be squeamish about speaking 
 out. 
 
 And if we do interest boys in Euclid, and make 
 them like it, only think what we are doing for 
 them. Lund, in his Preface to his Geometry, 
 says : — " Next to the Bible, Euclid is the most 
 wonderful book in the world." I prefer to place 
 the Bible in a category by itself, and, drawing no 
 comparison between it and any other book, 
 simply to say, Euclid is the most wonderful book 
 ever written by man. Undoubtedly it is so. It 
 is the book which has moulded European thought 
 from generation to generation. 
 
 Even in those nations who have given up 
 Euclid as a text book, the mind has been trained 
 to habits of thought by the rigour and precision 
 of geometrical reasoning of which Euclid is the 
 father. But we Englishmen, with our stability 
 of taste, and our love of linking ourselves on with 
 the traditions of the past, stiU use the very text
 
 39 
 
 of Euclid for mental discipline and training. We 
 value its calmness, its dignity, its permanence. 
 We find Euclid to be a book the tendency of 
 which is eminently to give what St. James calls 
 "the meekness of wisdom:" there is no self- 
 consciousness, or conceit, or affectation in the 
 quickened intelligence which its study imparts. 
 
 For myself, I can safely say that I can re- 
 member few hours of greater enjoyment than 
 those in which — shutting out the noise, eager- 
 ness, and contention of the outward world, and 
 taking up a book which has held its ground for 
 more than two thousand years — I have endea- 
 voured, by its help, to open the minds of the 
 young, to bring out those faculties which God has 
 given them, by the calm and unimpassioned inves- 
 tigation of truth, for truth's sake, to which its 
 pages guide us. 
 
 It was a happy day for me, and a proud day, 
 when a party of my old H'VaTaL who had entered 
 into the Indian Civil Service, presented to me a 
 copy of a Euclid which they had translated into 
 Hindustanee, as the surest and best way of bring- 
 ing the Asiatic mind and mode of thought into 
 conformity with the European. 
 
 Again, as I have said, Euclid is the true en- 
 trance to the natural sciences, — and a noble en- 
 trance it is, — how much better to enter on them 
 thus, than to scramble up in some other way ! 
 
 What, for instance, is the greatest and most
 
 40 
 
 elevating of all the natural sciences ? It is that, 
 incontestably, which issues in the researches and 
 discoveries of Physical Astronomy. 
 
 When we have made a pupil appreciate Euclid, 
 we have placed his foot firmly on the first step 
 of that great intellectual ladder which leads by 
 natural and continuous sequence, step by step, up 
 to the highest researches of celestial mechanics. 
 The highest steps of this ladder no man has ever 
 reached ; but the most highly gifted among man- 
 kind are those that have climbed highest upon it, 
 and are climbing still. 
 
 Terrestrial and celestial mechanics are one 
 harmonious whole, one continuous, unbroken rise. 
 All matter obeys in its moiivement the same 
 laws. *' La courbe," says La Place, — in the 
 Preface to his Third book of the Systeme du 
 Monde, — " decrite par I'atome leger que les vents 
 semblent emporter au hasard est reglee d'une 
 maniere aussi certaine que les orbes planetaires." 
 
 Surely, for this branch of natural science may 
 be claimed precedence before all others. Euclid, 
 as we have said, is the first step on this intellectual 
 ladder, and, moreover, each successive step upon 
 it is so much clear gain. 
 
 There is no room here for Professor Seeley's 
 amusing simile: — "If a man is not quite up to 
 going to Cambridge, it is no use for him to go to 
 Eoyston and stop there ! " 
 
 Though we may never reach the heights of
 
 41 
 
 celestial meclianics, Euclid is a clear gain. The 
 first principles of mechanics, the composition 
 and resolution of forces, are clear gains. So 
 is each successive step in advance, up to 
 Newton's giant step, — " The moon is retained in 
 her orbit by the force of gravity," (happy the 
 man who gets thus far,) and so on. The know- 
 ledge acquired and the mental training, no 
 matter where we stop, are both of the highest 
 benefit. 
 
 I ask, then, with an outline of physical science 
 so great, so pre-eminent before us, — Dr. Whewell 
 truly calls it classical, — why should we divert our 
 students' minds from it ; and propose in its place 
 something so shaky as experimental lectures on 
 branches of science not yet fixed ? 
 
 It is not very long ago that a chemical lecturer 
 told me that he had been obliged to modify his 
 printed programme in consequence of some modi- 
 fication of hypothesis which it had been found 
 necessary to introduce during the preceding 
 week ! Are branches of science which give, as yet, 
 such uncertain sounds, to be named as educational 
 studies, with those which are based on rigorously 
 established laws, and have acquired all the 
 firmness, authority, and permanence of classical 
 science ? 
 
 If boys have laid the sound foundation of 
 classics and mathematics, by all means let them
 
 42 
 
 have scientific lectures* and teaching.* Their 
 intellectual training will prepare them to turn such 
 lectures to a profitable use. What I deprecate is 
 putting the scientific lectures in the place of 
 classics and mathematics. — {See Appendix C.) 
 To revert again to Euclid. All that I have been 
 
 * The following is a list of the Lectures given at Eton, 
 on scientific subjects, and on the discoveries of modern science, 
 which I furnished to the Public School Commissioners at their 
 request: — "I find thiit, during the last fourteen years, there 
 have been courses of Lectures on the following subjects : — 
 Natural Philosojihy ; Popular Astronomy ; Mechanical Philo- 
 sophy ; the Forces of Attraction ; Light ; Heat ; Frictionai 
 and Voltaic Electricity ; Chemistry (at various times and in 
 its various branches and applications). Organic and Inorganic ■ 
 Chemistry of Gases, and of Metals ; Chemistry of Common 
 Things ; Water in its Three Conditions of Ice, Water, and 
 Steam ; the Chemical and Physical Properties of the Atmo- 
 sjihere ; Application of Scientific Discoveries to the Useful Arts 
 and Manufactures ; on Coal and Coal Mines ; the Manufacture 
 of Iron, &.C. Also X'emarkable discoveries or processes, which 
 have from time to time attracted attention, have been illus- 
 trated and explained by Lectures, such as the Electric Tele- 
 graph ; Photography ; Electro-Plating ; the Construction of 
 the Westminster Clock ; the Bessemer Process for Making 
 Steel ; Rifling Cannons, and the Science of the Armstrong and 
 Whitwortli Guns ; the Method of producing Brilliant Colours 
 from Coal Tar ; Professor Bunsen and KirchhoflTs Analysis of 
 the Spectrum, &c. 
 
 " The following courses have also been given : — 
 " Comi^arative Anatomy and Geology ; Physical Geography, 
 including the Theory of the Winds, Rain, and Climate ; Mo- 
 dern. History ; Ancient and Modern Assyria ; China and 
 Japan from Personal Observation." — Report of Commisdon 
 on Public Schools.
 
 43 
 
 led on to say in these last paragraphs is based on 
 the assumption that EncHd may be made an 
 interesting, instead of a repulsive, study. I have 
 said that at Eton the boys like Euclid, and take 
 an interest in it. I ought to do more than this : 
 I ought to try to show how this is brought about. 
 
 Among the most charming pages of the essays 
 on a Liberal Education (second indeed in interest 
 only to the blunt and manly semi- autobiography 
 given by Mr. Johnson, which they who remember 
 his first coming to Eton Imow to be affectingly 
 true) are those in which Mr. Wilson gives his 
 graphic picture of the mode in which his colleague 
 initiated a class of boys into the study of botany. 
 One cannot help regretting that the poor boy who 
 made a mistake in spelling was not privately 
 corrected ; otherwise it is a beautiful picture, 
 valuable and suggestive in the highest degree. 
 I can well imagine that the French Commis- 
 sioner would have been charmed with the intelli- 
 gence and vivacity of a class which had been so 
 taught. 
 
 Now, I must confess to my readers that, to the 
 juxta position of the above graphic account of the 
 botanical lesson, and the note about the repulsive- 
 ness of Euclid, they owe the pleasure and profit, 
 such as they are, of this Narrative-Essay, which 
 they are reading ; for the thought occurred to me 
 that Euclid as well as botany may be made a 
 bright and pleasant lesson ; at least, I thought it
 
 44 
 
 might bo useful to sliow how we try to make it so 
 at Eton.* 
 
 So now, as Mr. Wilson set his botanical 
 master face to face with his forty pupils, we will 
 suppose the mathematical master and his class are 
 assembled for the first time for a lesson of Euclid. 
 We wiU suppose them the weakest twenty of a 
 division which has lately been advanced to that 
 part of the school where the study of Euclid is 
 begun. 
 
 Some few may have had some lessons in Euclid 
 at the last school : only perhaps to hate it. These 
 are ready to ask the question, " What is the use 
 of Euclid ? " The master deprecates the question, 
 " Don't ask me now. We should not be talking 
 on fair terms. I should know what I was talking 
 about ; you would be talking about — you don't 
 know what. Wait one month. If at the end of 
 
 My readers must judge how far I have succeeded in my 
 sketch. It has grown very long — is necessarily, in some degree, 
 technical, and cannot be so interesting as the sketch of the lesson 
 on botany, to the general reader. Still I hope the perusal of it 
 will not be confined to those engaged in teaching Euclid, but that 
 the general reader will try if he can extract some profit or, 
 at any rate, some amusement from it. I ought also to premise 
 that I do not make my colleagues responsible for a mode of 
 expounding Euclid, which some grave teachers might think was 
 trifling with the subject. They have their own methods, and I 
 can add emphatically that some of them succeed equally with 
 myself in making boys take an interest in Euclid. The 
 St. Mark's Masters do teach it after my method. They learned 
 Euclid from me, and as they were taught it, so they teach it.
 
 45 
 
 that time you are a /u-uo-t???, that is, if you under- 
 stand the meaning of EucHd — and then repeat your 
 question, I will answer it ; hut I never met an 
 instance of anyone asking the question after he 
 understood Euclid." 
 
 Now, open your books. Euclid begins with 
 definitions ; of course, every subject has its own 
 language, its technical words, as they are called. 
 We must be agreed about the words we are going 
 to use, and their meaning. 
 
 Look at the first definition, it is a curious one, 
 — "A point is that which hath no parts, no 
 magnitude." You will better see its meaning if 
 you consider how Euclid may have come to it. 
 
 Here is a wooden brick I have got in my hand. 
 You see that it has length, breadth, and thick- 
 ness. Each of these is called a dimension. The 
 brick, then, has three. Suppose I plane away 
 its thickness till it is all gone, then there will 
 remain two dimensions, length and breadth — that 
 is, the surface of one of the faces of the brick ; 
 again, in like manner, suppose the breadth be 
 taken away, then only one dimension remains ; 
 length — that is, the edge of one of the faces. 
 Now, suppose the length to shrivel up from one 
 end till all the length is gone, what would 
 remain ? — no dimension at all. We should have 
 just the dot of the corner of the brick. 
 
 This is Euclid's "point : " it is deprived of all 
 dimensions ; it has no parts, no magnitude.
 
 From this he starts, and, travelling the opposite 
 way to that we have gone, he gets first to a line, 
 that which has one dimension, length ; then to sur- 
 face, that which has two, length and breadth. 
 By adding on thickness to the surface he would 
 come to the solid or full brick from which we 
 started. He does not do so, because he 
 treats, in the first six books of plane geometry only, 
 that part of the subject in which the lines are 
 drawn on a plane or flat surface. 
 
 And here let us pause for a minute. I wish to 
 say something to you, in a sort of parenthesis, 
 which I hope may help you hereafter to under- 
 stand two words that you will hear used to describe 
 two different ways of reasoning. 
 
 We began with the full brick, and went back 
 undoing it, taking it to pieces till we got to the 
 " point." Euclid, on the other hand, begins with a 
 point and goes forward, putting things together, 
 adding on length, &c., till he builds up the full 
 brick, that is, arrives where we started from. 
 
 Here you perceive are two different ways of 
 considering the same question — the way of 
 undoing, and the way of putting together. What 
 do you think would be a good name for the way 
 of undoing, of taking to pieces ? does dva-\u(o de- 
 scribe it ? and for the other way, the way of putting 
 together, do you think (rw-rlOrnML would be a good 
 word for that ? 
 
 Well, if hereafter you hear two rather long
 
 47 
 
 words, which yon will easily trace to avaXvw and 
 a-vvrcOTjfMi for two jdnds of reasoning, think of the 
 brick; perhaps it will help you to understand 
 them. 
 
 Now, let us go back. Euchd wants a flat 
 surface to write on, and how does he find out if 
 his table is flat ? I will tell you. He takes a 
 straight line ; we all know what a straight line is : — 
 The edge of this ruler — carpenters call it a straight 
 edge — is meant to be a straight line. If wherever 
 this straight edge is placed along the table its edge 
 lies exactly in the surface of the table (if there is no 
 day-light between), then the table is flat, it is a 
 plane surface. Here is a bit of warped board. My 
 straight edge, though in some positions it may lie 
 in the surface of the board, in others it does 
 not do so ; so the face of this board is not a flat 
 surface, and therefore will not do for drawing 
 the lines oi plane geometry on. 
 ' But supposing our table flat and our rulers 
 straight, draw now any two straight lines from 
 the same point, in any direction you like, and tell 
 me what have we got here ? — An angle. — Yes, a 
 flat straight lined, i. e., plane rectilineal, angle. 
 
 Now, what is the meaning of this word ''Angle?" 
 It is the inclination, the amount of opening be- 
 tween those lines. You will see plenty of angles 
 if you look round the room [an octogan roomj ; 
 all the different corners are angles ; some are blunt, 
 some are sharp ; in fact, an angle is a corner, the
 
 48 
 
 opening at the corner. What does Horace say of 
 that cosy corner of his Tiburtine farm where he 
 hoped to sit in his old age, and drink his 
 Falernian ? — Angulus ille milii ridet. 
 
 Eemember, the size of an angle in no way 
 depends on the length of the lines containing it. 
 Here, as I open and close up the legs of my big 
 wooden compasses, I make angles greater or less 
 with the same straight lines ; and here, give me 
 one of your little brass compasses, — if I open it 
 equally, with the large compasses, the angles are 
 equal, though the legs are much shorter. 
 
 Plenty of time should be given to this matter — 
 the meaning of an angle ; and when the boys 
 have learned how, by means of three letters, 
 an angle is indicated in Euclid, a number of inter- 
 secting lines should be di'a's^Ti on the black board, 
 and while the Master puts his finger into the 
 angles, the boys should indicate them by naming 
 the letters ; and conversely he should name the 
 letters, and the boys should come up one by one 
 to the board and put their finger into the angle 
 named. 
 
 A Master will often be surprised how long it 
 will take before the whole of a class of weak boys 
 can do this ; but he will be greatly helped in 
 stimulating the slowest and weakest, by the hearty 
 and not ill-natured laugh elicited by their bad 
 attempts at hitting the angle named. 
 
 All teachers should assure themselves that
 
 49 
 
 every individual boy has got over this difficulty. 
 I have met boys professedly reading the third 
 book of Euclid, who actually did not know the 
 angle they were naming. No wonder Euclid is 
 repulsive to such. 
 
 The same figure on the board will supply 
 another exercise which should not be omitted, — 
 the adding two contiguous angles, and pointing 
 out and naming the single angle which they make 
 when added together, also the taking one angle 
 from another, and naming the angle that remains. 
 
 This is a greater difficulty with many boys than 
 would be supposed, but it is a great gain when 
 they can do it promptly ; it helps them much 
 in the winding up of the fifth proposition, and 
 when they come to the seventh. 
 
 The three classes into which angles are divided, 
 according as they are acute, right, or obtuse, are 
 easily set before them, by the Master putting the 
 end of his long ruler to the edge of his table, and 
 making it slant more or less ; they soon get to 
 appreciate Euclid's test of a right angle. 
 
 Before drawing a circle with a pair of com- 
 passes, it is well to do it by the primitive mode 
 of a tack in the black board, and a bit of string 
 with a loop at one end to go round the tack, and 
 a piece of chalk tied to the other. 
 
 The rest of the definitions offer no difiiculty. 
 It is better to pass over ah reference to parallel 
 lines at present.
 
 50 
 
 With regard to the Postulates, it may be 
 enough to observe you are allowed the use of a 
 straight niler and a pair of compasses. They are 
 allowed you only that you may draw, and pro- 
 duce, straight lines, and describe circles, and not 
 to mecmLre tcith. It is better at present not to 
 distract the boys by alluding to any deeper mean- 
 ing of the Postulates. 
 
 The Axioms are readily taken in. Let them 
 know that Euclid asks that they may be accepted 
 without proof, hccause he has no proof to offer, that 
 . he proves everything he can. Of course, they 
 will be told not to think about the twelfth axiom 
 at present. 
 
 And now we have arrived at the first pro- 
 position. Let the figures of the first three pro- 
 positions be drawn very carefully and deliberately ; 
 the boys will enjoy doing it. Let the equilateral 
 Fig. 1. triangle in the first proposition be drawn on each 
 side of the line. In the second proposition let 
 •^«'r/- 2. them join the point with each end of the given 
 line. Vary also the relative positions of the point 
 and the straight line, bring the point nearer and 
 nearer to the straight line, let them see that the 
 triangle thus becomes smaller and smaller, and 
 guide them to feel what it becomes when the 
 point actually coincides 'with an end of the line. 
 Also place the point in the given line. 
 Fifj. 3. In the third proposition, by all means let them 
 do all the figure of the second proposition re-
 
 61 
 
 quired for drawing AD equal to C ; they had 
 better do it in j)€ncil, inking in the Hne AD ; 
 then let them efface all the pencil figure, and they 
 have the figure as given in their Euclid books, 
 and can proceed with the third proposition. 
 
 Boys like all this ; they take a great pleasure 
 and pride in it : they like to bring out neat and 
 good figures, and it is all very instructive. 
 
 The demonstrations of the first three propo- 
 sitions are very simple, and there is this good 
 about them, that the boys have the advantage 
 of going three times over the same argument, 
 with a little variety in details. But even here 
 boys think there is something mysterious about 
 lines, so that it is desirable to throw them 
 off the rut of Euclid's phraseology and ])ack on 
 their own common sense. 
 
 And on Horace's principle that FdcUculmn acri 
 fortius et melius, secat res, we proceed in some such 
 way as the following : — 
 
 At one side of the black board a few strokes 
 represent the Tower of London. Near it we draw 
 a soldier on guard, — soldier, musket, and all is 
 done in a few strokes. At the other side of the 
 board is drawn a round tower and a flag flying ; 
 this is Windsor Castle, and we place a sentry on 
 duty there too. Now tell them these are two 
 soldiers of the Grenadier Guards, one battalion 
 of which is stationed at Windsor, the other at 
 
 D 2
 
 52 
 
 the Tower, and there is a bet pending between 
 these two men as to which is the taller. Un- 
 fortunately they are both on duty, one at Windsor, 
 the other in London, and cannot therefore settle 
 the question by the primitive method of standing 
 back to back and measuring. What shall they 
 do ? The Windsor man has a comrade who 
 measures with him ; they find they are exactly 
 of equal height. This comrade is not on guard, 
 and gets leave to go to London. Then, midway 
 between Windsor Castle and the Tower, a few 
 strokes exhibit the train and the '' comrade " 
 inside. By the time we have drawn the scare- 
 crow figure of the long-legged guardsman in the 
 train, all are in a roar of laughter. Well, he 
 gets to London, and measures back to back with 
 the man at the Tower, and they find they are 
 also of exactly equal height. 
 
 Now, the London man and the Windsor man 
 know, u-ithout measuring ivitli each other, that one is 
 exactly of equal height with the other. 
 
 By what axiom it is asked : they answer, doubt- 
 less rightly, the first. 
 
 Now, then, says the Master, who of you can pick 
 out, in each of the first three figures, the London 
 man and Windsor man, and, above all, the man 
 that went by the train ? 
 
 In the best humour they all turn to their 
 figures and look and think till, in a little while, 
 
 I
 
 63 
 
 one after another, they all find out; and when 
 they have all caught the man that went by the 
 train, it is a great victory ! 
 
 This done ; — turn, says the Master, to the thir- 
 teenth proposition. I tell you beforehand, that the 
 grand difficulty of that proposition is to see which 
 is the man that went by the train. You are con- 
 fused with the multitude of angles named, until 
 you have discovered the man that went by the 
 train, then it is all perfectly simple ; and I here 
 give you notice that when you come to that pro- 
 position, whoever finds out which is the man that 
 went by the train, may claim an exemption. 
 Make a note of that ! 
 
 Now comes the tug of war : the fourth proposi- 
 tion, which is the key of Euclid. We tell them 
 that the first three propositions are put in first, 
 because in the fifth and sixth propositions we 
 have to cut off, from a greater line, a part equal 
 to the less ; but that the real beginning of Euclid 
 is the fourth proposition, the first theorem, and 
 that on this proposition the battle with Euclid is 
 to be fought, and the victory won. 
 
 From the beginning one cannot be too parti- 
 cular in pointing out the three distinct portions of 
 each proposition — the enunciation, construction, 
 and demonstration. 
 
 In drawing the figure of the fourth proposition. Fig. 4. 
 it is wise to be very deliberate, and make a great 
 to do about making the two given lines and the
 
 64 
 
 iucludcd angle in each triangle equal, in order 
 that the fact of their equality may be strongly 
 impressed on the learners' minds. 
 
 Let each boy draw the AB and DE, and care- 
 fully, by his boxwood ruler, make them (say) two 
 inches long. [If any sharp boy retorts, *' You 
 told us we were not to use our rulers to measure 
 with," explain — this is only a datum; that it is 
 for the qucesita they are not to measure.] 
 
 For the included angle, if a boy has learned 
 the use of the protractor, and done a little practi- 
 cal geometry, (as he ought to,) he draws two lines 
 equally inclined to the lines AB and DE ; if not, 
 let him bend a bit of paper or cardboard to any 
 angle, and with its help draw the second lines AC 
 and BE equaUy inclined to the first ; and, by the 
 boxwood ruler, let him make them carefully (say) 
 two inches and a-half long. 
 
 Does this seem long and useless ? I think it is 
 highly important. It must be borne in mind that 
 I have supposed a set of very weak boys before the 
 Master. If he were to draw quickly the figures of 
 two triangles, and say (as he might if he had 
 more advanced pupils) we will suppose such lines 
 and angles equal in each, and expect them to take 
 in his words, he will be disappointed. I venture 
 to say, if he names different lines and angles, and 
 says was this and this given equal, or have they 
 to be proved equal, he will find the boys again 
 and again making bad shots ; but all this care-
 
 55 
 
 fill deliberation which I advocate helps them 
 gradually to take in the idea, and till they know 
 accurately what is giveu, and what has to be 
 proved, they can make no progress. 
 
 It would be well at this point to take up the 
 eighth axiom, and dwell on it and elucidate it : let 
 them know that though in common parlance the 
 words '' same " and " equal " are used as if they 
 had the same meaning, (for instance, we speak of 
 two boys being of the same height, of two masses 
 being of the same weight, when we mean they are 
 of equal height and equal weight,) the words are 
 not confounded in Euclid : when he says the same, 
 he means the same identical. 
 
 He says, we know two magnitudes are equal, if we 
 know, if we can assure ourselves, that they fill the 
 very same identical space. Elucidate, by sup- 
 posing the boy you are addressing to be casting 
 bullets : he casts one out of the mould, then he 
 casts another out of the same mould ; there they 
 are lying side by side ; is he sure that they are 
 equal ? yes, why ? because he knows them to 
 ha.ve filled the same space, the same cavity of the 
 mould in which they were cast. 
 
 It is good, here, to get a promise from each boy 
 that they will not say that any two things which 
 they want to prove equal are so, until they have 
 first shown that they fill the same space. 
 
 We then begin with Euclid's ideal super- 
 position : place A on D and AB on DE. Where,
 
 66 
 
 then, will B naturally and of necessity fall, and 
 why ? Some wall have difficulty in answering the 
 question ; they arc frightened at the phraseology 
 of geometry. Draw their minds, then, to some 
 homely illustration. Here are a couple of walking- 
 sticks, a long one and a short one. I lay them 
 alongside of each other. I bring the handles 
 together ; say, wdll the points come together ? No. 
 Why? Because one is longer than the other. 
 Quite right. Here are a couple of equal length ; 
 I do the same with them. Now, do the points 
 come together ? Yes. Why ? Because one stick 
 is as long as the other. Quite right again. 
 
 Now, says the Master, let us go back to the 
 lines ; consider them to represent walking-sticks ; 
 and remember, AB was given equal to DE. 
 Now, then, if you place A on D and AB along DE, 
 will B come on E ? Yes. Why ? Because they 
 are equal. Quite right, admirably said. You 
 have got over one-third of the difficulty of the 
 main part of the proposition. 
 
 Now, these lines AB and DE lying together, 
 where will AC naturally and of necessity lie, and 
 why ? Here it is well to have three triangles at 
 hand in cardboard, w^hich have two sides in each 
 respectively equal, the included angle being in two 
 cases equal, in the third case unequal. Place them 
 together as directed, bringing together alternately 
 the triangles which have unequal and equal in- 
 cluded angles. Thus the pupil will be brought to
 
 57 
 
 feel the reason why AC will lie along DF. Two 
 pair of compasses will do as well. 
 
 And AC now lying along DF, will the point C 
 naturally and of necessity fall on F ? Yes. It is 
 hoped this time he will say firmly, " Because the 
 lines are equal." 
 
 He should now be called upon to give the three 
 consecutive steps of the reasoning. If he does it 
 correctly, he may deservedly be patted on the 
 back; for out of a hundred boys that come to 
 Eton professing to have read Euclid, not one can 
 do as much. 
 
 Now, take every boy consecutively, and make 
 him try to say the same three steps of the proof. 
 A Master will find comparatively few able to do 
 so, even after the foregoing explanation. He 
 must be ready to repeat and vary his illustrations ; 
 also by going round and round till each boy can 
 say it, one will teach the other, and the desire to 
 be classed with the successful will be a stimulus 
 that will help the poor weak fellows to fix their 
 thoughts. At last, we may suppose they have all 
 succeeded in saying this much, right. 
 
 Now, call a pupil up to the board, and ask him 
 where B now lies. It is ten chances to one that 
 he wiU point to the letter B on the board. No, the 
 Master cries energetically — and he dashes a couple 
 of chalk marks across the triangle ABC, saying, 
 ABC is not there ; it's lying on DEF. Now, try 
 again. Where is B '? He puts his finger on E ;
 
 58 
 
 and Where is C ? He puts his finger on F. 
 Quite right now, observes the Master ; you have 
 shown that the two hues BC and EF begin to- 
 gether and end together. Now, answer me this. 
 Beginning together and ending together, as they 
 do, can they separate at all between the beginning 
 and the end '? 
 
 If they do not take in the meaning of this 
 question, and possibly they will not, they might 
 be helped thus : — 
 
 The Master might take up a couple of pens, 
 and bringing the points of the pens together with 
 one finger and thumb, and the feather ends to- 
 gether with the other, he might say. Here these 
 two pens begin and end together, but they don't 
 keep together ; they separate. In fact, they en- 
 close a space, don't they ? Put your finger into 
 the space they enclose. How is it that ' they en- 
 close a space ? Because they are not straight. 
 Exactly so, and if they w^ere straight lines, they 
 could not enclose a space. Is not that just wdiat 
 Euclid says ? Here are two straight pen-holders ; 
 if I bring the beginning and end of these together 
 as I did the quill pens just now, they do not enclose 
 a space, but keep together from beginning to end. 
 
 Now, these two lines BC and EF are sup- 
 posed to be straight lines, and you have shown 
 that they begin together and end together. 
 
 Say now, do they separate like the pens, or 
 keep together like the pen-holders ?
 
 59 
 
 Tliey all answer promptly and rightly this time. 
 The Master now tells the boy whom he has called 
 up, to draw his finger along the space filled by EF; 
 he does so ; And again to draw his finger along 
 the space filled by BC ; he draws his finger along 
 the same space. Eight, and yon have discovered 
 (he adds) that the two lines fill the same space, 
 i. e., so much length, you need take no account of 
 their breadth because lines have not any. 
 
 Now, let us look back and see what we have 
 done. We have shown that if any two triangles 
 have two sides of the one equal to two sides of 
 the other, each to each, and have likewise the 
 included angles equal, — and that if one of the 
 triangles be applied to the other as a triangle of 
 any form ivhatever might he applied to any other, — 
 
 THE two BASES WILL OF NECESSITY FILL THE SAME 
 IDENTICAL SPACE. 
 
 Now, turn to your eighth axiom and read it. 
 " Magnitudes which coincide, that is, which 
 exactly ^/Z the same space, are equal." 
 
 What, then, can you now say of BC and EF ? 
 That they are equal. Quite right, well said. 
 
 After a minute or two's rest for breathing, the 
 lesson is resumed. 
 
 Now, tell me, where does AB lie ? On DE. 
 How do you know ? He hesitates. The Master 
 passes on the question. At last, one, a little 
 clearer or bolder than the rest, ventures to say, 
 " Because we put it there." Quite right. A very
 
 60 
 
 good and sufficient reason, we put it there. Shake 
 hands for that. And where does BC He ? On 
 EF. How do you know ? If he is very bright 
 he will say, '' We have just proved that it must 
 come there," and the Master may well say, 
 "Capital." If he does not see the right answer, 
 he must be led on to it. 
 
 When he sees this, the Master says. Now put 
 your finge]' into the space filled by the angle ABC, 
 now into the space filled by DEF. He puts his 
 finger both times into the same space. So you 
 have discovered that the angles ABC and DEF 
 both fill the same space. And as they fill the 
 same space, what does the eighth axiom tell you ? 
 That they are equal. Eight again. 
 
 Now, once more. Where does AC lie ? On DF. 
 " How do you know ? Don't say because we put 
 it there." No, but we put AB on DE, and we 
 proved that, in that case, AC must come on DF. 
 A triumph ! you deserve exemption for that. Of 
 course, you know where BC lies, you have already 
 told me. Now put your finger into the space 
 filled by the angle ACB, and now into that filled 
 by DFE. Twice again he puts his finger into 
 the same space. So you have discovered for the 
 third time that the two things which you wish to 
 prove equal (that is, the second pair of remaining 
 angles) fill the same space. 
 
 How do you finish ? Therefore by the eighth 
 axiom The pupil finishes the sentence by say-
 
 61 
 
 ing, "They are equal." Right agam. "You 
 are gomg ahead — one 'bout more, and you're safe 
 in port ! " 
 
 Once again, then, where was it you put AB ? 
 On DE. And where did you prove AC would 
 come ? On DF. And where did you show that 
 BO must lie ? On EF. 
 
 Now, then, put the flat of your hand into the 
 space filled by the triangle ABC, now into the 
 space filled by the triangle DEF ; twice he puts 
 the flat of his hand on the same space. So you 
 have for the fourth time made the discovery that 
 the two things you want to prove equal (now the 
 two triangles) fill the same space, and, therefore, 
 
 by the eighth axiom in tone of sympathetic 
 
 triumph, the pupil takes up the word, and adds, 
 the triangles are equal. 
 
 You have thus proved, in accordance with EucVuVs 
 eighth axiom, that if two triangles have two sides 
 of the one equal to two sides of the other, and 
 have the included angles also equal, thcg are equal 
 in every respect. 
 
 This is the grand fourth proposition. It is, as 
 I said, the key to Euclid. I congratulate you 
 on what you have done. Go now to your place, 
 read over the proposition, as it is written out in 
 Euclid, once or tv/ice, carefully, then close the 
 book and write it out, while I take another boy 
 in hand. 
 
 I have here imagined a very fair (a far too fair)
 
 62 
 
 specimen of an average pupil. A Master must 
 not be disappointed if he has to lead a boy on and 
 encourage him many a time, before he wins the 
 victory. Many and many a time has a boy said 
 to me, *'AB lying along DE, AC will lie along 
 DF, because AC is equal to DF." And I have 
 had to answer, " My dear fellow, there is ex- 
 actly as much sense in what you have now said 
 to me, as if you were to tell me it is twenty-two 
 miles to London, because butter is eighteen-pence 
 a pound." 
 
 Boys are most apt to say words without attach- 
 ing a meaning to them. This is often found to 
 be the case where it would not be expected. They 
 must be shaken out of the habit, and this is 
 exactly one of those things that Euclid when 
 properly learnt does. 
 
 I remember once hearing a boy saying the pro- 
 position thus : — 
 
 Because AB is equal to DE, and the angle 
 BAC is equal to EDF, therefore the line AC lies 
 on DF. No, no, said I. What ought he to say ? 
 The next boy answered. Because AB lies on DE. 
 A little fellow sitting by the side of the speaker 
 (he is a post Captain in the Navy now) looked 
 up eagerly into my face and said. Will you tell 
 me why it is not as good to say it one way as the 
 other ? — " Do you wish to know why ? I'll tell 
 you willingly." 
 
 Look at those two triangles on the black board,
 
 63 
 
 ABC and DEF. Remember AB and AC are 
 respectively equal to DE and DF, and the included 
 angles also. Yes. 
 
 Now, if I were to take a saw and cut down 
 through the board between the two triangles, and 
 were to send one-half of it, that on which the 
 triangle ABC is drawn, to Oxford, and the other, 
 that on which DEF is drawn, to Cambridge, the 
 lines and angles would still be equal, would they 
 not ? Of course. But if one of the triangles 
 was in Oxford and the other in Cambridge, could 
 the line AC lie oil DF ? Of course not. 
 
 But if the triangles are neither at Oxford nor 
 at Cambridge, but there on the board before us, 
 and I conceive the triangle ABC to be laid on 
 DEF, laying A on D, and AB along DE, then 
 indeed AC ti-ill lie along DF, because the included 
 angles are equal. 
 
 A rich, deep blush forthwith suffused the boy's 
 ingenuous countenance. "Thank you, sir," said he ; 
 " I see it perfectly now, — I never saw it before." 
 
 When the whole class have been thus set on the 
 right tack for appreciating the demonstration, and 
 by their own efforts have mastered it, and shown 
 themselves able to produce what they know by 
 writing it out correctly, then follows another exer- 
 cise most interesting and instructive. The aim 
 of it is to show the application of the fourth 
 proposition. 
 
 But it is high time the class should have a
 
 64 
 
 little rest, and while they are resting, I should 
 like to have a little talk with my readers about 
 all this. 
 
 Will one of those friends who have been reading 
 these last pages feel ready to exclaim, "What 
 labour, what misdirected effort have we here ! all 
 this work to prove (in subjection to an artificial 
 test of equality) an axiom ! for the fourth pro- 
 position is nothing else ! " " My friend," I answer, 
 " let me speak as a Schoolmaster. Euclid is 
 the book which the traditions and the general con- 
 sent of the country put into our hands, and my 
 business as a Schoolmaster is to try and make it 
 do what it is put into our hands to effect. Now, 
 what do I find, by experience, is the result of this 
 mental ordeal I have been describing ? I reply, 
 confidently, the boys come out of it intellectually 
 changed. They are lifted into a higher mental 
 level from that in which they stood before, never 
 to descend again into it as long as they live." 
 After this badgering (it might be called, if there were 
 not a perfectly good understanding on both sides) 
 on the fourth proposition, there is comparatively 
 no more difficulty in Euclid. Henceforth they 
 take kindly to it ; they icill know the meaning of 
 what they are doing. They never think of learn- 
 ing a proposition by rote. It is too much trouble ; 
 there is no pleasure in it ; but there is very great 
 pleasure in understanding it. 
 
 The sort of mental activity that is henceforth
 
 65 
 
 evoked by Euclid, and the satisfaction of the 
 EucHd lesson, I can best illustrate by referring 
 to the actual facts of those weekly evening Euclid 
 lessons of last school-time with the class of 
 St. Mark's boys that I have alluded to. I can 
 speak more freely of them than I can of others. 
 
 When we had come to the third proposition of 
 Book III., I told them of a mistake which had 
 been made by some great men* in a mathe- 
 matical examination, who tried to prove the 
 second part of the proposition by the B.I. 4., and 
 I asked them to explain where their mistake lay. 
 They did so. One of them, however, observed, 
 '' But it might be proved by the fourth." " How 
 so?" "Because two of the angles of each 
 of the triangles are equal, so by the thirty-second 
 proposition the third must be, and that is 
 the included angle." Another of the lads here 
 interposed : "It might be proved by the forty- 
 seventh proposition." 
 
 * I am afraid tliese " great mea " here spoken of were 
 none other than the scholars of Trinity in their fellowship 
 examination. When I was trying for a fellowship, (which I did 
 not get,) one of the examiners told me that all the candidates 
 but two had made this mistake. Now, the story is so valuable 
 for making boys give an intellectual spring, for giving them 
 what the French would call elan, that I am afraid it often does 
 duty in my class-room. So I must here humbly apologize to that 
 most select and respected body of men the scholars of Trinity, 
 and ask them, " for a great good," to let me " do them a little 
 wron"; ? "
 
 6G 
 
 There is not much in this ; but it shows mental 
 activity, and an appreciation of Euclid. The 
 study cannot be repulsive to boys who have this 
 kind of Imowledge of it, and can link on readily 
 one proposition to another ; and I can assure my 
 readers that as I led them on to discover for 
 themselves the different unexpected properties of 
 the circle, which Euclid brings out in admirable 
 continuity in the latter half of the third book, so 
 entirely interesting was the exercise, that they 
 could hardly refrain from a cheer of satisfaction at 
 the winding up of each proposition. 
 
 Come here, my friend, and stand by my side. 
 Look into those boys' faces. They are merry- 
 hearted boys ; they laugh like others, and sing 
 (that they do, and sing very well too !) Look at 
 them now. Mark the fixed eye — the rivetted 
 attention — the animated countenance — the smile 
 of satisfaction — they are not conscious of all this, 
 but you and I looking into their faces can see it. 
 What, I ask you, is all this the sign of ? The 
 interest and internal j^leasure felt in the exercise 
 of the mental faculties in the following out intel- 
 lectual truth. 
 
 Give me then your sjmapathy, my friend, and tell 
 me if you do not think that Euclid is doing them 
 a great good. 
 
 I could speak of others besides St. Mark's boys, 
 and say what pride I have in finding myself sur- 
 rounded by boys in whose minds has grown that
 
 67 
 
 grand capacity which EucHd emphatically imparts, 
 *' the capacity to know when they know a thing, 
 and to hnow when they don't hioiv it.'' 
 
 I rejoice to see them reject an explanation if 
 they do not see their way to link on all that is said, 
 from sentence to sentence, in a manner satisfactory 
 to themselves. 
 
 I rejoice to see their quickness at putting their 
 finger on the weak or obscure point of an expla- 
 nation. I rejoice to he pinned down by them by a 
 searching question. " Why is this ? You have 
 not explained that." 
 
 But we must leave this. It is time to go back 
 to the Euclid. We left the pupils resting ; but they 
 were only half through the battle. 
 
 To appreciate the fourth proposition the learner 
 must know, not only its demonstration, but its 
 application. Of course, the fifth and sixth pro- 
 positions are exercises on the fourth ; but it so 
 happens that they are particularly hard exercises. 
 
 There are a number of far easier ones scat- 
 tered about Euclid, if only it were permitted to 
 take a few things for granted, which they have no 
 difiiculty in doing; for instance, that an angle 
 may be bisected, and that a perpendicular may be 
 drawn from a point in a line. (If they have 
 done any practical geometry, they have learned 
 how to do such problems,) then very easy exer- 
 cises on the fourth proposition may be found Figs.5,Q. 
 in Euclid {e. g., the tenth prop.) — or framed. 
 
 E 2
 
 68 
 
 Agaiu, if we assume that on opeiiiug a pair 
 of scissors the angle between the blades is equal 
 
 Fiij. 7. to the angle between the handles, then the six- 
 teenth proposition furnishes an exercise. If we 
 
 Fig. 8. write a figure like a Z on the black board, and 
 assume that the angles in the knees of the Z are 
 equal, then the thirty-third is an exercise. If we 
 
 Fi(i. 9. assume that a square may be described, the forty- 
 seventh furnishes a capital exercise. 
 
 And if they are told that all these things, which 
 they are asked to take for granted now, will be 
 regularly proved hereafter, no harm is done. 
 
 The two triangles to be proved equal being set 
 before the pupil, he examines them and finds out 
 for himself the two sides of the one that are equal 
 to the two sides of the other, observing that the 
 equal angles in each triangle must be those that are 
 contained by the respectively equal sides ; then he 
 writes formally out the exercise in five lines or 
 paragraphs : — 
 
 1. He names one side in each triangle that is 
 equal, giving the reason why. 
 
 2. He names a second side in each that is 
 equal, giving the reason why. 
 
 3. He recapitulates, — wherefore the two sides 
 named of the one triangle are respectively equal 
 to the two sides named of the other ? 
 
 4. He names the included angles, and gives the 
 reason why they are equal. 
 
 5. He concludes, therefore, hij the fourth pro-
 
 69 
 
 position, the triangles are equal, in every respect, 
 naming the respects if necessary. 
 
 It is hitting a nail on the head that drives it 
 home, and that is just what these exercises do. 
 After doing two or three of them, they get quite 
 clear and hrisk. They enjoy the exercise. They 
 examine the triangles ; pick out the sides ; write 
 out the five formal paragraphs ; come up with it. 
 It is examined. Right. Off they are to do another. 
 One hears occasionally, in a tone of triumph, 
 " Therefore, hy the fourth proposition," &c. 
 
 The last exercise is always that crucial test, 
 the second part of the third proposition of Fiy. lo 
 the third book, and the scholars of Trinity do 
 duty again and again. 
 
 Now, among these exercises, we introduce the 
 following in an off-hand way, without letting 
 the class into the secret of what we are about. 
 
 Draw, says the Master, a couple of circles, with Fiy. 1 1. 
 the same centre one inside the other ; and draw 
 now a couple of radii (two spokes of the wheel) to 
 the rim of the outer circle ; call them AD, AE ; 
 put B and C where these lines cut the inner circles, 
 join BE and CD. Now take as an exercise to 
 prove that the triangles AEB and ADC are in 
 every respect equal, and name the respects. They 
 set to work ; in two or three minutes they bring 
 up the exercise, the five paragraphs written 
 correctly out. . 
 
 Then the Master says, Now join BC, and.
 
 70 
 
 remembering what you have proved already, try 
 and prove that the triangles DBC and BCE 
 are also equal in eveiy respect, observing to them 
 that the bases of both triangles are the same line. 
 
 Down they go to work, and this exercise is 
 brought uj) in a few minutes. 
 
 Then the Master again quite casually says. Let 
 me see, we proved these big angles ACD and 
 ABE to be equal ? — Yes, say they, in the first 
 of the two exercises. And we have just now 
 proved that BCD is equalto CBE ? — Yes. Suppose 
 we take these little poky angles from the big ones. 
 Then ABC and ACB remain ; And if equals are 
 taken from equals, what do we know about the 
 remainders ? — They are equal. Exactly, then 
 what angles are equal ? ABC is equal to ACB. 
 
 The tutor's face, which has been solemn and 
 somewhat constrained all this time, now relaxes into 
 a serene smile of triumph and congratulation. 
 ** Gentlemen," says he, "I have the pleasure to an- 
 nounce to you that you have done the fifth propo- 
 sition. The ' Bridge ' is passed." They are taken 
 aback. " Quite true. It's all over ! The tooth is 
 out ! It's all right ! " So, then, we are aU very 
 happy together. 
 
 In doing these exercises with the boys, I have 
 had reason to admire Euclid's judgment in speak- 
 ing of the two sides and the base of a triangle, 
 instead of talking, as we very commonly do, of 
 the three sides of a triangle. To observe which
 
 
 dcoJ./^ 
 
 <M4X^..I J 5 
 
 T.y.^ 
 
 X^. 7.4-/ 
 
 y^e^ /C^ 
 
 s. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 '3 
 
 t^.J.J^. 
 
 H- /'S--^ C-^' .^■F'c'i
 
 71 
 
 lines are the bases of the triangles to be compared 
 is a great help to learners. One boy to whom I 
 gave the sixth proposition as an exercise on the 
 fourth, without, of course, telling him it was a 
 proposition of Euclid, came up a little baffled, 
 and scanning the figure, he said, "Which are 
 the bases of the triangles we have to compare ?" 
 " A capital question !" was my answer. " Shake 
 hands." I put him on the right tack to find out 
 for himself. He picked them out. " I see," he 
 said ; and he went down to his place, and wrote 
 out the exercise (really the proposition) at once 
 perfectly right. 
 
 After this we turn to our Euclids : they read 
 over the fifth and sixth* propositions, paragraph 
 by paragraph, and then write them out carefully. 
 These exercises are not intended to supersede the 
 careful writing out of Euclid. The appreciating 
 and falling in with Euclid's guarded choice diction 
 I hold to be a great intellectual benefit. It is a 
 help to those who wish their knowledge to be 
 clear and precise, and I cannot think it is lengthy. 
 Very often, when with a little oratory and 
 emphasis, suiting the action to the word and 
 the word to the action, I have gone over a pro- 
 position for a class at the black board, they have 
 said to me, '' Is that all ? we can understand that, 
 but there is such a lot of it in Euclid." Then I 
 
 * I do not find that they have any difficulty in taking in the 
 idea of the reductio ad absurdam proof, if dearly put.
 
 72 
 
 take a Euclid in my hand, and say, " You tix 
 your eyes on the figure on the black board, while 
 I read the proposition in Euclid verbatim et lite- 
 ratim, and you will see if there is anything in it 
 that I have not said ; also, you will tell me if it 
 can be shortened, and where." At the end of 
 the reading they are always satisfied that the 
 wording of the proof is only what is needed for 
 completeness and precision. 
 
 They might go a-head now as P'Va-rat, but I gene- 
 rally take them by the hand, — keep the belt round 
 them, till they have reached the eighth. After 
 that they swim off by themselves. 
 
 So to complete my sketch, I will give a rapid 
 outline of our teaching the seventh and eighth. 
 We always teach them together ''without solution 
 of continuity." 
 
 The seventh, I frankly tell them, is a teaser. 
 I like to do so, it puts their courage up. I add, 
 it is a proposition introduced only to prove the 
 eighth, which is a most important proposition, as 
 valuable as the fourth, but the seventh is never 
 used again. 
 
 I tell them that some schools are afraid of the 
 seventh, and, explaining to them what is wanted 
 to be proved in the eighth, I guide them to show 
 me the proof that is given of the eighth (as a 
 simple deduction from the fifth), in schools where 
 they are afraid of the seventh. " But you are not 
 afraid of the seventh ? " No ! — Let us go at it then.
 
 73 
 
 I find it simplest to put the enunciation in this 
 form. If the two sides terminating in one ex- 
 tremity of the base are equal, those terminating 
 in the other extremity must be unequal. Then 
 we proceed step by step, in the way of questions, 
 from the equal angles at the base of the isoceles 
 triangle to the "Much more then...." Some 
 boys have a great difficulty about the a fortiori 
 argument. We have a familiar illustration which 
 has often proved a great help to boys.— You agree 
 that a father is older than his son ? Yes. And 
 that a grandfather is older than the father ? 
 Yes. Much more must a grandfather be older 
 than his grandson. Now, then, in the seventh 
 proposition pick me out the father, the grand- 
 father, and the grandson. They do it after a 
 little, and the difficulty is got over, and they go 
 on at once to the eighth, see its connection and 
 take it in. In fact, the coinciding of the angles 
 is no difficulty to them after the drilling they 
 have had in the fourth proposition. 
 
 The work is done now. Those who have suc- 
 ceeded in mastering the eight propositions, and 
 have answered our questions* upon them, and 
 
 * One of our methods is to turn the eight propositions into 
 a series of questions (they make upwards of a hundred) ; to 
 these we get written answers. I had thought of putting our 
 questions into an Appendix to this Essay, but it is not worth 
 while. It" any teacher of Euclid who reads these pages would 
 like a copy of the questions, ho is heai'tily welcome to them.
 
 74 
 
 liave written them out correctly, get their pass : 
 they are fivo-rat. And to them I say : " Now, if 
 you hke to ask, what is the use of EucHd ? I will 
 tell you." But, no ! they are too pleased and 
 proud to ask the question. Besides, they have felt 
 internal satisfaction in completing a geometrical 
 demonstration. 
 
 These are formed into a class of honour-men ; 
 they go on by themselves, learning their four 
 propositions, and writing them out each time 
 they come, wiiile the Master goes over the same 
 ground a second time with those who have not 
 conquered. 
 
 In this second going over the ground, with the 
 weakest boys, we find that the patent fact that 
 some of their companions have conquered, and the 
 exalted honours which they enjoy, are a great 
 stimulus to the less successful. Many a time I 
 hear a little tap at my door — "Come in," and the 
 face of one or other peeps in, asking for a little 
 private teaching in play-hours, that they may get 
 their "mystic " honours. When all have passed, we 
 can form ourselves into a class again, and sometimes 
 we lecture, sometimes write out Euclid, sometimes 
 do exercises. (And here I must say that School- 
 masters are under great obligation to the modern 
 editors of Euclid for the carefully graduated 
 exercises which they have appended to their 
 Euclids.) And the work is all pleasant. 
 
 I have now said my say on teaching Euclid, and
 
 75 
 
 happy shall I be if any hint of mine in these pages 
 shall help any Schoolmaster to some of the bright- 
 ness and sunshine which teaching Euclid has been 
 to me for these many years back. 
 
 I must now bring my Essay or Narrative to a 
 close. 
 
 I have been reading over Mr. Wilson's essay 
 again. I do not think we are far apart in view. 
 I hope not. No reader of his essay can lay the 
 book down without feeling that Rugby is most 
 fortunate in having such a teacher of natural 
 science, and that, whatever can be made of it, he 
 will make of it ; if the study of natural science can 
 be prevented being cram, he will prevent it ; if its 
 votaries can be saved from sciolism, he is the man 
 to save them. But even he, I think, will say that 
 if Euclid can be made attractive instead of repul- 
 sive, and I have tried to show that it can, then 
 the boys who are imbued with geometrical concep- 
 tions and reasoning will pass on to mechanics, 
 which he judiciously places foremost in the course 
 of natural sciences, much more profitably than 
 those that are not. I do not speak as a novice. I 
 have before me papers on experimental mechanics, 
 hydrostatics, and explanatory astronomy, which 
 I set to my pupils at Eton in the year 1836-7 
 (and, I may add, the actual marks got in the 
 examination by the late Head Master of Eton, 
 Dr. Balston, then my pupil). Now, while the 
 Euclid and the non-Euclid boy will both enjoy
 
 76 
 
 the models equally, the Euclid boy will be at 
 home iu the parallelogram of forces in a mauner 
 that the other will not be. The figure and its 
 properties are strange to this latter one ; you have 
 to be leading him on with hesitating steps, and 
 slow ; he does not see his way. The boy up in 
 his Euclid, on the contrary, when you put before 
 him the principle of the " parallelogram of forces," 
 takes it in at a glance ; he sees directly what it 
 must lead to. This is not a fancy. In answer 
 to the question from one of my pupils, " What is 
 the meaning of the parallelogram of force?" I 
 drew a parallelogram on his paper, and, in a few 
 words, answered his question. "How jolly," said 
 he, rubbing his hands. " Oh, do teach us that ! " 
 
 And with a little knowledge of trigonometry, 
 founded on the second book of Euclid, how soon 
 is a boy at home in the triangle of force, and 
 the composition and resolution of forces. How 
 many easy, entertaining, and most instructive pro- 
 blems is he prepared to do. It is not to be 
 doubted that one who has read Euclid will bring 
 conceptions, and a mental training, and a know- 
 ledge to the subject that will make it far more 
 profitable to him than it will be to the other. 
 
 So, in explanatory astronomy, that most in- 
 structive and elevating subject, often have I tried 
 by paper triangles and models to make people, 
 untrained by Euclid, realize the greatness of 
 creation, and comparatively in vain. There is a
 
 77 
 
 haziness of view, an indefiniteness in their con- 
 ception that one cannot get over ; the matter does 
 not seem to come home to such ; but take a set of 
 boys that are well up in their Euclid, who have a 
 clear understanding about the nature and proper- 
 ties of triangles, to whom the thirty- second 
 proposition is a truth known, felt, and easily 
 applied. Carry them gradually on from a base 
 measured on the earth's surface to find the dis- 
 tance of the moon, up to the fact that a base of 
 190 millions of miles shrivels to a point in com- 
 parison with the distance of the fixed stars, they 
 take in w^hat you say, and listen with wonder, and 
 (I can say so, for I have seen it) with breathless 
 awe. 
 
 I wonder and should very much like to know if 
 such charming books as " HerscheU's Astronomy," 
 his " Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects," or 
 " Airy's Ipswich Lectures," are read to any extent 
 with interest and profit by any except those whose 
 minds are imbued with and trained by the con- 
 ceptions and reasoning of plane geometry. 
 
 Before I close, I would say a word about 
 Foreign Schools for the middle and lower classes ; 
 at least, as far as they have come before me. 
 
 Last summer, in Switzerland, I learned from my 
 Swiss Guide, that there was an excellent pensionat 
 at Sallenches, under the direction of the Freres 
 Chretiens ; that the numbers of the school had
 
 78 
 
 doubled and more, within a year ; that, standing 
 on its own merits, it had gone far to empty the 
 Government College at Bonneville, which received 
 a large subvention from the State. My guide 
 had a son at the school ; he was going with his 
 wife the next day to the distrihution des Prix, and 
 to bring his boy home for the holidays. I asked 
 leave to go with him ; and the next day I ac- 
 companied him and his wife in their char-a-banc to 
 Sallenches. He introduced me to the principal, 
 clearly an able man. I had also much talk with 
 the Professors and the boys. I was present at the 
 closing ceremony of the year, heard their brass 
 band, listened to their glees and songs, heard 
 their pieces recited, saw their little plays acted, 
 and through the local knowledge of my guide, got 
 the names of those who appeared the most pro- 
 mising and successful pupils ; of those, at least, 
 who carried off the greatest number of that in- 
 exhaustible stock of chaplets and books, that are 
 distributed on such occasions at French Schools. 
 
 It was a very interesting meeting, and I greatly 
 enjoyed it, though Dr. Balston would have been 
 surprised and amused, if, in the course of his 
 Swiss rambles last summer, the local paper of 
 Sallenches had fallen into his hands, and he had 
 read as follows : — 
 
 "Nous devons mentionner un Suffrage non 
 moins precieux que ceux de I'assistance toute 
 entiere. Un stranger, venu du Village de St.
 
 79 
 
 Gervais, montrait dans les rangs de 1' assemblee 
 sa tete venerable, et semblait ecouter avec plus 
 d'interet que tous ses voisins, ce qui se disait dans 
 la salle, ou sur le petit Theatre improvise. C'etait 
 le Eeverend Hewtrey, directeur du celebre College 
 d'Eton en Angleterre." 
 
 I found that some of the most promising pupils 
 were living up the valley of Mont Joye, where we 
 were staying, and as they were now dispersed for 
 the holidays, I found them out in their mountain 
 homes, and had most friendly and familiar com- 
 munication with them. They showed me their 
 cahiers, and explained the methods of instruction 
 pursued at their school. In fact, they gave me a 
 dozen or fifteen of their school cahiers filled dur- 
 ing the last year, and very neat and tidy they are. 
 Among them are books of drawing, both orna- 
 mental and geometrical, indeed, their geometrical 
 drawing is first rate ; their plans, sections, and 
 elevations, of all kinds of objects, even of com- 
 plicated pieces of machinery, are perfectly 
 astonishing ; so much so, that I went, when 
 passing through Paris, to the great depository of 
 the Freres Chretiens, in the Eue Oudinot, and got 
 a large case of their models and appliances for teach- 
 ing practical geometry and geometrical drawing, for 
 the use of St. Mark's. (They had carried off the 
 Gold Medal at the Great Exhibition.) Besides 
 their drawing books, there were cahiers of Book- 
 keeping, Arithmetic, the common working of
 
 80 
 
 rules, aud rather complicated questions and 
 problems, Composition, Information about common 
 things, some facts of Natural History, a little 
 French grammar, and Physics. 
 
 The contents of the caliier on Physics seem to 
 have been given by dictation from a text-book. 
 They consist mainly of definitions in graceful 
 sonorous French phraseology of the properties of 
 matter : Molecular attraction, cohesion, affinity, 
 porosity, elasticity, vis-inertiae, specific gravity, 
 force, &c., &c. 
 
 Whether or not the boys took in what they 
 wrote down, I cannot say. My knowledge of boys' 
 minds would lead me to fear that it was all sound 
 to them and nothing more ; and I have high au- 
 thority for my doubts ; " ra fiev 6v irKnevovanv ol vioi 
 
 aX\a Xer/ovo-i," says Aristotlc,* 
 
 And if what they wrote down was not taken in, 
 digested, and assimilated, what was it to them ? 
 I fear that for one Rugby chef, who can lay before 
 his pupils an intellectual meal on physics really 
 nourishing and appctisant, there will be found a 
 hundred inferior artists who will give their pupils 
 nothing but — beans ! 
 
 ■"■ The whole sentence from which the above few words are 
 taken is very worthy of attention in this day ; it occurs in the 
 Ethics vi. 8 : — 
 
 'Enii Kal tovt' av rig (TKt-^aiTO, Sid ti, /jiaOiJuariKOQ fiev ttoIq ykvoiT aV 
 ao(li6Q Se 7] (pvaiKOQ ov. "H on rd fiiv Si a(paiptatujg tcrrr rwv SI, at dpxai 
 i? iuntipiag ; Kal rd fxtv 6v TTidTtvovaiv o\ v'loi 'aWd X'tyovai' twv Si, to 
 Ti itjTiv ovK iiSijXoi'.
 
 81 
 
 I liad much talk with the boys about their 
 school, and their work. They recited to me some 
 of their pieces, and translated into French the 
 patois, iu which some of them were written, and 
 explained the jokes, which had called forth the 
 hearty laughter of the audience on the speech- 
 day. 
 
 On the other hand, I talked to them of what 
 interested me. I told them of St. Mark's, and 
 when they were gathered round me, I told them 
 the affecting story of our little African boy (see 
 Appendix E). They were greatly interested in 
 his history, and asked how he was getting on. 
 I told them very well; and, though it was not 
 two years since he was living in a savage country 
 where he had never even heard of a white man, 
 he was now able to read and write. I showed 
 them a letter I had received from him ; they 
 scanned it with interest, and especially the signa- 
 ture, " James Chala Salfey," for so he had been 
 christened by the Bishop of Cape Town on his 
 way to England. 
 
 " Mais il n'ecrit pas aussi bien que vous, Henri," 
 said I to an intelligent boy among them named 
 Henri Kevenaz. '* S'il eut appris aussi long- 
 temps peut-etre qu'il ecrirait beau coup mieux," 
 was his answer. Another day the same little 
 fellow came to me, saying, " Le petit negre, 
 quel age a-t-il ? " I said we could not tell — 
 perhaps ten ; but I would send him his photograph.
 
 82 
 
 I mention all these details to show that they 
 were not at all shy with me or constrained. We 
 had a good deal of very pleasant intercourse 
 during the ten days I remained in the valley, and 
 I got to feel a very great regard for them. — (See 
 Appendix F.) 
 
 To return now to the Sallenches School. Here 
 is a very favourable specimen of a French School, 
 with an able Director at its head, and with such 
 a character, that I found it drew scholars from so 
 great a distance as Lyons. On the other hand, 
 there is St. Mark's. The Schools are for about 
 the same classes of the community ; the French 
 School is, of the two, for the higher class. 
 
 The course of instruction at both Schools is much 
 the same, with one exception — that the French 
 School stops short of Latin and Geometry as a 
 science, and, of course, devotes more time to 
 other branches of Education, especially those im- 
 mediately bearing on the boys' future occupations. 
 The question for decision is this. Do the Latin 
 and Euclid of St. Mark's leave their seal — their 
 cachet — on the boys, so as to allow of no doubt 
 as to their being thoroughly worth the time and 
 effort which they demand ? I hope my readers 
 will give me credit for sufficient sincerity and 
 largeness of heart to be a fairly unprejudiced 
 judge when I answer, "Most decidedly they do." 
 
 There is a strength, a nerve, a development of 
 mind — a kind of completeness of mental training
 
 83 
 
 — a difference of intellectual level in the St. 
 Mark's boys as compared with those of the 
 French School, which make me more than ever 
 sm-e that there is nothing like Latin and Euclid 
 if you want to produce "well-developed minds, 
 ready to turn with ease and vigour to any special 
 pursuits." 
 
 I trust that no one will think that in saying this, 
 I am bearing hard upon a poor school that cannot 
 speak for itself. Far be it from me to do so. 
 The school and the scholars greatly interested me. 
 
 But, if my readers will call to mind the struggle 
 with Euclid of a St. Mark's boy, and compare with 
 this the copying out definitions of the properties 
 of matter couched in language which a boy could 
 not, I think, understand, they will feel that it 
 must be as I have said. 
 
 I am not drawing invidious comparisons ; what 
 I say is prompted solely by the desire that my 
 fellow-countrymen may feel what is the more 
 excellent way, and take it. 
 
 Such are the thoughts that I have to offer on 
 the topic of the day. 
 
 It will be seen that, while giving in some detail 
 an account of the attempt to give a Liberal 
 Education to boys of the working class, I 
 have wandered at times into the history of my 
 Eton experiences, so that the two have become as 
 it were intertwined. 
 
 r 2
 
 84 
 
 I am not sorry for this. Those who think 
 deepest will take it, I trust, as a sign of the truth 
 of the principles of Education advocated, that 
 they are found to suit equally the highest and the 
 lowest class ; and those who are now interested in 
 establishing schools for the middle class may con- 
 clude, d fortiori, that they will work beneficially 
 with that class also. 
 
 And so may w^e approach that happy time when 
 the healthiest of all bonds shall connect the whole 
 of the great English family ; that is, when the 
 same principles shall be at work through all the 
 gradations of society, from the highest to the 
 lowest, to reach the heart, enlighten the mind, 
 and form the character. 
 
 The cry that resounds at the present day is 
 this, — " The great extension of Political Power 
 renders the extension of Education necessary," 
 
 I appeal to my readers whether the truer view 
 of the question, — whether the cry that should have 
 resounded years ago, — is not this ? " A great ex- 
 tension of political power is coming and must 
 come, and, therefore, our country must be pre- 
 pared for it by judicious Education." 
 
 This was the principle, I can safely say, on 
 which St. Mark's was founded, so much so, that 
 from fifteen to twenty years back, it has been 
 pleasantly called, within the sphere in which its 
 operations are known, the School of the coming 
 age.
 
 85 
 
 In its principle and details, it was founded in 
 anticipation of a time coming, when in religious 
 matters the being imbued and formed by the 
 Gospels would be the stay and defence of the soul 
 amidst religious doubts and perplexities; and when, 
 in a political and social aspect, the strength and 
 well-being of the country would be best secured by 
 the more prosperous classes holding frankly out 
 the right hand of fellowship, and the less pros- 
 perous grasping it firmly and without suspicion ; 
 in order that, thus united and mutually supported, 
 all should stand together. 
 
 The writer cannot here forbear to adorn his page 
 with the description of this most happy time — 
 most blessed state of things, given by the gifted 
 editor in his preface to that Book — prized and 
 cherished by the country — in which Her Majesty 
 has been pleased to admit her people within the 
 sanctuary of her thoughts and feelings. 
 
 His words are as follows : — 
 
 " Nor does any wish more ardently than Her 
 Majesty, that there should be no abrupt severance 
 of class from class, but rather a gradual blending 
 together of all classes, caused by a full com- 
 munity of interests, a constant interchange of 
 good offices, and a kindly respect felt and ex- 
 pressed by each class to all its brethren in the 
 great brotherhood that forms the nation." — (See 
 Appendix G.) 
 
 The School in which it has been the writer's
 
 86 
 
 aim to exemplify the working of these principles is 
 hefore the world. It has been long in action. 
 Many, far and wide, have evinced deep interest in 
 the success of the experiment. The men whom 
 the S3^stem has formed are scattered about the 
 country, doing their work in the different classes 
 of the community. " They are our epistle, known 
 and read of all men." 
 
 I do not say that none of them disappoint us. 
 I have, indeed, heard not long ago of an instance 
 which has given me sorrow. But by the general 
 character of the St. Mark's men, by the way in 
 which they are doing their duty in life, by the 
 specimens of Englishmen they form, I wish the 
 system I uphold — of giving a Liberal Education 
 to the working classes — to be judged. 
 
 And now, in closing, the writer would say one 
 word as to the character of the Liberal Education 
 advocated in this Essay. 
 
 It may not be according to the ideas of the 
 most advanced writers on the subject ; on the other 
 hand, readers of the foregoing pages will not 
 imagine that he wishes to throw any hindrance in 
 the way of the growth of Education, and of the 
 Social Progress of the country. All he wishes to 
 do is to w^rn those who are ready to give up the 
 old ways, and are somewhat nervously casting 
 about for new methods, to be careful that they 
 do not unawares throw aside engines of intel- 
 lectual and moral value, endangering thereby
 
 87 
 
 some of the characteristics which we prize in 
 Enghshmen. 
 
 For himself, after being upwards of thirty years 
 in the work, he must feel that his time must be 
 approaching to its close, and he would as a last 
 word urge on those who will have in their hands 
 the charge of guiding the Education of the next 
 generation, " To prove all things, and to hold fast 
 that which is Goon ! " 
 
 Finis.
 
 89 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 Appendix A. 
 
 I WAS exceedingly amused last school-time when hearing the 
 '' Gentil-homme bourgeois/'^ inimitably acted by Frank and 
 Henry Tarver, and their pupils, at being reminded that 
 Moliere ridicules as arrant pedantry what we have practised 
 in all seriousness. 1 mean the custom of analysing how the 
 different vowel sounds are produced, and how the consonants 
 are articulated. I think Moliere has here let his wit run 
 away with his good sense. We find it to be an admirable 
 exercise, and very amusing to little boys. 
 
 When you tell them how this or that articulation is pro- 
 duced, you see each boy testing the rule with his own tongue, 
 lips, and teeth. It is also the best corrective I know for 
 provincial mispronunciation. And how often have I seen 
 a non-scientific teacher teasing a young child by telling it to 
 say cat, not tat ; how much better, and more instructive, to 
 tell the class that the hard C is produced by raising the 
 middle of the tongue towards the roof of the mouth. That 
 the child's mistake is, that, instead of doing so, he puts the 
 tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth, which is the way 
 to pronounce t. To prove the truth of the rule, you call for 
 a spoon, and, gently holding down the tip of the tongue with 
 the spoon, you tell the child to say cat, and he says it to his 
 own surprise, and \h.Q delight of the others who are watching 
 the experiment.
 
 90 
 
 Appendix B. 
 
 My Eton experience enables me to give a few useful hints 
 in the matter of writing. To superintend the lower school 
 writino" is an occupation in which I take great delight. 
 
 A most important element of success in every branch of 
 instruction is this — to make a boy respect what he is doing. 
 No one, in my time, has been a better friend to writing- 
 masters than Lord Palmerston. It may be remembered that 
 some years ago, in the House of Commons, he extolled the 
 old and distinct writing of some eighty years back, in whicli 
 each letter might be distinguished when deprived of its sup- 
 porters. The authority and countenance of Lord Palmerston 
 have contributed greatly to our success in teaching writing in 
 the Lower School at Eton. What Lord Palmerston thought 
 important is entitled to respect in the eyes of an Eton 
 Lower School-boy. Many a one has taught himself very 
 good and distinct handwriting in consequence. 
 
 I sent one of the Lower School copy-books (that of a little 
 fellow of nine years of age) with his photograph to Lord 
 Palmerston, and received a speedy answer from his Private 
 Secretary, saying that he was desired to say that " Lord 
 
 Palmerston thought B 's handwriting remarkably good, 
 
 and especially on the page which Lord Palmerston had 
 doubled down, the letters being well and distinctly formed, 
 and there being none of those fine strokes which prevent the 
 eye from catcliing the form of the letter." This book, along 
 with Mr. Evelyn Ashley's letter, itself a model of good writing, 
 is preserved in a glass-case, and is shown to successive gene- 
 rations of Lower school-boys. " This is the writing that 
 Lord Palmerston admired !" " This is the page which Lord 
 Palmerston doubled down ! " The book has been a treasure 
 to us. 
 
 If the boys are sitting in a good attitude, and pressing 
 equally on both nibs of the pen, (Mr. Harris's rule ensures
 
 91 
 
 this,) a single Master's eye can superintend a large class. I 
 read a story-book out to them while they are ■writing under 
 the eye of their writing-masters^ and make the story do duty 
 in insuring attention by simply leaving off when any one is 
 sitting improperly or looking about. " I leave off because 
 
 is not writing." That is quite enough to brace the 
 
 whole class up to attention. 
 
 In writing, as in all branches of instruction, individualize 
 and classify. We divide the boys periodically into Classes 1 , 
 2, 3. We let Class ]. go when they have had half-an-hour's 
 writing. Class 2 goes at the end of three-quarters of an 
 hour, and Class 3 at the end of the full hour. Any other 
 encouragement that may suit the discipline of the school 
 could be adopted ; but inspect periodically, and classify. 
 
 I got some useful hints and appliances for teaching writing 
 from the Paris Exhibition. In the Educational Department 
 I saw some curious copy slips of indented metal. I made the 
 acquaintance of the inventor, Mr. Sinet, and got a supply 
 of his indented metal plates. His theory is, that a learner 
 by following the indented letters with his pen is obliged to 
 form them right ; a sponge prepares the plate for another 
 writing lesson. 
 
 I also got a model hand in the right pose for writing, and 
 some inventions of his for keeping the hand in a proper 
 position. They have been of service to some of the younger 
 boys, and are very popular. We call them " Sinef s Yokes." 
 
 I called on the old man again last Christmas when in 
 Paris. He was delighted at the popularity of his inventions. 
 When I said to him, " Void I'ecriture de mon eleve avant 
 qu'il ne se soit servl de la machine Sinet, void sou ecriture 
 apres qu'il en a fait usage," it was almost too much for him. 
 I got more " Yokes," and some hints : — 
 
 One of these was to practise what he called '' la gtjmnas- 
 tique des doigts." This consists in doubling up the last 
 two fingers of the hand, and straightening the two writing 
 fingers and the thumb, so as to bring their points together, —
 
 92 
 
 to place their points against the palm of the left hand, and 
 squash them, letting the knuckles give way ; this was to be 
 repeated frequently. The wrist is not to be bent in writing, 
 that the muscles of the fingers and thumb may have their full 
 play ; to this end the right arm should rest on the table mid- 
 way between the elbow and the point of the fingers that are 
 supporting the hand on the paper, and the root of the hand 
 should not rest on the table, but be raised just sufficiently 
 "pour quun petit souris hlanc puisse passer dessom ! " 
 
 Appendix C. 
 
 I will add one word to what I have said about arithmetic, 
 in memory of our celebrated visit to Her Majesty's ship 
 " Pembroke." We met an old Naval Instructor on board ; 
 he told me he owed all his success as a Teacher to one kind 
 of sum, which he named, from the inventor, " Ranklin." 
 It was to put down a sum of money, £ s. d., and multiply 
 it by the odd figures 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 ; and then, by the same 
 figures, in an inverse order, 11, 9, 1, 5, 3. If the final 
 results agreed, the sum was right. The odd figures, of course, 
 to preserve the farthings to the end. Examples of weights 
 and measures may be dealt with in the same way. 
 
 I am disposed to think, and the St. Mark's Masters agree 
 with me, that this kind of exercise, worked off quickly at odd 
 minutes, has been of use to the School, that it has taught the 
 boys quickness and accuracy. 
 
 It has this to recommend it, that it is so easily set ; any 
 boy can set himself a " Rauklin," and the consciousness that 
 if there is one error it all goes for nothing, and that he will 
 have to do it all over again, helps, we think, to give that 
 earnest and sustained attention which is requisite for ensuring 
 correctness. 
 
 Appendix D. 
 
 And here I would put in an admission that, in addition to 
 (not instead of) those mental habits which are formed by the 
 study of language and geometry, the habit of exact observation
 
 93 
 
 might be cultivated witli great advantage. This, no doubt, 
 is what the advocates of Botany aim at, and I think they are 
 quite right in choosing that particular science. The objects 
 of observation are accessible without expense or difficulty, are 
 infinitely various, beautiful, and interesting ; and the obser- 
 vations admit of perfect precision with the simplest possible 
 apparatus. Also the pupils incidentally learn something of 
 the principles of classification, besides acquiring information 
 which may turn out to be very useful. In the same way, in 
 suitable localities, I should think Geology might be taught 
 with great advantage. Whereas Chemistry, Electricity, &c., 
 can hardly be taught to boys otherwise than in the way of 
 superficial information. 
 
 I think, also, a great deal might be said in fiivour of 
 elementary Physiology, even icitJiout rats, for the higher classes 
 of middle schools. Such a book as Huxley's Lessons on 
 Physiology (which is suitable for either boys' or girls' schools), 
 in the hands of an intelligent teacher, might be very useful. 
 And here is a case where a knowledge of facts as such is of 
 real importance ; besides, we have got in us the natural 
 faculties of wonder and admiration ; and no one who is totally 
 ignorant of the structure of his own bodily organs can have 
 experienced the full exercise of these faculties. 
 
 Only let it be always remembered that nothing ought to 
 supersede the solid foundation laid by the old studies, and 
 that in all studies, old or new, it is the training of our facul- 
 ties which should.be the primary object, though, when useful 
 information can be also acquired by the process, so much the 
 better. 
 
 Appendix E. 
 
 It may not be uninteresting to my readers if I refer to the 
 incidents of this little boy's story ; nor is it quite out of 
 place, for it bears on the main subject of my Essay, the value 
 of a Liberal Education to every class. And I am unwilling to 
 lose any opportunity I have of showing how such Education
 
 94 
 
 nets on those whose circumstances and condition would point 
 them out as extreme cases. 
 
 This made me, in a former tract, refer to tlie little Russian 
 boy taken prisoner after the battle of the Alma, and brought 
 to this country by Col. Brovvnrigg, and put to St. ]\Iark's 
 School. What is he now ? An apprentice in the Mercantile 
 Navy, nearly out of his time, who brings home the highest 
 character from his captain and the shipowners for being a 
 smart and active seaman, and " being free from those vices 
 which that class of men are much addicted to." He has every 
 prospect of rising in his calling. 
 
 And not only is he an able seaman, who does his duty in a 
 gale of wind, but he can sit beside the bunk of a sick messmate 
 and read a chapter in the Bible to him, and tell or read to him 
 stories of his school-boy days, till the tear gathers in the sick 
 man's eye, and he says, " Oh, that I had been brought up 
 so!" 
 
 Whenever his ship comes into port from China, Singapore 
 Calcutta, &c., as soon as he gets leave, down he comes rushing 
 to the old School, to re-visit the old scenes, and renew his 
 acquaintance with his former schoolfellows. Our worthy 
 Russian seems to enjoy nothing much more than to sit beside 
 his old and well-loved Schoolmaster, ]\Ir. Blythe, and listen to 
 him giving a lesson to the new generation of St. Mark's boys. 
 
 And now for the story of our little African. He belongs to 
 the Galla tribe, who may be found on the south-west of 
 Abyssinia : they are a very beautiful race, and, in consequence, 
 fetch an immensely high price in the Turkish slave market. 
 The men of the tribe are great warriors, and during his 
 father's absence on some expedition, the Turks kidnapped 
 our little boy, and. carried him oflF to the coast some six or 
 seven hundred miles distant I believe. Here he was shipped 
 for the port of Muscat. Before they landed, by God's good 
 providence, an English cruiser (the "Pantalon") caught sight of 
 the slaver. The Turks (our little fellow tells us) put their 
 money into their turbans and took to their boat ; and the slaves,
 
 95 
 
 consisting of women and children, were rescued. Captain 
 \V. F. Hastings (then First Lieutenant of the " Pantalon ") 
 undertook the whole charge of one of the boys thus saved. 
 He has taken the greatest care of him, and brought him to 
 England, and has put him to St. Mark's School. Here, then, 
 is a new and unexpected case upon which to try the effect of 
 a Liberal Education. Two years ago the boy was an untutored 
 savage in the interior of Africa ; he has been about one year 
 under training at St. Mark's, and is now a thorough English 
 boy, and takes rank among his compeers. The school has 
 got hold of his affections, and is moulding his character. He 
 is an intelligent boy, with a sweet disposition and reverent 
 spirit. He is as much interested about getting on in school, 
 doing his evening lessons well, and getting good reports, as 
 any boy in the School. His instincts are gentlemanly ; he 
 cannot bear to be taken out from among his companions for 
 any special notice or attention. To be seen to advantage, he 
 should be seen at school, or in the play-ground with his school- 
 fellows. He is a great favourite with them all, and, indeed, 
 with everyone who knows him. His natural disposition is so 
 sweet, that he must have been greatly beloved at home. His 
 own sentiments, and little incidents of his former life which 
 he has told me, prove it. His parents have not the remotest 
 conception where he is. They must have known that he was 
 carried away by the Turks, so that slavery would be the 
 natural consequence ; and when I look at him in church, 
 amongst the other boys, with his surplice on — for he is one of 
 our choristers — and observe his reverent demeanour in chanting 
 the Psalms, or following the lessons in his Bible, I cannot but 
 feel an indescribable emotion of gratitude that the dear little 
 fellow is not now in a Turkish seraglio, but that we have him 
 safe in the bosom of St. Mark's School, to bring him up as a 
 Christian boy. 
 
 When I saw in the telegram from Abyssinia a few weeks 
 since that the " Gallas " were one of the hostile tribes that 
 were leagued on the south side against the unfortunate and
 
 96 
 
 absurdly mcomprehensible Theodore, the idea occurred to me 
 of printing an account of our " Jem/' and sending it, with his 
 photograph, to our young St. Clark's Serjeants and corporaJs 
 in the army in Ahysr^inia ; for many of our boys take to the 
 army. I hear of them as young Serjeants in a very short 
 time after their enlisting. Their education makes them be 
 picked out ; and they all seem very ready to volunteer for 
 foreign or special service. 
 
 Now, if in the course of events they should come in contact 
 with the Galla tribe, I know that they would do their utmost 
 by means of the photograph, and of his name Chala, and his 
 father's name Salfey, to bring him, if possible, to the knowledge 
 of some of his kindred ; but this may be a wild idea. 
 
 Captain Hastings' hope is that the boy may grow up to be a 
 well-educated and good man, and ciualified for Holy Orders 
 that so he may be ordained as a Missionary. In which case 
 Captain Hastings hopes to return with him to his own country, 
 and go with him into the interior of Africa to search for his 
 tribe and parents ; that our boy may, according to his own 
 great wish, hope, and prayer, " tell his father and mother 
 about Jesus Christ." 
 
 Morally and intellectually, I see no reason to doubt about 
 the fulfilment of the desire of both ; nor do I at all see why 
 we should not hope to rear our Jemmy to man's estate. He 
 has passed through two English winters, and is in excellent 
 health. God grant this blessed conclusion to the dear boy's 
 romantic history, and may St. Mark's do its part towards 
 bringing about the fulfilment of the pious hope of his 
 protector and friend. 
 
 Appendix F. 
 
 Nor, indeed, has this intercourse ceased. The cahiers given 
 to me by the Sallenches' school-boys have been handed round 
 St. Mark's School, and are greatly admired. Their neatness I 
 hope will be imitated. 
 
 I have before me at this moment letters which " Le petit
 
 negre" and one of his school-fellows, have written to Henri 
 Revenaz, to accompany their photograph which they have 
 had taken for him. These I am to translate, (for our African 
 has not, of course, begun French, nor has the other, though 
 learning it, yet attempted a French letter,) and under the 
 two figures in the photograph 1 am to write in French, 
 " White," " Black," so says our little negro. 
 
 It enters very largely into my idea of a Liberal Education 
 to draw the boys out of themselves, and to give them 
 external sympathies and wide-spread interests. With 
 this view I have encouraged intercourse and correspondence 
 between them and Bishop Patteson's Melanesian boys. Our 
 boys know his by name, have sent photographs and presents 
 to them, and have received letters from them. 
 
 And now, while on this subject, I may add, that not only 
 do our boys know about and correspond with lads living 
 in the mountains of Savoy, but I hope, before two years are 
 over, that the acquaintance will be a, personal one, and that 
 the Savoyards of the Pensionuat of Sallenches will accom- 
 pany the St. Mark's boys in their mountain excursions. 
 
 Poor untravelled English boys living in a flat country, who 
 have seen but flat maps with a little shade for mountains, 
 what can they know of Physical Geography except in words ? 
 But when I have taken them up the enchanting valley of 
 Montjoye, and have led them up its wilder and wilder fast- 
 nesses till they have stood on the rugged " neck of the Bon- 
 homme," henceforth, indeed, the chain of the Pennine 
 Alps will have a different meaning for them than it has 
 hitherto had. 
 
 This most pleasant prospect we have, for the offer of the 
 free use of three large " Granges " for the St. Mark's boys 
 has been made me in three choice localities in Swizerland, 
 St. Gervais, Chamonix, and Comballaz, by prbprietaircs who 
 wish to send their sons to St. Mark's. 
 
 Indeed, I may here say what I think will interest many an 
 English family, that the motherless grandchildren of one 
 
 G
 
 98 
 
 who is known to many as a much esteemed guide, " Michel 
 Alphonse Couttet," are coming to St. Mark's as soon as tliey 
 are old enough. I am told that the thought of this was the 
 comfort of their poor mother on her death-bed. 
 
 I need hardly apologize for wandering into these details. I 
 am giving the account of an attempt to give a Liberal Educa- 
 tion to boys of the working class, and these summer ex- 
 cursions are, as my friends know, a very prominent feature of 
 my system. I have only to tell those friends who have read 
 with kindness the visits of St. j\Iark's to the '' Pembroke," 
 &c., that, if this excursion takes place, they may count 
 upon having a new St. Mark's Story, — "St. Mark's in 
 Switzerland," 
 
 Appendix G. 
 
 The idea of the various classes of the Nation being 
 drawn into one great English brotherhood is on e that has 
 been long uppermost in the writer's mind. Th is will be seen 
 in the following Address, which he circula ted in the year 
 185.9, along with copies of the account of St. jNIark's School, 
 araono; the Parochial Schoolmasters of Enicland, throu2;h the 
 hands of their Clergymen. It is reprinted here in the hope 
 that it may do good : — 
 
 An Address to Parochial Schoolmasters, circulated in 
 1859. — This paper will probably be put into your hands with 
 a pamphlet, called " An Account of St. Mark's School, 
 Windsor." I hope that you will not think I am taking a 
 liberty if I ask you to peruse tlie tract ; and, in connection 
 with it, point out to you, that it is in your power to help 
 forward a great social movement — full of hope for the future 
 — which may be called the distinctive feature of our day. 
 I mean the increasing community of feeling and interest
 
 99 
 
 amono;st the different classes of society, which is gradually 
 drawins; them to2;ether, and is o-ivino; to Ensjland more and 
 more the character of one large family. 
 
 About the fact, thank God, there can be no doubt. And 
 of the causes which conspii-e to bring about this result, none 
 certainly is more influential than the personal character of the 
 Queen of England, considered both as a Sovereign and a 
 Mother. 
 
 There are Physical causes, no doubt, which it is impossible 
 to overlook. The great moral engine^ however, is doubtless 
 the thought and care which very many of those who occupy a 
 position in the country, corresponding to that of parent in the 
 family, bestow in furthering the well-being of their de- 
 pendents. The great Landed Proprietors of the country, 
 beginning; with the Highest Personao;es in the realm,^Q;ive 
 constant proofs of this feeling. So also do the great Manu- 
 facturers and Tradesmen of the country : tlic ]r.-. vision which 
 many amongst them have made for the social improvement of 
 their dependents is proverbial. A similar kindly and parental 
 feeling is also widely extending itself between Merchants'and 
 Professional men and their Clerks ; and instances have come 
 within the writer's knowledge of its exercise in public offices, 
 between the heads of departments and their subordinates in 
 the office. 
 
 The friendly relation which has long existed between the 
 Clergy of the country and their people is too obvious to 
 allude to. But I may mention another phase of English life 
 which has been revolutionized by the action of friendly sym- 
 pathy between classes — I mean the English Army. Thirty 
 years ago, a regiment was little more' than a great machine 
 organized to produce a certain result : from a great machine 
 it is now transformed into a large family. The officers know 
 their men individually. Their moral and religious well-being, 
 — their health — their social recreations — their manly sports 
 —their families — all occupy much considerate thought on 
 their part. The men can see this, and meet it' with a feeling 
 
 G 2
 
 100 
 
 of loyal attachment to their officers. The existence of this 
 friendly relation between officers and men is well known to 
 those who have the opportunity of observing the inner life 
 of a regiment ; and its effect was abundantly evidenced in the 
 endurance, gallantry, and devotion exhibited in the last two 
 wars in which this country has been engaged. 
 
 In the Navy, with the rough materials of which a man-of- 
 war's crew is made up, it might be supposed that this kindly 
 regard and fellow-feeling must give way to a sterner rule ; 
 but the contrary is the fact. The martinet-rule is fast dying 
 out, or has died out, of the service ; and those vessels will be 
 found in the highest state of discipline where the friendliest 
 feelinss exist between the officers and men. 
 
 You will see this statement exemplified in a little pamphlet 
 (which will possibly be put into your hands along with the 
 account of the School), giving the history of a week which 
 some of the boys of St. ]\I ark's School were privileged to 
 spend on board a man-of-war. The story has not only been 
 read with pleasure in this country, as an illustration of the 
 foregoing statement, but has excited a lively interest wherever 
 it has been read on the Continent — as giving an agreeable 
 peip into an English man of-war, and as detailing occur- 
 rences which (it has been frankly observed) could not have 
 happened on board a ship of war belonging to any nation in 
 the world but England. 
 
 This testimony is important as showing that the bond of 
 family feeling, which rendered the occurrences of the narrative 
 possible, is thoroughly English. 
 
 it will be seen from these various instances that there is 
 hardly a ramification of English life into which the working 
 of this principle has not in some measure penetrated. It is 
 the bond which keeps the whole machinery of English society 
 together and in good working order. If there is any part 
 that does not work well, if any hitch occurs that throws any 
 part of the machine out of gear, or brings it to a standstill, 
 it is because this bond is displaced, or wants tightening.
 
 101 
 
 My object, however, in addressing you is mainly to trace 
 the working of this principle in the economy of schools. 
 
 There has been for several years, in the great schools of 
 the country, and those private schools which have the largest 
 share of the confidence of parents, an increasing cordiality 
 of feeling, and friendliness of intercourse, between tutor and 
 pupil, which has been followed with the happiest effects. 
 
 The very great confidence which the public schools of 
 England enjoy at the present time, and the high esteem in 
 which they are held on the Continent, arises mainly from the 
 influence on the formation of character of this mutual good 
 understanding, confidence, and sympathy existing between the 
 tutor and the pupil. 
 
 It is evident that not only is the freedom of mind and 
 happiness of the boy at school justly attributable to a good 
 understanding with his tutor ; this must also be the main- 
 spring of the happiness and comfort which the tutor himself 
 has in his work. Certain I am, that this friendliness of 
 feeling between tutor and pupil is what parents most desire ; 
 and those tutors are the most valued in our public schools and 
 elsewhere who sympathize most heartly with their pupils. 
 
 Will it be said that this kind of parental relation between 
 tutor and pupil is very possible with those who have been 
 well brought up at home, who are well toned, and responsive ; 
 but that such a relation could not exist between the Master 
 of a National School and the kind of children which he has 
 to educate ? 
 
 Let me say in reply, that it is now about eighteen years 
 since, observing the happiness and unaffected manliness of boys 
 brought up under the culture I describe, I first asked myself, 
 Must this be confined to the rich ? What would be the efiect 
 if a similar relation were established between the teacher 
 and the taught, at schools for the children of the poor? 
 What if their boyhood were also made a joyous one, by kind 
 usage and friendly confidence on the part of the Master ? 
 Would it unfit them for the life of toil in prospect for them ?
 
 102 
 
 I resolved to try the experiment. The history of St. Mark's 
 School is the history of that experiment ; and an experience 
 of above thirteen years warrants me, I think, in saying, 
 that the same principles of treatment which are pursued at 
 the great schools of the country, with the sons of the gentry 
 of the land, (viz., vigorous mental cultivation, joined with 
 trustfulness and cordiality in intercourse with them,) may be 
 safely pursued with the children of the poor ; and that, far 
 from unfitting them for their position in life, such training 
 will, under the Divine blessing, make them useful, simple- 
 minded, well-conditioned, and pleasant to deal with ; in a 
 word, valuable men in all the relations of life. 
 
 It is a strong confidence in the truth of the above, which 
 leads me to invite you to read the tract on St. Mark's School. 
 If you have established such a relation with your scholars as 
 is there described, you will learn with satisfaction that others 
 are pursuing the same plan, with comfort to themselves. If 
 you have not hitherto contemplated the possibility of being 
 on such terms with your boys, I trust you will be encouraged 
 to try this method of dealing with them ; and be assured, 
 that it will prove not less full of happiness to yourself than 
 of benefit to your scholars. 
 
 S. HAWTREY. 
 
 Mab7 S. Rickebbt, Printer, 4a, Walbrook, Mansion House. E. C. 
 
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