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making wills; and Mr Davies, his secretary, spent much of his time in copying and recopying them. On the 11th of May 1831, he writes to his bankers to transfer £120,000 to certain gentlemen in St Andrews, entreats them "to make all despatch-no time must be lost." This was done. Meanwhile, Miss Bell wanted to come and see him at Cheltenham, where he was living he wrote to say she might come, and as soon as the letter had gone, he wrote to say she must not. She came however, and he gave her his cottage, a covering used at the coronation of George the Fourth, his silver plate, gold coins, rings, tea-service, trinkets, and money. But Miss Bell got it into her head that her distinguished brother "was not in his right mind," and that he was not in a fit state to make his will. The Doctor discovered this, and placed a paper in her hands ordering her to leave his house immediately. He was every day becoming more and more impatient to hear what was doing with his money. "My solicitude distresses me much. Excuse my anxiety. There is danger in the delay of a day." In June he wants all his money to be thrown into Chancery, and the trustees along with it. He next asks the trustees to come down to Cheltenham to see him.

Picture to yourself the situation. An old man, nearly eighty, who had totally lost the power of speech, with his faculties and eager spirit all alive, but without the power of giving adequate expression to them, with £120,000 to give away and no one to trust, with the belief that his System was to be the salvation of the world, and yet with little hope of seeing this System con

fided to good and safe hands.

The trustees, when they

came, found him with his head sunk upon his breast, and he could talk with them only through a slate. He asked them for a plan. "When will you have it? Can you bring it to me to-night at eight o'clock, or to-morrow morning? A plan we must have," etc., etc. But a plan for a college, and for the right investment of £120,000, cannot be made in an hour. "The trustees were methodical in their way of doing business; he was capricious and vehement. They were slow; he was quick. They were very patient; he was at times very violent. Fire and water would have combined more easily." After the trustees left, he enters into a long and violent correspondence with them; he accuses them of "concocting the trust-deed, and that they surreptitiously obtained it from him, under circumstances of painful and disqualifying enactment.' They reply firmly but modestly; he tells them their "declamation is written to give a death-blow to my debilitated condition, or for a posthumous epistle to the grave, which tells no tales." He tells them to write by return of post, and by every post. He writes a holograph deed on the 21st of December, and he executes another on the 29th, which he says "perhaps supersedes it." He speaks of the "studied embarrassments, machinations, devices, and distortions, and perversions of the propositions of a dying, speechless, and insulated man, with funds undisposed of, and the multiplication of writings contrived for this purpose are inconceivable by those who are not in such a situation." His last wishes were expressed in a paper which he drew up at intervals

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shortly before his death. He signified his approval of this twelve hours before his departure; but he did not live to sign it.

His intellect and memory were unimpaired, and his affections were as eager as ever. At half-past ten on the night of the 27th of January, his doctor said to him, "How are you, my dear sir?" and in half an hour afterwards his breathing became languid; and at length gently and calmly ceased altogether; and no man saw at what moment the fiery, passionate, enthusiastic soul took its departure for another world. He only quietly ceased to be. He was buried among the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey.

The correspondence in the third volume need not detain us long. Dr Gray writes from Bishopwearmouth about "Harrogate damsels and ladies, young, handsome, and accomplished; of barons and baronets enthralled; and of schools enthusiastically patronised." We, of this generation, may be thankful that we have got beyond that we only want our work to take its right place among other kinds of work, without prejudice and without patronage. George Dempster draws an enthusiastic picture of the result of Dr Bell's labours: "Ploughmen, between their yokings, reading the Old Testament; the New read by milkmaids and dustmen; cobblers solving problems algebraically; and girls drawing maps of Europe on their samplers." And he repeats his advice. to Dr Bell to strive for the mitre; "bishoprics have been obtained for trumpery essays on chemistry, and archbishoprics for flogging Westminster schoolboys,then, why not you?"

You will perhaps agree with me that it has not been uninteresting to take a backward look on the early beginnings of popular instruction in this country; and if any one should ask for the moral of Dr Bell's story, I think it is to be found in the divine words,-words which are written in letters of fire upon the face of the commonest human life. "The fashion of this world passes away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." And this, too, is a voice straight from Heaven: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is neither wisdom nor device in the grave, whither we all hasten."

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EXTRACTS FROM DR BELL'S WORKS.

[The Educational works of Dr Bell amount to several thousand pages; but they cannot be recommended to the perusal of even the most enthusiastic student of education. There is much dust, chaff, and inorganic matter in them; and it is only here and there that one finds something worth picking up. I have thought it right to go carefully through the volumes, and to select what might possibly be worth reading and thinking about. This is contained in the following pages.]

"The advantages of teaching the alphabet, by writing the letters with the fingers in sand, are many. It engages and amuses the mind, and so commands the attention, that it greatly facilitates the toil, both of the master and the scholar. It is also a far more effectual way than that usually practised, as it prevents all learning by rote, and gives, at the instant and in the first operation, a distinct and accurate notion of the form of each letter, which in another way is often not acquired after a long period, and after a considerable progress in reading, as may be seen in those who write letters turned the wrong way, and other instances familiar to every one. It likewise enables them, at the very outset, to distinguish the letters of a similar cast, such as b, d, p, and q, the difficulty of which is known to almost every person who has

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