He goes

nose,' taking one of them who was in the company by the nose." No doubt Dr Bell was shocked. on: "Pestalozzi has twenty masters for one hundred scholars; .. a multiplication of masters to attend, elaborate, and instruct the children viva voce, to prevent emulation, and to tell whenever a mistake is made, without stopping." But now and then he breaks into admiration: "The gymnastic exercises are incomparable."

In a letter from Yverdun to his friend Mr Morris, Dr Bell points out that "every professor must have a prejudice against an innovation which would expose the whole tenor of their system, or want of system. There is also a natural jealousy in their republic of letters: why should not we on the Continent improve as well as they in England? It will be long before the new system is sufficiently understood to put an end to such speculations. Every one wants to remake a discovery which has only been made after the world had existed almost 6000 years." But that is just the beauty of the "world!" The world is perfectly new to the new human being.

"Und alle deine hohen Werke

Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag!"

Dr Bell had got it into his head that the world had "waited" for his "discovery" for six thousand years; and that then there was to be nothing after but rehearsing the wonderful discovery. But the good and warm heart of the Doctor often got the better of his crotchet. Further on in the letter he says of Pestalozzi: "The

chief I am charmed with: he has much that is original, I love the man.

much that is excellent.

He is a man of genius, benevolence, and enthusiasm.” Returning home from Switzerland, he made his way by Holland, and had the new and rare pleasure of going down a large part of the Rhine on a raft.

Soon after his return home, his thoughts went out towards America. "I often think," he writes to Lord Kenyon, "what a field America presents for the new system. The low state of education there; but, far above all, no institutions, no prejudices, to encounter. The impulse thither appears irresistible." But Lord Kenyon cannot bring himself to approve of America. He thinks that young nation is "hollow and unsound." He thinks it has no principles. He does not even believe it ever will have any. "I fear," he writes in reply, "there is not, and never will be (would there might!) principle enough in America to work upon to do good, even by your almost all-powerful System.”

In 1817, the Crown Prince of Sweden sends over a Mr Swensson "to take notice of the principles and the method of learning, for which not only England, but all Europe, is indebted to you;" and Dr Bell replies that Mr Swensson 66 shall receive every instruction which can be given him in the knowledge and use of the new organ of the human mind for the multiplication of power and division of labour in the moral and intellectual world." The Novum Organon of education—that was now Dr Bell's way of talking about the Madras System.

We now find Dr Bell, at the age of sixty-four, work

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ing away as indefatigably as ever on his I L T O and А В С. 'I have satisfied my mind that there is no difficulty in teaching the alphabet. I have applied a tutor to every child-made copying to be done first, the tutor helping as much as possible-repeating, and requiring to be repeated, the letter on which the child is employed-registering each letter taught-reading aloud, and taking places for every possible superiority, and writing afterwards from dictation on the opposite Iside of their slates." What a great deal of misery -slow, numbing, mind-destroying misery-has been inflicted on children for want of a little previous inquiry-of a simple, open-eyed preliminary examination into the matter they were asked to learn! is the proverbial beginning of everything; and so it is made the beginning-and in many places still is the beginning of what is called education. But to "know" the A B C is simply to be able to attach a number of meaningless sounds to a number of meaningless and uninteresting marks; and the child is not one whit the better rather the worse-for having had to put his mind through an arbitrary drill. Even now, the superstition, that it helps a child to make him say doubleyouaitch-eye-see-aitch before he says which, and that teaaitch-ee-why is an "account," both rational and philological, of they, still survives in some of the darker parts of educational England.

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The A B C

In September 1817, Mr Johnson wrote Dr Bell that the Central School was never in so flourishing a condition as at present." There were 52 masters and 21 mistresses under training, and more than 1000 scholars

in the school. But in the same letter he informs Dr Bell that the famous I LTO has been "tried and condemned by the Committee as worse than useless, and ordered to be struck out of the type." But the strong-hearted Doctor was quite equal to the occasion. "It may be buried for a while," he writes in reply, “or in a corner, by the hand of power; but it will rise again, and spread over the world, and live for ever. It were then vain to take up arms against eternal truths." Meanwhile, after a little further correspondence, the alarm proved to be vain. It was merely the term, the heading, that the National Society wished to abolish. The practice itself, designated by the term—that is, simultaneous instruction in reading and writing became a permanent practice in all the schools with which Dr Bell had to do. It is significant, however, that about this time we find that the Madras System had more difficulties to contend with at St Andrews than at almost any other place where it had been introduced.

CHAPTER XIII.

HEREFORD AND SHERBURN.

WHILE in St Andrews on a visit, in the beginning of 1818, he was delighted and surprised by an offer, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, of a stall in Hereford Cathedral, "of good value." He had expected that the duties would be light, and that, holding this post along with his Mastership of Sherburn, he might still be able to give the larger part of his time to the promotion of his System and the foundation of new schools. But he found that the post was not without its duties. He had to preach four English and four Latin sermons; he had to sit for forty days in a prebendal stall, without any duty to perform (surely the hardest kind of work for his active brain), thrice every Sunday and Saint'sday, and twice every ordinary week-day; and all this time he was not allowed to ride or walk outside the walls of the city.

While residing at Hereford, he, of course, lost no time in setting to work on the schools of the placethe Grammar and the National Schools. For the latter he preached a charity sermon at St Peter's. His subject was The System.

It was not a short sermon. The