pleasing and not pleasing;" and he goes on to say that he "showed Dr Bell yesterday the most perspicuous marks of my being entirely incapable to succeed in the room of Mr Harvey." “You see, dear sir, this is sin

cerity, this is open-heartedness."

But now at length Dr Bell, whose health, owing to worry and the climate, was not so good, began to think of returning to Europe. The climate, the dryness and clearness of which he at first enjoyed, began to affect his health in 1794. He had been very happy in India; and he had rendered his "system" complete in all its details. Mr Dempster writes to him to "bring back a good constitution and £10,000;" and, tiring of the eternal fine weather and the sultry sun, his thoughts turned to the cooler air, the more varied climate, and the clouds and mists of his native country. He felt, too, that he had made his mark in India. "I think," he says, "I have made great progress in a very difficult attempt, and almost wrought a complete change in the morals and character of a generation of boys." This was much. But his health would not permit him to remain; and he wrote to a friend to find him a landed estate, "the purchase of which would bring him in two or three hundred pounds a-year."

29

CHAPTER V.

HOME AGAIN.

DR BELL left India on the 20th of August 1796, followed by the praises, the regards, and the regrets of everybody who knew him; and he had, in addition, £25,935, 16s. 5d. in his pocket. In his head he carried a new idea which he thought was destined to change the face of English society, to mould the rising generation, to raise the Church to new and greater heights of power, and to promote the interests of the whole nation. On his voyage home his ship called at the Cape, and Dr Bell climbed Table Mountain, admired "the moss over the table, soft and moist as a sponge," and visited Constantia, where he found in the Calvinistic chapel "the candlestick and the sand-glass, like a Presbyterian Church." The sand-glass is forgotten, and its use has utterly perished. He called at St Helena, too, and "ate conger-eels at the Governor's garden-a rich fish." On the 28th of December he "took up a bucket of water and found it highly luminous when agitated; saw distinctly the fiery particles, and poured them on the deck, where they shone for some time as well as in your hand." He arrived in London on the 7th of February

1797, after a voyage of nearly six months. go round the world now in three.

We can

"Never was I so charmed with an English spring," he writes to his friend General Floyd: "Scotland has no spring, and the daughters of the spring are so enchanting." He goes on to say that he fears his susceptibility to beauty is not so quick as it once was. The English world was now his oyster, and the sword with which he was about to open it was his "Report on the Madras Asylum." This Report he made up his mind to publish under the title of An Experiment in Education, made at the Male Asylum at Madras, suggesting a System by which a School or Family may Teach itself under the Superintendence of the Master or Parent.

This Report was, in his belief, to be the seed of a slow-growing and mighty tree, from which generation after generation was to be fed, and under which they were to find shelter and shade; and Dr Bell hoped that "by the end of next century it would be generally practised in Europe." In one of his letters to the printer, he says, "You will mark me for an enthusiast; but if you and I live a thousand years, we shall see this system of education spread over the world." In the meantime, however, his "humble essay" is "not to be advertised in the London newspapers oftener than thrice in all;" and these three advertisements were to be distributed over the Times,' the 'Sun,' and the 'Star" newspapers, the two latter of which have been long sunk in endless night. He sent copies of his Report to the most influential persons in the kingdom-dukes,

archbishops, bishops, and a large number of other

peers.

Meanwhile he bought some land in Dumfriesshire, which brought him in a rental of £610 a-year.

His plans very soon began to make way in London. A Mr Watts, one of the trustees of St Botolph's, Aldgate, "the oldest Protestant parochial school in London," handed the Report to Samuel Nichols (the Mr in the case of teachers was always omitted at that period) the headmaster, who reported to the trustees that the System "instructs the younger ones with more rapidity, because to the monitor they can read and spell twice or thrice in the morning and afternoon, when to the master not more than once." This was a beginning. The plan was accordingly adopted in this school in 1798; and in 1803 Mr Nichols writes to Mr Watts in praise of another "idea" of Dr Bell's-the use of sand. He says: "The sand I continue to use, it being the most facilitating as well as the most saving method that ever was conceived." And he gives as an instance of its efficacy the following case: "I had a boy, who is the dullest, heaviest, and the least inclined to learning I ever had, who, having for six months past wrote upon sand, and read alternately and constantly while at school, is now able not only to spell every word, but can tell me many words, let me ask him where I will; and he appears ow to have an inclination to learning, to which, when he first came, he had an utter aversion." The value of this as an educational fact clearly lies in this: that whereas the boy had before this time been called upon merely to imitate another person by threats and by

coercion, his self-activity was now agreeably roused into free play, and the movements of his mind and finger were accompanied by their natural modicum of pleasure. The little boy, in shorter words, liked "writing with a pen upon damp sand.”

The System travelled down to Kendal, and was taken up with enthusiasm by Dr Briggs, the mayor of the town. He started a school on the Madras System, and most thoughtfully attached to it "a penny ordinary." "The experiment of giving the children occasional lessons in geography was also made here, a set of maps having been presented to the school; and with admirable results." Nearly eighty years after, the present writer has found schools, both in London and Glasgow, where lessons in geography were given, but where a map was never either shown or seen.

Dr Bell spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister at Dumfries, so as to be near his lately acquired purchases. He seems to have mixed a good deal in the society of the place, and, "towards the end of his sojourn there, to have kept a carriage and horses, together with a coachman and footman." In August of 1799 he went to Edinburgh, and officiated at the English Episcopal Chapel there services which the congregation rewarded with a quantity of plate.

His friends now began to think that Dr Bell had some intention of marrying. And Mr Dempster wrote him, that "it is the general opinion of all my female friends, that you could only hire so dear a house, and keep a carriage, with a view to fascinate some coy damsel." Major Wight, another friend, wrote to