so well satisfied with what he saw there, that he determined to found and endow a school at Gower's Walkwhich should be a school of industry as well for instruction in the ordinary subjects. In the school shoemaking was tried, but this did not succeed. Printing was then introduced, and the boys took to it with immense eagerness. They "composed, distributed, and worked off to admiration," and found the labour "highly amusing."

Lord Radstock, a great admirer of the System, suggested in 1807 to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, that he should establish a school for two hundred boys at Lambeth; and in the beginning of May, Dr Bell obtained a licence from his bishop "to be absent from his benefice of Swanage for two years."

The System was introduced into the female orphan asylum at Lambeth; and in 1808 Dr Bell was appointed "perpetual guardian" of the institution, in order that he might have every facility for the carrying out of his plan. He was also invited to remodel the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea. In explaining his System to the Duke of York, then Commander-in-chief, he said that his "teachers and assistant teachers were his sergeants and corporals, his reports their orderly books;" and that it was in the school of the army that he had learned his own lesson.

About this time-the beginning of 1807-Lancaster inserted in the 'Star' newspaper an advertisement which produced in Dr Bell's mind a considerable amount of excitement. In this advertisement, he stated that he had "invented, under the blessing of Divine Providence, a new and mechanical system of education for the use of

schools;" and that, "by this system, paradoxical as it may appear, above one thousand children may be taught and governed by one master only. . . . Any boy who can read, can teach arithmetic with the certainty of a mathematician, although he knows nothing about it himself." This claim to teach a subject that the teacher does not himself know is constantly making its appearance; and it is one of the diseases that accompany the low feverish habit of mind which demands a method, but cares little for the knowledge which must accompany the method-which looks for a panacea, and overleaps the need for first-hand knowledge. This constantly cropping-up demand impeded for a long time the science. of medicine; and it even now impedes, to a large extent, the possible science of education.

Mr Whitbread, the eminent brewer and member of Parliament, was at this time engaged on an attempt to remodel the poor-laws, and to introduce a system of national education. The differences between Dr Bell and Mr Lancaster were submitted to him, and he settled, or appeared to settle, them in an amicable way. He stated that "Dr Bell unquestionably preceded Mr Lancaster, and to him the world is first indebted for one of the most useful discoveries which has ever been submitted to society. . . . Mr Lancaster at the same time asserts that many of the very useful methods practised at his school are exclusively his own." Who knows? Who needs to know? Who cares to know? Lancaster hardly knew himself. But he gave a noble life to popular education, and no doubt he has his reward. Another school on Dr Bell's system was begun in

D

East Marylebone in 1807. It opened with three boys, and in a short time numbered two hundred and fifty. The success of this school suggested the formation of a society for the promotion of education and the training of teachers; but nothing came of this movement till several years after. It was, however, very cheering to Dr Bell to find letters pouring in upon him from all parts of the kingdom-from correspondents who asked. to be provided with teachers trained upon the famous Madras System. From Ireland, too, came an application from Richard Lovell Edgeworth, who wanted “some hints on the subject of education." The art of instruction was at this time very backward in Ireland; and the ideas of discipline very rudimentary. "The boy who had written the best copy was ordered by the master to pull the other's hair, and so to do till they arrived at their seats in the school again."

A petition from the West Indies-from Barbadoesalso came to Dr Bell. It asked for a "well-instructed boy," to be sent out immediately; and a young protégé of Bell's, Lewis Warren" was sent out. The Bishop of London was very enthusiastic about Warren, and wrote of him: "He will make his fortune and immortalise his name. He will be ranked among the greatest benefactors to mankind, and (although it is a bold thing to say) he will be doing as much good in the Atlantic Ocean as Bonaparte is doing mischief on the continent. of Europe." This contrast between oceans and continents, Warrens and Bonapartes, is very pleasing. But Warren very soon withdrew his light from education, and gave it to the more lucrative subject of blacking.

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The West India planters were, however, up in arms. They deprecated Dr Bell's introducing education among their negroes. They looked upon education as something akin to small-pox or yellow fever. They ask whether there is nothing further to be done in Great Britain and Ireland in the instruction and civilisation of the lowest classes, that he must adventure the fruits of his imagination to our side of the Atlantic?" If England is fully educated and civilised, there is Ireland; and a Scotch gentleman, "who is now at the right hand" of the correspondent, suggests that even in Scotland the lower classes are not so highly polished as they might be. The planter goes on to complain that England never thinks of her colonies, except to tax or to educate them; that they are the corpora vilia for experiment; and to "entreat the Doctor to contemplate the miseries of St Domingo," and to give up a scheme that would "make him answerable in another world for so wanton and cruel a misapplication of his talents." And the writer concludes by stating that, on the Day of Judgment, Dr Bell would not be able to plead “as a justification for the injury done us, the benefits to our slaves, who are, I sincerely believe, better off in their present condition than instruction in letters would make them."

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CHAPTER IX.

DR BELL IN DURHAM.

In the beginning of the year 1808, Dr Bell was trying to find a living near London, in exchange for his rectory at Swanage, in order that he might be able to give personal aid and superintendence to the schools which were rising up under his system on every side. In one of these applications for an ecclesiastical position, he describes himself as 66 more than fifty, and a bad life; and points to "the zeal with which I have devoted myself to the King and Church." The motivation, by aid of "the bad life" and "the King," who takes precedence of the Church,-sounds to our modern ears somewhat odd. About this time he became acquainted with the Bishop of Durham, who appointed him one of his chaplains, and presented him with the Mastership of Sherburn Hospital.

A long triangular correspondence, about dilapidations, between the Bishop of Durham, the Bishop of Ely (the late Master), and Dr Bell, followed, with which the present reader need not be detained. The Hospital, which is near Durham, had been founded by Hugh Pudsey, "the joly Byshop of Durham," for sixty-five lepers; and the