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CHAPTER X.

PROGRESS.

THE friends of Dr Bell and the Madras System were desirous of establishing a "National Institution" which should extend the benefits of the new ideas to all parts of the three kingdoms. They were also bent upon establishing-what was a very minor matter, about which not a soul cares a straw nowadays-" the priority of Dr Bell's claim." One of the very first discussions which arose at the preliminary meetings was, whether it was advisable to convert the present schoolmasters to Dr Bell's ideas, or to create a new set of teachers by founding a seminary for training them. A third course suggested was "to have one school in perfect order in the metropolis, where masters may be trained, and to which they may be referred." In the course of time, it was resolved to found a society, "to be called the Metropolitan Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, according to the System invented and practised by the Rev. Dr Bell." Part of the plan of the society was also "to show the danger of Lancaster's proceedings." But Mr Bouger, one of the most powerful prota

gonists in this movement, had a larger plan in his head. His plan was "to establish not a metropolitan, but a national, society, for the education of the poor." Everybody that was anybody was ready to give his support to either plan. "The Prince Regent approves ; that wisest and best of men, Mr Perceval, will give it his best support" (Mr Perceval was the unhappy Prime Minister of the day); and these ceremonial and official heads of the State were followed by a crowd of peers and bishops. But the movement was in some danger. The new society got mixed up with a "Bartlett's Boys' Society," and several of its best supporters refused to join it under this restriction. At length the ship was fairly afloat: and the name was by general consent altered to "The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, throughout England and Wales." The President of the Committee was the Archbishop of Canterbury: and the vice-presidents numbered among them the Archbishop of York, several bishops, the Lord High Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and a number of peers.

A sub-committee was also appointed; and its first work was to recommend that a central school for the education of a thousand children should be established near the city of Westminster, and that a similar school should be established in or near the city of London. Temporary rooms were meanwhile adapted to the purposes of a school in Gray's Inn Lane.

Some doubt was felt by several members of the committee as to the part that should be taken by Dr Bell

in all this organisation; and the Bishop of London "wanted to exclude Dr Bell altogether from the national schools, except as an occasional adviser," and seemed "likely to knock up the whole scheme by his perverseness. This would surely have been to play Hamlet without the part of Hamlet. Mr Marriott, an enthusiastic ally of Dr Bell's, supported the Bishop of London on all points but this; and thought that "for this he will hate me, but that is more his business than mine." At length all difficulties were settled, and all jealousies laid to rest, by giving Dr Bell a permanent appointment in connection with the society, and by electing him “ an honorary member of the general committee."

The head-mastership of the Central School was given to a Mr Johnson, the curate of Grasmere, who had introduced the Madras System, at the suggestion of the poet, and had carried it out with great success. Wordsworth himself had placed three of his own children under his care; and in a letter to Dr Bell, in 1811, expresses his delight "that the great work goes on so well and it is some consolation to think, in the present afflicted state of Europe, that there is at least one small portion of it where men are acting as if they thought that they lived for some other purpose than that of murdering and oppressing each other."

While on a visit to Grasmere, Dr Bell made the acquaintance of the poet's sister, Miss Dorothy Wordsworth, whose assistance he asked in the correction of his books. Miss Wordsworth accordingly remodelled, and in fact rewrote, his work on the Madras School; but Dr Bell subsequently threw the manuscript aside. The

fact is, that Dr Bell wrote a terribly lumbering and painful style, and no one now can read his books; but then no one can speak for another as well as the man himself -however clumsily and stupidly he may speak.

Dr Bell's introduction to Mr Bamford at Grasmere gives a not uninteresting glimpse of the state of teaching in the begining of this century. Mr Bamford was the head-boy of the grammar-school at Ambleside; and when Mr Johnson went to London, he was sent to take charge of the school at Grasmere. "I was sitting one day," he says, "reading Baptista Mantuates, while a little brat was squeaking his letters before me, when an elderly venerable-looking gentleman entered the school." The custom in Grasmere school was for the master to do as much reading of his own in the school as he could, and to "hear the lessons of the children, who came up separately four times a-day to "say" them. This ancient superstition still lingers in some parts of the country, under the name of "the individual system." Mr Bamford gives a bright and pleasant picture of Hartley Coleridge. "Hartley was very irregular in his time of attending school. He used to run in about ten o'clock, with his hat on his head, chewing a slate-pencil in his mouth. Where have you been?' Hartley, 'I laughing, I really don't know.' You are a strange fellow, Hartley, to go on in this way. Get me forty lines of Homer in such a book.' 'Shall I say them now, sir?""

The System was now spreading itself over the country. Mr Marriott tells him that, near Lutterworth, he will "find several parishes rendered comparatively a heaven

upon

earth by teaching." And Mr Justice Park wrote to Mr Marriott that Dr Bell's "plan is one of the most stupendous engines that ever have been wielded, since the days of our Saviour and His apostles, for the advancement of God's true religion upon earth.”

The Central School was now beginning to do good work, but also to be a source of some trouble. The "masters and mistresses " who had come to be trained as teachers were, in many instances, "unable to write, and in some even to read;" and what was worse, they seem to have shown themselves quite indifferent to the merits of the System. In the Charterhouse, however, where it had been introduced, the System seems to have been successful; and the Archbishop of Canterbury entertained Dr Bell "for an hour with eulogiums on the effects produced in this school by the Madras System."

During this period, young Bamford seems to have been his private secretary and amanuensis. Of Bamford he took possession body and soul. He would have him in attendance at six in the morning; and sometimes till eleven at night. His chief work was transcribing, "from little scraps of paper and backs of letters, the chaotic effusions of Dr Bell's ardent mind." Young Bamford hardly dared to speak to a friend or to call upon an acquaintance; and he "looked upon all others who spoke kindly to me, or wished me to seek some relaxation, as insidious enemies." “He exacted of me," Mr Bamford goes on to say, "the prostration of the intellect, the affections, and the actions." For all this absolute devotion of time and soul, Bamford was paid chiefly with promises. Dr Bell also represented to him