by Professor Alexander; but, when the paper was concluded, he himself drew up another in reply to his own ideas. "I am, indeed," he wrote, "reduced to a sad dilemma. It afflicts me beyond measure to think that the funds laid up for giving full effect to a system of education, the object of which is the health, the happiness, the moral, religious, intellectual, and literary improvement of the young (to a degree impracticable before) by a new and stupendous engine, may, by mistake or otherwise, be directed to different purposes. The only remedy that occurs to me is to desire that the funds be put into Chancery." Such was the utterly hopeless condition of Dr Bell's mind-such was the faithless outlook that presented itself as he lay at the door of death.

He was afraid that some of his money would go to the support of a number of ancient nuisances—such as "charity schools, hospitals, asylums, colleges, and universities." He lumped them all up together, and took no note of any distinctions that might be made, or differences that might possibly exist. Nothing was to be done except for the "Madras (or, as it is often called, the monitorial) system of education." Before that system, education did not exist. "Do not talk to me of your colleges and your universities. They are asylums for the maimed, the halt, and the blind; more, they are receptacles for the dead, who cannot hear the new word of life which I have spoken, and who must sleep on."

While Dr Bell was in this anxious state of mind— drawn hither and thither by every new suggestion, driven hither and thither by every new letter he received from

his correspondents-splitting up his money into portions of £10,000, and distrusting the very men to whom he proposed to intrust these portions, a paragraph in the newspapers met his eye about the establishment of a Royal Naval School near London. "This is a godsend !" he muttered; and a letter is immediately sent to Sir Henry Blackwood the chairman, to offer him one of his sets of £10,000. He was duly thanked; and Captain M'Konochie was despatched to Cheltenham to converse with him about the constitution and purposes of the new school. Captain M'Konochie found that Dr Bell had totally lost the power of articulation, and could communicate with others only by writing on a slate. He sat with his head sunk on his breast, raising it quickly now and then when he was excited. When he agreed with the speaker, he pointed to his eye; when he dissented, a strong grunt was heard in his throat. He wrote question after question on his slate with the same impulsive eagerness that had marked his whole life. “What do you think of my offer?" "Do you know my system?" Captain M'Konochie had established a school on his system in Scotland. "But where did you learn it? Have you read my books?" 'Some, not all." Davies is sent off for the last production. "Have you seen that?" "No." "Then take some." "Where have you seen my system at work?" "In Edinburgh and in Chelsea." "Good! Where is the plan of your Naval School?" "Oh! we have not got the funds yet." will give you funds at once."

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"But my £10,000-that "True: but we have just

learned your kind intention, and have not had time."

"Well; but you have time now. I must have a plan. When will you have it? Can you bring it to me tonight at eight, or to-morrow morning? A plan we must have." Captain M'Konochie, seeing no way of escape, undertook to bring him a plan in the morning. Dr Bell stuck to his own views-in small things as well as in great. He asked advice from everybody; he always rejected it. It was pleasant to him to see how many roads he need not go; and how little those who were advising him knew of what they were talking about. But he liked the excitement-he was fond of keeping up the discussion, and had "some reluctance finally to conclude, because then the business which was by this time almost necessary to him (the activity of his mind having become morbid) would be over."

a

On Captain M'Konochie's next visit to Cheltenham, he met the trustees from St Andrews. These gentlemen had been presented with £120,000 for the good of their city; and they were now called upon to give up half of this splendid donation. There is no doubt they could have legally held Dr Bell to his transfer; but this would have been ungracious. The old man was afraid they would. They, too, were asked for " plan;" but they did not even know the rudiments of the System. They were not even willing to try to make a plan; they were afraid Dr Bell would disapprove of it. "They 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." Such are the trials of donors and trustees.

And now an epistolary dispute arose between Dr Bell and his St Andrews trustees. The letters-some of them-extend to ten printed pages. He accuses Provost Haig, a perfectly honourable man, of using some of his money, on the eve of an election, to bring a fresh supply of water to the city. Mr Haig replies: "I beg to say that I never fingered a shilling of your money, nor did I ever make use of it in any way to serve a political purpose." Dr Bell heaps letter upon letter and accusation upon accusation. He pours red-hot shot into the defences of the St Andrews trustees-quiet honest gentlemen, who were quite willing to help him in every way.

He accuses them of having "kept him in a state of incessant agitation and excitement;" of availing themselves of "my loss of voice to convert a large portion of my property to objects and purposes at entire variance with those to which I had proposed to devote them;" of "denying my last days the comfort which I sought for from an epistolary participation of your doings" (this only meant that they should write him by every post); "of concealment;" of writing "declamations to give a death-blow to my debilitated constitution, or for a posthumous epistle to the grave, which tells no tales;" and of "trying whether I was so much alive as to be able to discriminate between sophistry and prevarication and sound reasoning and good sense." Thus, in the first part of his long and fiery letter, he complains that they do not write enough; while, in the after part, he complains that they want to write him to

death, in order that they may have perfect freedom to do as they like. And he concludes in the most characteristic way: "Finally, I adjure you, by the living God, to forward copies of this letter immediately" to certain legal authorities in Edinburgh. The trustees replied in the meekest and mildest manner. But the volcanic soul was in full action; and he at once wrote off to the other Principal in the University and three other professors a short note, asking "what immediate and brief additional measure can be taken to enforce compliance with all my requisitions and injunctions, that will lose no time, require no formal deed on my part? What can be done-what can you do—what can I do, in one moment? Write by return of post and by every post. Excuse haste. Late for post, and not one must be lost." Poor old gentleman! he asks several excellent men to be his trustees, and then he appeals to others whom he hardly knows to tell him what to do, what can be done, what they can do. Boundless suspicion; infinite isolation.

Another long epistle followed, in which, among other flowers of a luxuriant rhetoric, he says that "Dr Bell's little finger, when put to the work, will do more than the whole of St Andrews." He had forgotten the quiet idyllic life there-how, in transcendent and sky-like repose the academic inhabitants refused to believe that they had left the fifteenth century. Dr Bell had got into his head an insatiable desire to see "extraordinary visitors" appointed, who were to be a check on the ordinary trustees. But this the trustees demurred to, on the common-sense ground that the "extraordinary