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been a formidable rival for still higher status; but, before another competition, he died of consumption.

It

It is more difficult to describe the remaining class, properly the main class of the year. occupied the largest amount of time-three hours daily, and was the most pretentious in point of subject; its designation being Natural and Civil History a clumsy conjunction established in the middle of the eighteenth century. The farce of including Civil History was still maintained; the professor giving a certain number of lectures on the four great Monarchies of Antiquity, without getting beyond the Macedonian or Greek. The rest of his course was supposed to be Natural History, but was a jumble of Physics, Chemistry, and Natural History properly so called. He was radically inefficient, whatever might be his subject, and left a very small residuum in the minds even of the most attentive of his pupils. I got a prize, nevertheless-I forget which.

Even more important than the college work, was my private occupation throughout this session, which may be said to have seen the beginning of my determined application to the study of mind. I got Stewart's Dissertation and Locke's Essay out of the library in the beginning of winter; probably, other metaphysical works.

THE NATURAL HISTORY CLASS.

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My excogitations with the pen, which has been the main source of my development, were henceforth incessant.

The morning hour in the Natural History class was occupied with viva voce examinations. In the first weeks of the session, I believe I spent this hour (being out of the professor's sight, from sitting below his desk) in reading the Pickwick Papers. When these were finished, I took to metaphysical composition; and this, by the New Year, completely engrossed me. A definite turn was given to my efforts by the announcement of the subject for the Blackwell Prize of £20,-for which competitors had to give in their essays by the end of March. The subject was, "A Comparison of Queen Elizabeth's Age and Queen Anne's, in regard to Style". Little as I knew of literature in general, or the authors of these two periods in particular, I had the audacity to scale the fortress by sheer force of speculation. I attempted a hurried study of three authors for each period-Bacon, Hooker, and Raleigh, for the one; Addison, Swift, and Pope (I think, but cannot trust my memory), for the other; making generalizations of sentence structure, more especially in Hooker and Addison. But the whole attempt was obviously crude and premature. The speculative part was good in

itself, though little fitted to the occasion. I began what I called a system of categories, borrowing the Aristotelian word from floating allusions, and applying it to the loftiest generalities I could find; the idea being to push these generalities far ahead into subjects remote from their original source. I kept up this aim for many subsequent years, and found it to chime in with, and receive confirmation from, the philosophy of Auguste Comte. Its overt expression was, after all, confined to a note in Education as a Science (page 150)-where few people could discern the enormous stress that I had laid upon it, so long, in my own mind. At a later period, I could have made far more use of it in the philosophy of style, which was what the essay required, if brought in there. That I should fail in the rivalry with any one that had been a reader of English Literature, was inevitable. I heard from Dr. Cruickshank the private judgment of the examiners. One put me down as thinking I knew everything, while I knew nothing; the other said the writer showed talent, but did not seem master of the subject-which was true enough.

From some notes of the time, I gather that the writing of the essay gave a vast impetus to my psychological studies, but inflicted a blow

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on my health, which I long felt, and from which, perhaps, I never entirely recovered.

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My appearances in the prize lists were only partly satisfactory in Greek alone did I keep up a position. The competition in Latin fell the very day that I completed the essay, writing from morn till nearly midnight. Even if I had entered as a competitor, I should have failed this time; the stress being put upon a Latin version, in which I had never risen to a respectable mark, from insufficient early training.

Summer Recess, 1838.

Jaded as I was, I went on in my philosophy career. It still took the form of incessant cogitation; the stimulus being augmented by occasional demands for essays to the Mechanics' or other societies. The interruptions from alternative avocations were not serious. I had to do a little teaching and other work for my personal expenses; but the family circumstances were happily such as not to exact a large contribution for board. Many students had to incur the drudgery of private tuition from four to six hours a day,-which would have rendered me quite unfit for hard study.

I began the recess with morning walks and

out-of-door readings with George Walker. We took up the Georgics of Virgil, believing in the expediency of keeping up a certain amount of classical study. Partly from want of ease in the understanding of the language, but still more from deficient poetical and rhetorical training, which should have begun in English, I was at the time very little rewarded for my pains. The Latin teaching under Melvin had no rhetorical efficacy. He felt the poetry himself, but could not impart it to pupils. I have no doubt that Blackie, who was thrust into the college by a discreditable job, could have inspired far more literary ardour, as well as given a better perception of literary form.

These morning walks soon came to an end. Walker entered as an apprentice with a new master, and had to give his morning hours to office work. I still went on struggling with Latin authors to little profit. Finding that my shaken health demanded regular and incessant exercise, I did nothing, for two months, but study for myself. In June, I undertook to act as substitute for the teacher of a day and evening school, for which I received the fees. The day pupils were few in number, and very disorderly; and I did not succeed in bringing the school into anything like discipline. The evening class

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