visitors" might themselves want "extraordinary visitors" to watch them, and—as is so often the case in Scotland -all the power needed to create these new Madras Institutions would disappear in friction.

The trustees did their best to mollify Dr Bell. They took advantage of the opportunity of the first quarterly examination to write a flowery and laudatory report of the two new schools, in which they state that they carried in their hands (as if it were a foot-rule) Dr Bell's 'Manual' to apply to the English school, and his 'Ludus Literarius' to the classical school; that everything was done as Dr Bell would have it; and that the "proficiency of Andrew Bell Morrison" (a relation of the Doctor's) was "sufficiently attested by the unexceptional evidence of the paidometer;" that "Mr Waugh has adopted the Novum Organon;" and that Virgil, with the happy anticipation of true prophecy, had some time previously described in his verses a Madras school:

"Ac veluti in pratis, ubi apes aestate serenâ

Floribus insidunt variis, et candida circum

Lilia funduntur: strepit omnis murmure campus,
Fervet opus."

But this appeal to his literary and pedagogic vanity, to his family love, and to his weakness for well-worn classical quotations, utterly failed. Dr Bell could not be moved. He therefore executed "a holograph deed, which may or must be my ultimatum." In this deed he appointed a large number of miscellaneous gentlemen as patrons, and another number as "supplementary trustees." The central idea of his holograph deed was

that the St Andrews Trust should be managed, not by local persons, but from Edinburgh. But, only a few days after, Dr Bell writes: "Since writing the holograph deed, dated 21st December 1831, I have executed a deed, dated 29th December 1831, which perhaps supersedes it." Perhaps he was not quite sure. And, further on, he launches out into another denunciation of his own trustees-whom he calls "ostensible advocates and insidious patrons ;" and he enumerates the "studied embarrassments, machinations, devices, distortions, and perversion of the propositions of a dying, speechless, and insulated man, with funds undisposed of."

In the beginning of 1832, Dr Bell grew worse, but his mind was as active as ever. Mr Davies's bedroom was next his own, and he could call him whenever he awoke. This "he now generally did at three, four, five, or six o'clock;" and Mr Davies had to get up at once, read his own manuscripts to him, receive his corrections and recorrections, transfer them from slate to paper, read the manuscripts over again, and correct and recorrect them once more. Up to Thursday the 26th of January 1832, his intellect was vigorous and his memory unimpaired. The day after he was very weak; and it was plain that the end was not far off. His friends went to see him. "He was sitting in his chair, his head inclined forward, his breathing short." When Mr Allen came in, he just looked up, and then dropped his eyes again. At half-past ten he was asleep, but still in his chair. Mr Davies and his two women-servants knelt round him, holding the hand of

the master whom they loved so well, in spite of his passionate manners and exactingness. His breathing became softer and gentler, and, when they next looked up, he was dead. So passed upon a quiet wave of sleep into the unknown world the soul of the fiery eager Scotchman, who had fought a good fight, kept faith with God and man, and who had also been the lover of, and beloved by, children. He was seventy-nine; and, as a prebendary, his body was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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CHAPTER XV.

DR BELL'S CORRESPONDENCE.

DR BELL'S correspondents were of all kinds, ranks, and nationalities; and one might have expected to find a good deal of interesting matter a good many characteristic remarks, unconscious revelations, curious national traits, and piquant anecdotes—in them. But it is not so. Dr Bell kept every note, letter, paper, and pamphlet he received during sixty years; and it is only astonishing how barren the mass turns out to be. Everybody, with one or two exceptions, writes in the most ponderous and sesquipedalian style—it is plain that Dr Johnson was still all abroad in the air; and everybody pays everybody else the most elaborate compliments. The end of last century was the period of the minuet; and George III.'s sons and daughters danced that slow and elaborate dance for entire eveningshours at a time-with each other. The personages in Dr Bell's letters walk and talk as if they were dressed in the stiffest pasteboard or brocade, as if life might be spent in writing and in reading letters, as if the old antediluvian span had come into existence once more. Dr Bell writes of his two young American pupils:

the very first line of life. Your sons have, among their con-disciples and most intimate friends at St Andrews, an earl, the son of an earl, the son of a bishop, the grandson of a bishop, and the sons of knights in great number." Thus people talked in pedigrees, and arranged their conversation according to precedence. And these two young gentlemen themselves, going home to Virginia rather unexpectedly, cannot say that their father and mother were both glad and surprised to see them, but must put their facts and feelings in this eighteenth century fashion: "Our meeting with papa and mamma was joyful beyond description. The engine of paternal affection was conjoined with that of surprise, by no means weak, you will allow. We announced our arrivals with our own persons."

And we find a Mr Sikes opening a correspondence with Dr Bell after this wise: "My acquaintance with you has indeed been short; but it has served to persuade me that you possess those respectable qualities of head and heart which ought to make me desirous of improving it." In fact, one might just as well take to reading the 'Polite Letter-Writer.'

The few women who write to him are by far the best of his correspondents. They say what they have to say in fewer and simpler words than the men, some of whom write in the most long-drawn, ponderous, and dreary style. Mrs Berkeley, the wife of the then Dean of Canterbury, is one of these correspondents. She thanks Dr Bell for "half-a-dozen elegant dried

G