just enough to set every one else talking; and not much more than that. He often spoke of the unsatisfactory state into which the study of mathematics was getting, especially at Cambridge, where he said it was made too little of a training for the mind, and too much a display of mere tours-deforce. A real mathematician, he said, must be something more than a mere mathematician, he must be also something of a poet. He spoke of the probability that a mathematical school of a higher order would grow up at Oxford. A professorship there having fallen vacant, he was spoken of as one who would have a chance of obtaining it. The position would in many ways have suited him, and I could see that the idea haunted him like a too pleasant daydream. If he ever were at Oxford, he said, he would be able to throw himself heart and soul into his favourite scheme of trying to develope the teaching of mathematics as a healthy moral discipline. There might be duties connected with the post which a man with more extensive knowledge of the details of the science would be better able to perform. That, however, he could of course leave to the decision of those with whom the appointment rested. But there was another difficulty in the way, and a much more serious one. The Essays and Reviews" had been not very long published. If he were at Oxford, he said, he would be expected by many people to take one side or the other in theological controversy. The life of a man who would be a partisan of neither side might be made very uncomfortable. I persuaded him finally, but with some difficulty, to enter his name as a candidate, but without sending in any testimonials. " The appointment was given to a young Oxford man. I have since heard that it was said in the University, that my husband's way of sending in his name merely, looked as if he did not care for the appointment. Those who said so little knew him. I think that there were times when the longing for intellectual companionship was very great, and the idea of what life at Oxford might be, but for religious bitternesses, was one which he hardly dared trust himself to dwell on. I have often heard him speak of the danger which besets persons, in many social circles, of being tempted to acquiesce, by silence at least, in religious opinions which they in reality think false and mischievous, for fear either of giving pain to others, or of being supposed to doubt truths which seem to many to be, but in reality are not, necessarily bound up with those opinions. Giving pain was a thing from which he shrank with a sort of morbid terror. He had on one or two occasions to expose the wrong-doing of persons with whom he was officially connected. He spoke out boldly enough at the time, but suffered terribly for the next few days, and had to be watched and tended like an invalid, so great was the nervous strain. He used sometimes to say that if a man were so placed that it was his duty to give pain to others, he might always reckon on strength being given him to speak out: but that he himself felt he had no right, for his own pleasure, or for his children's advancement, to expose himself to the temptation of seeming to sanction what he felt to be false. I have often heard him say that when once a man thinks himself bound to a settled creed, it seems as if truth, faith, and charity be come impossible to him, except in so far as he evades his creed. His own warmest affection always flowed out to those-they were very few-who proved to him that this was not necessarily the case. When I knew him first he would (when too ill to bear the whole length of the service) rather not go to church on the Sacrament Sunday than have to leave before the Communion. Of late years he never received the Sacrament at all. He said that it had been originally intended as a bond of brotherhood, and was now taken as an expression of belief in certain doctrines; that, whether the doctrines were true or false, this was a perverted use of the rite, and he would have nothing to do with it. He used to say that a National Church ought to admit all people who accept the Life of the New Testament as the true life for man; and that the question between Trinitarians and Unitarians, and even any such other question, as whether the life of Christ was an actual or an ideal one, ought to be left to be discussed amicably within the Church. He used to say that a sufficient poof, if proof were needed, of the indifference of the religious world generally to everything but the keeping up of a certain routine of theories, would be afforded by the reception given by it to every earnest, pious man who tries to find out the truth. Instead of heartily accepting the man for the sake of what he is, and then assisting him in correcting what they suppose to be his mistakes, clergymen and religious laymen pounce upon errors in doctrine and think them a sufficient reason for excluding him from Church sympathy. He always seemed to think the belief in dogmas, rather than in relationships between men, the crying sin of the age. He used to speak with great indignation of any woman who, being married to a man of more liberal opinions than herself, tried to prevent his exerting a natural influence over his children. The father, he said, was the normal priest of the family; and a woman who supposed that fact to be altered by any private theories of her own as to what might be, or not be, correct doctrine, gave thereby sufficient proof of the radical unsoundness of her own theology. The best men and most earnest students in a nation, he said, these were its heaven-sent teachers, and these ought to decide on the theology to be taught in its Church; and he would begin to believe in the possible stability of the Church of England when some supposed heretical preacher was made Bishop, not because his doctrines were proved orthodox by his adherents, but purely on the ground of his Apostolical character. He fully acknowledged all that doctors say about the importance. of physical and mental hygiène i and thought that a child's being quite ignorant of everything, theology included, at twelve years old, would be a matter of no consequence, if it were possible for it to be healthy and have its faculties in working order without study. But he seemed to assume, as the first of sanitary facts, that there is direct contact between the Divine Magnetism and the nervous system of man; and to consider the main business of parents to be to cultivate such habits of mind in their children as make them most receptive of that magnetism. On the subject of corporal punishment, he used to say that a delicate child suffers physically far more from the nervous depression consequent on hesitating as to whether it should obey or no, than it would from the whipping which might have question for it. settled the He told me, if I were left to bring up his children without him, never to allow them to be under the influence of any one who would teach them to think anything more respectable than work. Prayer and labour, he used often to say, are the salvation of mankind. He also cautioned me not to allow my ideas of Church discipline, or my desire for Church sympathy, to induce me to allow the children to be with those who would teach them to think that there is any merit in holding one set of opinions rather than another, or that any state of mind is more religious than a humble desire to follow the truth in any direction in which it may present itself. In all other respects, I was left free to bring them up as circumstances should direct. any I was never allowed to encourage our children in babyish corruption of language. He would sit for a length of time with an infant on his knee, teaching it to pronounce its first words with perfect distinctness. I have heard it remarked that to hear him teaching a little child to read was a most valuable lesson for any teacher. Every letter, every stop, every inflection of the voice, was attended to with the minutest care. This was partly in order to give the children habits of accuracy, and of reverence for whatever was their work for the time being. Partly, I think, too, because, language being a common property, he wished to discourage the idea of individuals having a private right to use it as they pleased. But he also felt that, considering what is spoken of in the Bible as "The Word," people who make any sort of profession of believing in the Bible ought to be very reverent in their use of words. I was not allowed to stimulate in the little girls any ambition to excel, except in such occupations as are common to women in all ranks in life. A little pride in his own forefathers (whose character was that they were the best thatchers and the most reading men in their village) might have something to do with this. To be a good sick-nurse was always put before the children as the highest result of the best education, as the reward to which they should look for all the pains they took in learning. His He never allowed any theories of education which seemed to imply that parents may be wiser than Providence. I used to wish to keep the children from seeing animals killed, and was shocked when I found him promising them money for killing snails. explanation, though very gently given, was in effect this: "Peasant children have to do it; the world couldn't be cultivated if every one indulged in that sort of sentimentality; and I don't want any unnatural theories brought into my house." 6 He was much vexed when he found that I had told them that their father was "a genius,' as much as Tennyson or Dickens." He said they ought always to feel that they must take their chance through life like all other children, and not think of themselves as exceptions to any common rule. One of my most intimate friends, -a girl who has spent many an evening with us in reading poetry or looking at the telescopetold me that nothing could exceed her astonishment at learning, after his death, that he was an author. She knew some of his Collegeclass, and they talked of him constantly as their friend and guide, as having more influence on their lives than any other person (be sides being the best teacher they knew); but nothing they said of him ever suggested the idea of his being known beyond his own College. In giving hints on the subject of teaching he used to insist on the necessity of proceeding from the particular to the general-from acts to principles. He told me, for instance, always to require a child to work a sum before I gave any explanation of the rule. They were to obey first and understand afterwards. He said that in the process of making a scientific discovery, you could never tell beforehand to what question you were going to find an answer. You set yourself a question, and presently found that you could not solve it without solving a much wider one. And when you had done so, if you wanted to give others the benefit of your discovery, you must not begin at once with the wider question; you ought to go bark on your own track-start with something like the idea that first suggested itself to you, and lead them on in something like the way in which you had yourself been led. An instance of this is given in the preface to a work of his on Differential Equations. In speaking of the great anxiety of some parents to procure for their children the best and most accurate books, those which communicate knowledge most directly and with the least trouble, he used to say that they mistook the very nature of education. A great deal of the good of learning consisted in the struggle against difficulties avoidable difficulties were not necessarily an evil. He said that he had lost full five years in the beginning of his career for want of proper training; but he believed that he had gained in the struggle what was well worth the loss. I asked him once why, and even He used constantly to impress me that plodding, patient, obedient work has more to do with making children good and pious than any talk about God, or about morals or duties; for it keeps the right part of the brain at work, whereas very much moral or metaphysical speculation, no matter on what subject, is a less healthy exercise, and in early life a positively mischievous one. : I suppose that he connected with this another very favourite doctrine of his, viz. that theology always has been, and always will and must be, reformed from the outside, and very much from the side of science. He used to say that in any discussion among mere theologians, the worst side must almost necessarily win the day; inasmuch as theological discussions put a premium upon getting into an immoral and irreligious state of mind; and the man who wishes to be just and true hardly dares speak out, lest he should be "To feel sure of our own future is presumption; to trust that whatever God does will be good, whether it secures our own happiness or not, is faith." His whole theology, so far as it concerned the relation of the individual man to God, had regard to this life. We might be sure, he said, that all which is good will be perpetuated in some shape or other. Whether individuals will live to see it or not, he believed no man knew; and he, for his part, had no desire to know. The immortality he cared for was, not endless existence, but the conviction that while he lived his mind would be in contact with truths that are eternal. Nothing that I have read is so like his ordinary talk on this subject as Rénan's essay on Job, which he made me read to him repeatedly, and admired very much. So do I; but I don't think either Rénan or my husband could have taught a ragged school. Intense devotion to great purposes is very well for people who understand what the purposes are. He objected to all eager speculation about a future life, both as being a proof of want of faith in God, and as tending to keep up an undue excitement of a part of the brain which rather needs to be quieted. He used to say that mankind had never tried yet what this world might be if they set the right way to work to mend it. A German physician of Jewish descent, but I think not a Jew (Dr. Arbarbanell, of Berlin), once said to him, "Die Gemeinde der Zukunft liegt im Gehirn gesunder Männer." He often recurred to the words. laying great stress on gesunder, and said he should like to know more of that man. The contempt of clergymen for physical, especially medical, science, was one of the few subjects about which he ever became angry. He could not speak of it calmly. I don't know whether it is generally known that some of those who acquire at Cambridge considerable skill in the use of the Calculus confess that they never could understand it, and that but for seeing its results are correct they wouldn't believe it. I remarked once to my husband that I believed no man who was naturally capable of understanding the Calculus could ever belong to the "evidence" school of theology. He seemed delighted with the remark. We were talking of Whately's papers on probability. Whately quite misunderstood the subject, I thought. When Mr. Mansel's Bampton Lectures came out, he brought me the book and desired me to study it attentively, and tell him what I thought of it. There was something so droll in the notion of any body in the present state of the Integral Calculus gravely reviving Berkeley's old puzzle about the impossibility of reasoning from the finite to the Infinite, that I found it of course exceedingly interesting; but I don't believe the most distant idea of its being meant for anything more than a gymnastic exercise would ever have crossed my mind if he had not at last told me it was meant in earnest. I entered into an argument with him once or twice to prove that it couldn't possibly be meant to represent the belief of real clergymen with real parishes, and women and babies in them. At last he roused himself with an effort, as if |