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is widely different from that established in a place which is presumed to be a preparation for the world; and the head of a public school, who is a perfect miracle to his contemporaries, finds himself shrink into perfect insignificance, because he has nothing else to command respect or regard, but a talent for fugitive poetry in a dead language."

Of another Harrow celebrity, Sir Robert Peel, Byron, his schoolfellow, seems to have given a correct account, according to Sir Lawrence: the poet nowhere speaking of Peel as a genius, though neither does he describe him as a boy of moderate capacity, made superior only by dint of fagging. A younger brother, William Yates Peel, was thought to have naturally the quicker parts. But nothing, as Sir Lawrence Peel remarks-who says of Robert that "he was no prodigy, certainly;" and that "his parts and his promise were such as many boys have and give," nothing is more deceptive than the early promise of a child: "A girl commonly beats all her brothers in their early lessons, and I have seen no young people so quick of apprehension as the young Hindoo, but the after-progress is not proportionate to the early excellence." Casca's "bluntness," in the sense of tardiness, dulness, heaviness,-as noted with a note of exclamation by Shakspeare's Brutus, is a common-place in its natural development:

What a blunt fellow is this grown to be!

He was quick mettle when he went to school.

When the Princess Wilhelmina says of her brother, Frederick the Great, that he was "slow"

in learning, Mr. Carlyle presumes her to mean idle, volatile, not always prompt in fixing his attention to what did not interest him.-One is reminded of George Eliot's account of Tom Tulliver-as altogether not a youth of whom you could prophesy failure in anything he had thoroughly wished: the wagers are likely to be on his side, notwithstanding his small success in the classics: "For Tom had never desired success in this field of enterprise; and, for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity, there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest.'

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Of the late Mr. Angell James, so eminent among Congregationalists for his "pulpit-power," his biographer tells us, that at school he was backward in school-hours that when, in after years, a schoolfellow was told he had become an illustrious preacher, it elicited the exclamation, "What, thik thick-headed fool! why he was fit for nothing but fighting!"-The Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, accepted in popular literature as one of Our Indian Heroes, seems to have learnt little at school -"for he was not a studious boy, but one delighting in manly exercises, and somewhat addicted to mischief.”—Dr. Chalmers was long remembered by his schoolfellows as one of the idlest, strongest, merriest, and most generous-hearted boys in Anstruther school; whose lessons were often only half learnt, sometimes not learnt at all.-Sir Charles Bell, at the High School of Edinburgh, bore the character of a slow coach; and he, at one time, in the words 6

VOL. I.

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of his French biographer, désespérait modestement des efforts des son application, and inclined to believe himself doomed by nature to an "industrial career" of the vulgar sort" ne se doutant pas que même sur les bancs inférieurs de la classe l'enfant reçoit des leçons qui se développeront un peu plus tard dans son intelligence.”—Of another boy at the same school, Patrick Fraser Tytler, his father, Lord Woodhouselee, used to say to those around him, "You do not understand the boy. .. You tell me he never opens an improving book. . . . .. I am much mistaken if he does not read grave enough books by-and-by." Goldsmith delivers himself of a caution against deciding too hastily upon the natural capacity of children, before we have maturely considered the peculiarity of disposition and the bias by which genius may be strangely warped from the common path of education. A lad incapable of retaining one rule of grammar, or of acquiring the least knowledge of the classics, may nevertheless make great progress in mathematics-nay, he may have a strong genius for mathematics, Goldsmith contends, without being able to comprehend a demonstration of Euclid; because his mind conceives in a particular manner, and is so intent upon contemplating the object in one particular point of view, that it cannot perceive it in any other. "We have known an instance of a boy, who, while his master complained that he had not understanding to comprehend the properties of a right-angled triangle, had actually in private, by the power of his genius,

formed a mathematical system of his own, discovered a series of curious theorems, and even applied his deductions to practical machines of surprising construction."-Hartley Coleridge, it has been said, might have been pronounced a universal genius, but for one deficiency-he never, for the life of him, could demonstrate that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal. He bears witness of himself, "I was very dull at school, and hated arithmetic: I always had to count on my fingers.”

There is no concealing the fact, John Howard's biographer tells us of that philanthropist as a schoolboy, that John made little progress in his studies for a very long time. "Whether this arose from dulness in the pupil, or want of skill in the master, has been much disputed"-and may be still by the disputatiously disposed in such matters.-Of Schubart (Schiller's friend-not Schubert), we read, that at school, for a while, he lay dormant: at the age of seven he could not read, and had acquired the reputation of a perfect dunce; but all at once "the rind which enclosed his spinu started asunder," and Daniel became the prodigy of the school. His after life seems to have proceeded in much the same way, as if by fits and starts.

Neither at school or college was Lord Eldon one of those demure boys who, as Mr. Hayward ŝays, after Falstaff, never come to any proof. He was always fond of frolic, and had no particular liking for work.-Alexander Humboldt's childhood was the reverse of brilliant: a weak constitution, it appears,

prevented serious application, and even the growth of the mind seemed uncertain and slow. Dr. Channing, as a boy, though patient and diligent, was not remarkable for quickness of perception: “Indeed, like many men afterwards distinguished for intellectual power, he was thought dull;" and the story goes, that he found the Latin Grammar a pons asinorum, until a clerk in his father's office, taking pity on the plodding boy, said to him one evening, "Come, Bill, they say you're a fool, but I know better. Bring me your grammar, and I'll soon teach you Latin," which this friendly adjutant is accordingly said to have done. The late Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton "does not appear to have made much progress in his studies" under Dr. Charles Burney at Greenwich: by his own account he was of a daring, violent, domineering temper-of which, however, his mother always augured the best. Horace Twiss used to do his Latin lessons for him; and he, "Elephant Buxton," as the big, kindly fellow was called at school, did what fighting might be wanting for Horace Twiss.

Indolent and rebellious-this is the character Balzac bore at school, and bore away with him from school. Remembering how Balzac worked between 1821 and 1850, one is at a loss to think of indolence and him together.

Theodore Hook, as a schoolboy of nine or ten, at Mr. Allen's "academy," was a "dull little boy, affording no promise of future distinction." At another school, as a bigger boy, he did distinguish himself,

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