manently enriched by additions which it can never lose, and which modify its very character. No other acquisitions that the mind can make are thus permanent. What we store up laboriously in the memory is lost again; we have the usufruct of it for a certain time, but we have no property in it. The richness and the brightness and the capacity of growth in a man's mind are in proportion to the number of images which have passed in this imperceptible, uninvited way into the substance of it; and, as I have said, this only happens to a mind at rest. So that a man's intellectual wealth is in proportion not to his work, but to his rest; and recreation (i.e., a creating anew) is an apt word. In a certain sense the activity of the mind diminishes its wealth. As long as the mind is intensely active upon one particular thing it becomes dead to everything else, and so loses the wealth it might have gained in the same time if it had been at rest. If by an effort of will we fix our attention upon one thing, we keep all other things that might have attracted our attention at arm's length. The effects of this are serious in the case of a man who always and habitually keeps his mind on one thing, or on a small number of things. Such men are very common. There is the man who without great powers has great ambition. Self-important and persevering, he determines to distinguish himself in some way, and he proceeds upon the principle, if So-and-so made his way, cannot I, with inferior powers, make my way too, by working twice as hard? He is encouraged in this notion by a number of platitudes and stories which are current, the moral of which is that everything can be done by will, concentration, and perseverance.

Accordingly he devotes himself night and day to some one study or pursuit, and dreams, sleeping or waking, of some one object of ambition. Now a person suffering from this fever of purpose is a person permanently deprived of recreation. The wear and tear of his mind ceases to be repaired by influences from without; irritated by the perpetual goading of his sleepless purpose, he cannot throw his mind into a passive attitude; he is eternally preoccupied; whatever roving influences are in the air around him-chance fancies, that might make the very blood of his soul richer, happy intuitions ready to become his, which might give him a new life-nothing can cling to the marble surface of a soul petrified by the monomania of purpose; he sacrifices the wealth that lies ready at his hand for that which lies far off; he cannot be still, look around him, and enjoy, but is always staring at the horizon, foregoing the present for the future, bartering modest enjoyments for morbid wishes. This state of mind leads to what may be called a

starvation of character; a soul in which the will is perpetually on the stretch, and all the receptive power perpetually in abeyance is like a body which is always exercised and never fed; the end is exhaustion and starvation. The extreme case of this is the miser, but less extreme cases that are still sufficiently ghastly may be found where the soul has been starved through the want of "a wise passiveness," through the want of recreation.

People of this kind are often successful in attaining the object for which they sacrifice everything, as the miser does generally succeed in making money. The world has often owed much to them, and they are at least more respectable than the mere idler. In the soul, as in the body, it is better to die of starvation than of gluttony. Moreover, we must distinguish the different kinds of concentration. That concentration which I have described as a disease, an atrophy of the soul, is quite a different thing, for example, from the devoted concentration of the artist, who is concentrated not because he has lost the power of resting or recreating himself, but because to him the fullest recreation comes from the same pursuit which affords him work. As Thackeray says, "he has his task and he never tires of it."

I have called it a current platitude, that all greatness has been achieved by hard work. Certainly it has seldom been achieved without some hard work, but the supreme quality of great men is the power of resting. Anxiety, restlessness, fretting are marks of weakness; all mighty action, all triumphant energy rests upon a fundamental happiness, an habitual repose. The power of playing, of relaxing, of unbending, is the secret both of energy and of endurance, because play is food, because relaxation is recreation. And with more ordinary people, it is this power of resting that makes the difference between an interesting and commonplace person. With the working man you must talk upon his own subject; on all other subjects he is dumb; he never says anything that surprises you, or anything that excites your curiosity; and even on his own subject, if you happen to know the books he has read you know precisely what he thinks, and can predict infallibly what he will say. But the resting man has depths in his mind not so easily sounded; you cannot calculate all that has been left there by his unconscious cerebration; he knows more than he has been taught, more than he has read; he has not only the truths that he has found, but the truths that have found him. The universe and he are upon confidential terms, because he talks to it, it talks to him; because he admires it, it reveals itself to him. He has found Faunus lying asleep in the noon-day; he has caught

Proteus in his cavern; he has surprised Diana at the fountain.

"He knows the rocks which angels haunt;

Upon the mountain's visitant

He hath kenned them taking wing,

And into caves where fairies sing

He hath entered, and been told
By voices how men lived of old."

ESSAYS ON THE TEACHING OF CHEMISTRY IN

SCHOOLS.

By C. W. HEATON, Professor of Chemistry in Charing Cross

THE first requisite for all chemical teaching is a course of lectures. No system is likely to supersede the necessity for this, because, even in those fortunate cases where the pupils are enabled to make experiments for themselves, and thus study in the most satisfactory manner the nature of experimental evidence and illustration, it will always be necessary for them to see the experiments performed and hear them explained before they can try them for themselves with any good effect. And, however good the system of practical instruction may be, it will never be possible for the students to perform for themselves more than a few carefully selected and simple, although important, experiments.

The choice of a lecturer lies, as I have before said, between the professional chemist, the master who has received a regular training in chemistry, and the master who has not received such a training, but who is willing to take the trouble necessary to qualify himself for the work. The second of these alternatives I do not propose to consider, because it is impossible to define the extent of the knowledge that such a master

might possess. His previous knowledge might be a mere smattering, worthless for any practical purpose, in which case he would rank with the untrained master, or a thorough mastery of the science which would entitle him to rank with the professional chemist.

If the services of a professional chemist are engaged, he must, of course with certain restrictions, be left to choose his own mode of teaching and illustration. The duty of the master here is to examine the lecturer's style of doing his work,

and to ascertain whether his lectures are calculated to give the students sound instruction. The extent to which he may think it right to interfere with the lecturer will of course depend upon the result of his observations, and he should be very certain that he is right before he ventures to do so at all. It may aid the judgment of the master if I mention a few of the points which I think essential to all good teaching lectures. In the first place, the lectures must be simple and very clear. All grand language, all phrases or ideas which are at all likely to miss the audience, must be carefully avoided, and every leading truth must be stated distinctly and slowly, and repeated as often as possible. For the same reason the experiments shall be as simple as possible, directly illustrative of the matter in hand, and not too numerous, to allow of full explanation. The fact is, the lecturer too often forgets the distance between himself and his audience. He states things which interest himself in language which he himself would understand, while the unfortunate boys in front of him, after vainly endeavouring for a while to follow his flights, either subside into vacant repose, or betake themselves to the more active employment of dropping steel pens down their neighbours' collars until they are aroused by the next blaze or explosion. Lastly, the best possible lectures will fail of their effect if they are not interspersed with, or at any rate closely followed by a good volley of questions. To sum the whole matter up, the lecturer must make everything subordinate to teaching, and must be content to spoil the rhetorical completeness of his lectures by the adoption of a simple and colloquial style, and to mar their interest by the omission of all facts which the pupils are not expected to remember, and all experiments which have not a distinct object to serve.

We must now consider the most important, and at the same time the most difficult, question with which we have to deal— the question, namely, how a master who knows nothing of chemistry is to render himself capable of lecturing successfully upon it. It is necessary to provide for the worst case, and I will therefore assume that the position of the master is such that he cannot learn chemistry in a regular school, or from a regular teacher, and that he is consequently forced to rely entirely upon his own exertions. Such cases will no doubt be common enough, and they are precisely the ones which it is most important to deal with. Large schools are, or ought to be, able to provide any kind of teaching they choose; and as the newborn desire for scientific instruction grows, they will find no difficulty in meeting it. The real difficulty lies with the smaller schools, and the leaders of these, unless they are far-seeing VOL. I.

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enough to prepare for the coming want, will ere long find themselves left behind in the race.

In advising any one who intended to try his hand at such a course of study as is here suggested, it would be unfair to underrate the difficulties which he would have to encounter. Amateur lectures on chemistry, like most amateur work, are too often the most dismal failures, and tend to produce a sensation of pity for the lecturer in the breasts of those of the audience who are not employed in laughing at him. The hopeless way in which every stopper sticks and every flask breaks, the pertinacity with which the wrong precipitate appears, the extreme feebleness of the expected explosion, only exceeded by the startling intensity of the unexpected one, coupled with the confusion and constant thirst of the unfortunate lecturer, who, in his unaccustomed attempt to talk and work at the same time, wipes his moist brow with the cloth which has previously wiped up the sulphuric acid, and is with difficulty restrained from drinking the caustic potash instead of the water, all these combine to render many an amateur lecture a painful affair. To attempt to lecture without competent knowledge and a good deal of practice in the performance of experiments is to expose one's self to almost certain failure, and to incur the deep-rooted contempt of the critical and sharp-sighted boys. This knowledge and dexterity must be acquired by the master before he begins to teach, and the latter will require an amount of toilsome work and tedious repetition which will dishearten all who are not very much in

earnest.

Book-knowledge is the first thing to acquire, and this, to the trained mind, will be much the easiest part of the work. The knowledge to be attained need not be very extensive, but it must be accurate. Most students will find it best to begin with a very small book, such as the well-known one of Dr. Roscoe,* in order to gain a broad, general view of the science. If such a text-book has been thoroughly mastered, much will have been done, and it should not be laid aside until the learner has satisfied himself by repeated trials, and by the use of the exercises which are generally given at the end of the book, that he could answer questions from any part of it. A deeper study is now necessary, for the teacher must have attained a higher position and acquired a wider view than can be expected of pupils, before he attempts to teach them. He has, once more,

Published by Macmillan and Co. I feel strongly the awkwardness of recommending particular books when many are so good. I hope it will be distinctly understood that I by no means assert the superiority of those I mention over others, but that I simply select a few which I know to be good, to avoid vagueness and to indicate the kind of reading which appears to me most suitable.