Mr. Ariens, Lit.D., 'Rector of the Gymnasium (equivalent to Head-master of a Grammar School), is the most remarkable type even in this very remarkable set of men. He is highly unconventional, and his boys adore him, while his old boys admire him, and the parents are his perennial debtors in gratitude. He is unconventional in everything, in his dress, in his way of living, in his opinions and judgments, but he parades none of these, reducing them to neither a whim nor a hobby. He passed some years in the Dutch Indies, travelled all over Europe, knows more of Greek, Latin, and antiquities than anybody else, and is as thoroughly scientific as any University professer. But the Government will never give him a vacant chair, for his pedagogical powers surpass even his scientific abilities, and they cannot spare such men in such places. To some aristocratic people his noble simple-mindedness is downright appalling; but when he goes about in dull, cold, wintry weather and visits the poor wretches in the slums, where nature and natural emotions and forms of speech are quite unconventional, he is duly appreciated. For he is not only a splendid 'gymnasii rector,' he is also a very charitable man, though he likes only one form of charity, that by which the rich man first educates himself into being the poor man's friend, and then only offers his sympathy and help, the charity which the one can give and the other take without either of them feeling degraded by the act. He is not a public-body man, our 'Rector,' but his friends appreciate his keen, just judgment. They may disagree with him on some points, but a discussion with him is always interesting on account of his original, fresh method of thought, and instructive by reason of his very superior and universal knowledge. His best friend is Mr. Jacobs, a civil engineer. Dutch civil engineers are educated at Delft, at the Polytechnic School, after having passed their final examination at a 'Higher Burgher School.' Boys of sixteen or seventeen are not fit to digest sciences by the dozen, and, however pleasant and convenient it may be to become a walking cyclopedia, a cyclopedia is not a living book, but a dead accumulation of dead knowledge, which may inform though it does not educate. Happily, the majority of Dutch engineers are saved by the Polytechnic School, where they have about the same liberty as undergraduates at the Universities to go their own way. Educationally they are not so well equipped, attention only being paid to mental instruction, for the Director of a 'Higher Burgher School' is a different man from the Rector of a Gymnasium, while the System over which he presides is more or less incoherent so far as educational considerations go.