Certain traits could be recognised unmistakably in the boy. He had a great love of nature, of light, colour, and beauty, of flowers and trees and butterflies, of the sun and the blue heavens. There was also a strong sense of independence and individuality. This did not imply that he was lacking in gentler feeling. It is said that he would do anything that he was asked but nothing that it was sought to compel him to do. The little fair, blue-eyed lad would sit quietly if they gave him a daisy to pull to pieces. First he would, as if he were a student analysing it, detach the white leaves from the central yellow ground. Then he would carefully replace them, piece by piece, round the yellow centre, clap his little hands and cry out, “Now it’s all right again.” It is a very pretty trait that tradition has preserved. In the play of the child we seem to see the chief lines of the man’s character like two branches of a tree; the analytic work of the scientist and the reconstructive tendency of the artist who restores the dissected world to harmony. His excellent training in those early years fostered his feeling for nature and his sense of independence with wise adaptation to the personal character of the boy. The mother gladly cultivated his love of nature. On the deeper development of his character a decisive influence was exercised, with every regard for freedom, by a friend of the family, the physician Basedow. His ideal was education without compulsion, by means of a sort of constant artificial selection and cultivation of the good that grew up spontaneously in the soul of the child. The father, a great worker, was content to give a word of praise occasionally; to urge him to go to the root of things always, and never to coquet idly with his own soul. If the young dreamer stood at the window and looked up at the clouds, his father would pat him on the shoulder and say, “Every minute has its value in this world. Play or work—but do something.” It was, in a sense, the voice of the restless nineteenth century itself that spoke. The whole life of the youth and the man was to be an eternal proof that he had heard the message. He has pressed unwearyingly forward, as few other men have done. There was ever something in him of the mountaineer, hurrying on and watching every hour that he may reach the summit. The day of rest may come afterwards, down below in the valley. In truth, it never came. It is well known that the man wrote some of his most difficult, most widely read, and most controverted works subsequently in a few months, encroaching upon his night’s rest until his health was endangered. In a remote Cingalese village in Ceylon, where the enervating tropical climate forces even the strongest to indulge in the afternoon siesta, he tells himself that, in view of the great expense of the journey, each day is worth a five-pound note. He refuses to sleep long hours or take the siesta, rises at five in the