When eleven years of age, De Candolle was sent to the college at Geneva, and was placed in the fourth class, under a master of only moderate powers of teaching. No great progress was made in study, and the boy was rarely seen in the upper part of the class. One day his father came to the college to inquire how the boy was getting on, and being a Government official was, of course, well received. A little arrangement by the master, which excited the contempt of the boy, placed him at the head of the class, and so unfair did this seem that the little fellow told his father that he had no right to be there. However, he was removed to the third class, and fortunately came under a better master. Young De Candolle played hard and got more healthy, and his studies were not onerous. In fact, his mother did more for him than the school. She taught him his native language, and gave him a love for poetry. But this was almost crushed out by the foolish method of teaching in the school. If a boy wanted a holiday he had to write to the rector of the college for it in Latin verse, and of course children of twelve years of age could not compose sufficiently well. So they copied, and the result was that, year after year, the rector received a collection of Latin letters which resembled those of the year before, and this had gone on for several generations. However, the boy wrote to the rector in French verse, and in original verse. This was considered something out of the common, and the boy was praised, and his peculiar gift was fostered. He became very intimate with a school-fellow named Gaudy, who had the same tastes, and they used to spend much of their time in turning Latin prose and poetry into very bad French verse. Soon after his old fondness for acting returned, and he was successful in private theatricals. The boy worked hard at this amusement, and learned many of the great French tragedies and comedies, and although the time was apparently wasted, yet De Candolle used to say that it did his memory good, gave him a good style, and took away nervousness. Then his father gave him a good private tutor, and the boy entered the first class. There he found a master who insisted on regular and profitable study, besides Latin verse, and the result was that De Candolle began to distinguish himself and took prizes. One prize which he gained, made him think very deeply afterwards. It was an essay relating to the existence of God. De Candolle wrote his essay in four hours, and it consisted of from fifteen to twenty pages; it included all he had learned of his catechism, what he remembered of many sermons, and a host of quotations from the Bible. But although the youth got the prize, and was much applauded, he felt that he was a complete stranger to the spirit of the truths he had written, and that his heart had little to do with the sentences which came from his pen. He learned religion just as he learned Greek and Latin. In 1792 De Candolle left the college and