[2] “Remains of T. W. Hill.” By M. D. Hill, p. 124. [3] “Six years have now elapsed,” wrote my father in 1823, “since we placed a great part of the government of the school in the hands of the boys themselves; and during the whole of that time the headmaster has never once exercised his right of veto upon their proceedings.” [4] Its full title was “Plans for the Government and Liberal Education of Boys in Large Numbers,” and the work speedily went into a second edition. [5] Algeria was not conquered by France till 1830; and until the beginning of the nineteenth century our shores were still liable to piratical raids. One such (in Norway) is introduced in Miss Martineau's story, “Feats on the Fiords.” The pirates, during hundreds of years, periodically swept the European coasts, and carried off people into slavery, penetrating at times even so far north as Iceland. What was the condition of these North African pirate States prior to the French conquest is told by Mr S. L. Poole in “The Barbery Corsairs” (“Story of the Nations” series). [6] It was a visit paid to Bruce Castle School which caused De Quincey, in that chapter of his “Autobiographic Sketches” entitled “My Brother,” to write: “Different, O Rowland Hill, are the laws of thy establishment, for other are the echoes heard amid the ancient halls of Bruce. There it is possible for the timid child to be happy, for the child destined to an early grave to reap his brief harvest in peace. Wherefore were there no such asylums in those days? Man flourished then as now. Wherefore did he not put forth his power upon establishments that might cultivate happiness as well as knowledge.” The stories of brutalities inflicted upon weakly boys in some of our large schools of to-day might tempt not a few parents to echo De Quincey's pathetic lament, though perhaps in less archaic language. [7] It is as follows:—“A straight line is a line in which, if any two points be taken, the part intercepted shall be less than any other line in which these points can be found.” [8] He was an ideal schoolmaster and an enthusiastic Shakespearean, his readings from the bard being much in the same cultured style as those of the late Mr Brandram. Whenever it was bruited about the house that “Uncle Arthur was going 'to do' Shakespeare,” there always trooped into the room a crowd of eager nieces, nephews, and others, just as in a larger house members troop in when a favourite orator is “up.” At his own request, a monetary testimonial raised by his old pupils to do him honour was devoted to the purchase of a lifeboat (called by his name) to be stationed at one of our coast resorts.