are unique from an educational and psychological point of view. Any one passing along our corridors and galleries might now have witnessed a curious spectacle--that of a student of literature reading by gaslight, not the accustomed novel or light history, but the _Prologue_ of the Canterbury Tales, the tragedy of Hamlet, Emerson’s _May-Day_, or the story of Evangeline; pondering over the weighted pages of Bacon, or keenly trying to read between the lines of Browning’s _Paracelsus_; not rarely with a note-book at hand filled with private comments wrought out against the coming examination. At the examinations, be it remembered, the pupil was required to answer historical questions and, more important than this, to write out extemporaneously an essay or report dealing with some topic, more or less extensive, growing out of the text of his author--which topic was selected not by himself but by the Instructor on the day of the test. If one could realise the mental process of a “tough” from the slums of the metropolis, who, after passing up from class to class of our school, is forced to apply his intellectual faculties for the first time to the careful reading of an essay of Macaulay or a poem of Goldsmith, to enter in short upon the _terra incognita_ of good literature; and if one could then conceive of the state of this same “tough” when, after six months of application with growing susceptibility, he reads up _for pure pleasure_ the history of the Renaissance, searches the pages of Dante for illustrations of the text of Chaucer, ransacks our reference library for specimens of early English;--if one could do this he would comprehend in some measure what has been done by our class in English Literature. Our students, of course, were not wholly without intellectual culture at the start. A few possessed a large amount of it. All had been imbued with some sense of the excellence of culture by the labours of our lecturers in science, philosophy, and history. The discussions in the Practical Morality class had awakened our argumentative powers and developed a sharp relish for ethical questions. We had all had experience, too, in the reading of standard works of fiction and even of books of utility; but the formal study of an English, often of an old English, author, involving an examination, was something wholly new. A direct movement towards pure æsthetic culture was unprecedented for men who generally demanded that books should be amusing, should help to kill time in prison. The first effect was, as already remarked, discouraging. English literature did not immediately “take.” But necessity made it take, and the inevitable love of literature which quickly sprang up did the rest. The essays and poems were conned over and over, and minds heretofore innocent of culture became saturated with the drinkable gold of the classics. A change of feeling came over us; distaste passed into satisfaction as the intrinsic beauty of