Hugh Laemmer was born of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, at Allenstein, in Eastern Prussia, on 25th January, 1835. His mother was a woman of most fervent piety, who, in almost unceasing prayer, sought and found consolation under her many severe afflictions. It was not given her to exercise much influence over the mind of her son, who, long before her death, had gone to reside with his father's relatives, by whom he was brought up as a Protestant. The lad, nevertheless, had a tender love for his mother, and from his earliest years was conscious of an indescribable leaning towards his Catholic friends in preference to his Protestant kindred. This feeling was the natural growth of observations made by the quickwitted boy regarding the piety, firm principles, and good conduct of the Catholics. At the same time, the devotion of the faithful in their processions and pilgrimages served to put him on his guard against the bigoted prejudices which his Lutheran cousins ever sought to instil into his mind against their Catholic neighbours. When with the other schoolboys he went to church on Sunday, the sermon made no impression on him, and no wonder, for the preacher carried with him into the pulpit the chilling rationalistic principles he had imbibed at the university. Even in those early years the boy's heart tended towards the beautiful and spacious Catholic Church of his native town. Once, when his father took him to Heiligenlind (a famous resort of pilgrims), and the old sacristan showed him the rare treasures of the church, he experienced an emotion so strong that it survived even the rude trials of his after life. In 1844 he entered the gymnasium of Koenigsberg. He brought with him from home a good stock of elementary and grammatical knowledge; and soon discovered that his tastes inclined him to the study of literature more than to that of science. Ellendt, then rector of the gymnasium, was a man who possessed in a remarkable degree the power of making his lectures interesting to his pupils. Explained by such a master, Homer and Herodotus became in a short time the favourite authors of M. Laemmer, who, on the other hand, had no taste for what he calls "the tedious narratives of the Anabasis, and the pedantic tirades of the Cyropaedia". He preferred Caesar and Livy to Cicero, whose philosophy especially he found to be commonplace. Modern French literature had no attractions for such a mind as his; the contemporary romance writers of that nation excited even his disgust. As Germany is considered by many to be the very home of perfection in classical studies, it will be interesting to hear the opinion Dr. Laemmer's experience has led him to form concerning the special dangers which beset middle school education at the present day:--