“He looked,” as I have been told by one who was long under him, “at the bearings of every subject, irrespective of its conventionalities. In every case he would be asking, ‘If we were to begin the world afresh, how should we proceed?’ He would always consider what is the best thing to be done, and next how can it be done irrespectively of everything conventional. When he had once arrived at his conclusions, and laid down his principles, he would carry them out without regard to anyone or anything.” Yet he was as free from arrogance as any man could well be. He had an old-fashioned courtesy which never forsook him even when he caned an unruly boy. Towards women, towards children, towards the oppressed, towards the poor, in a word towards those who were weaker than himself, he bore himself like a second Knight of La Mancha, or another Colonel Newcome. Nevertheless he was not a good teacher. He had at least one great failing. He was wanting, as one of his sons has said, in mental perspective. There was no “keeping” in his mind. In the image that he formed to himself of the world of learning, all things seemed to be equally in the foreground. He could not distinguish between the relative values of the different branches of study. All kinds of knowledge ranked in his eyes as of equal importance. He was, for instance, an excellent teacher of correct pronunciation and clear articulation. “We were,” says Mr. Sargant, “thoroughly taught the elements of English; and our spelling was immaculate.... The dropping of an ‘h’ was one of the seven deadly sins.” He had a quick ear for melodious and rhythmical sounds. In writing of the year 1770, he said, “It was a date which I found no pleasure in expressing. The previous year, 1769, was that in which I first became acquainted with the way of distinguishing years by their number, and I was well pleased with the metrical expression of the number first learnt. That of the subsequent 1770 ended in what my ear felt as a bathos, and I longed for the metrical restoration of 1771.” He was not seven years old when 1770 thus distressed him. He used to tell how as a child he had been delighted with the name Melinda, and how he used to repeat it again and again. His ear was grievously offended by what he called a collision. There was a collision when two like sounds came together. When his boys repeated the multiplication table they had to speak euphoniously. A collision here would have been a most serious offence. They said five sixes are thirty, but five times five is twenty-five. Five fives would have set their master’s teeth on edge, as Dean Gaisford’s were set by a wrong Greek accent. “Your old friend, Mr. A——,” he wrote to his eldest son, “has sent No. 1. of his Birmingham—m—m—Mercury. I hope more skill and more taste will appear in the selection of materials than has been evinced in the choice of a name.” In returning home from the lectures that he gave at the Philosophical Institution—and very good lectures they