“Teaching was indeed the occupation most peculiarly suited to his powers and tastes. He had a remarkable faculty of drawing out the mind of the learner, by leading him step by step, and obliging him to think for himself. He used to say that he believed himself to be one of the few teachers who could train a young person of retentive memory for words, without spoiling him. The temptation to the student in such cases is to rehearse by rote the rules or facts he has learned, without exercising his powers of thought; while one whose powers of recollection were less perfect, would be forced to reflect and consider what was _likely_ to be written or said on such or such a point by the writer, and thus to learn more intelligently and less mechanically. The cure for this tendency in young persons who learned quickly by rote he effected by asking them questions, substantially the same as those in the textbook, but which they must answer in their own words, making them draw conclusions from axioms already laid down. In this manner he was able successfully to teach mathematics to many who had been apparently unable to master the first principles, and often to ground them in the elements of Euclid, better than some mathematicians whose actual attainments were far beyond his own. Both in this branch and in logic, as in all other studies, he always commenced analytically and ended synthetically; first drawing out the mind of the learner, by making him give the _substance_ of the right answer, and then requiring the exact technical form of it in words.” This must strike all, who remember Whately’s teaching, as evidently true. But it in no wise leads me to modify the opinion above expressed as to his adaptation for the position in which I knew him. The style of teaching described by his biographer, if ever suitable at all for a college lecture-room, could only be so in the case of a collection of pupils far superior intellectually to those, with whom (with one or two exceptions, notably that of Mr. Wall, whose subsequent career at Oxford did credit to his Alban Hall training) Dr. Whately had to deal. Miss Whately describes a teacher whose influence in _tête-à-tête_ teaching over a clever pupil would be quite invaluable. But he was always firing far over the heads of his hearers; and I do not think that his method was adapted to driving, pushing, hustling an idle and very backward and unprepared collection of youths through their “little-go” and “pass,” _quod erat in votis_. Most of this necessary driving fell to the share of Hinds, who was fitted for far higher work, but was patient, kind, laborious, and conscientious to the utmost decree.