has been danger of this in the recent past. I remember examining, some thirty years ago, the chemistry class of a public school which had been taught a series of formule and sums from a wretched little cram-book-and had never been shown an experiment or demonstration. This evil tendency, in my opinion (I dare say my view is not largely shared), was shown when, in the Preliminary Science Examination at Oxford, a skill in working out sums in mechanics and optics was required, in place of a modicum of practical acquaintance with the experiments by which the main facts have been demonstrated with regard to the phenomena of Motion, Sound, Light, Heat, and Electricity. The admirable courses of lectures and demonstrations on what used to be called Experimental Philosophy have, I fear, been generally abandoned in schools and colleges in favor of the pedantic logic of administering a thorough grounding and drudgery in quantitative work, adapted to the examination juggernaut which leads nowhere, but ends for most boys and undergraduates-where it began. These things may have been reconsidered of late years: I hope they have. I hope and believe that the small band of teachers of Natural Science who have been grudgingly admitted into our great schools will always themselves feel a real interest and enthusiasm for the science they teach, and be able to command the attention and interest of the youngest, as well as of the oldest of their pupils. If the teacher aims successfully, not at forcing a boy to go through what is to him incomprehensible drudgery, but at exciting his interest and desire to know more about the thing which has thus excited his interest, the day is won. The art of teaching a real and beautiful art-consists in thus exciting interest, and making use of the spontaneous effort to learn more which the pupil is ready to give.

Step by step this process of exciting curiosity, and then judiciously gratifying it, until another excitement of the flagging attention is necessary, must be used, and that not by any cut-and-dried routine procedure, but by the use of quick perception and sympathetic understanding on the part of the teacher. The teacher must have a true delight" in what he is doing, and enjoy the effort of skill by which he adapts his teaching to the capacity of his class and leads his pupils on bit by bit, day after day, by carefully selected ways of demonstration and experiment to the achievement of a real knowledge of great facts and principles.

In conclusion I will briefly state what I hold to be a possible and desirable course of school education when Compulsory Science has banished the usurper-Compulsory Greek. Let us suppose a six years' course to be followed by a boy from the age of eleven to seventeen. I hold that at seventeen he should leave school and go to college or university, choosing for himself, when there, a chief and two subordinate subjects for more thorough study. Further, I will suppose that there are three school terms of twelve weeks each, and that there are five mornings (9 to 12) and five afternoons (2 to 4) of school-work in each week. For convenience I divide school studies into two groups. For want of better names I call the first "Equipment Studies," the second "Final Studies." As equipment studies I reckon

I should give the mornings to the harder and less interesting work of the equipment studies-and for these a less accomplished type of teacher would be required than for the afternoon lessons or lectures in the final subjects. In six years of 180 mornings each, three of the equipment subjects might be worked for one hour each, every morning in successive years. I should begin with English, Latin and arithmetic: after two years substitute French for Latin and geography for English-and so on. There would be no difficulty in securing a thorough use of the subjects enumerated by means of active teaching in the time assigned. Of course the time-table would be variedhalf-hours given to some subjects instead of whole hours, and past subjects reverted to and kept up by special classes. With regard to the final subjects-they are so called because they are the end or goal to be sought by means of the equipment studies. But they would of course be taught only in outine in well-considered outline suitable to young people. There should be no pretence of "thoroughness" or a "grounding" with a view to

a later real handling of the subjectwhich like Henry James's "Madonna of the Future" never is realized. But the teaching should be accurate and the limitation of its amount be determined by great and judicious teachers. I should begin with chemistry, experimental physics and English history in the first two years, and then get on to ancient history and archæology, geology and physical geography and biology in the next two. In the fifth year I should put in courses on English literature, modern history and physiology, while in the sixth there would be general literature, astronomy, and some repetition of one or more of the other

courses.

I

I am perfectly well aware that almost every teacher will exclaim that this scheme is preposterous and could lead only to superficiality and confusion. But that I believe to be an illusion. due to the fact that I have named distinctly several subjects which are often confused under one head. see no reason to doubt that the power of talking and reading the Latin language could be acquired in two years' daily study, and the same with French were the methods of the Berlitz School employed by teachers as capable as those of the Berlitz School. And with regard to the final subjects, it must be remembered that I, at any rate, do not desire any more than does the advocate of so-called "classical education" to make boys into chemists or historians or physiologists. The thing to be arrived at seems to me to be a fairly accurate knowledge of some leading and essential parts of a great many branches of knowledge-a genuine peep or survey which can be extended or completed in later years, if the aptitude exist. It must be noted that I have only assumed five hours' class work on five days a week, and that leaves a great deal of time both for preparation and revision of notes in

the evenings, and for independent reading or pursuit of a subject, as opportunity might offer in the conditions of home life. The subjects which I think it would be wise to carry furthest, and to which I would give most time during school education, are chemistry, geology, the systematic parts of zoology and botany (included in my list under biology), and a complete scheme or chart of European history. I would also attach very great importance to the learning by heart of a considerable amount of selected passages of the best English prose authors and poets, and also of similar Latin and French selections; and I should make a point of seeing that these were not merely committed to memory and then forgotten, but by returning to them at intervals I should endeavor to make sure that they had become a possession for ever. Of such accomplishments as drawing and painting, singing and the use of musical instruments, I have said nothing. But there would be time for them, and in my opinion, they should be compulsory parts of the education of younger boys. The study and appreciation of art would come after the school period of education.

Postscript.-Since this article was written I have had a conversation on the subject with which it deals, with an old friend, who gained the highest prizes and distinctions in classical studies at the University, and has now been for many years a house-master in one of the greatest and best of our old "public schools." He said: "It is all very well to talk about the value of natural science, but it is not fitted for teaching to a class of boys as Latin and Greek are. With Latin and Greek you can give the boys something to learn by heart, and you can see that they learn it, and punish them if they do not. Now you can't do that with natural science. It is not adapted to The Nineteenth Century and After.

school-teaching." This remark is a

fair example of the state of mind of a large number of schoolmasters. It discloses the assumption that to make a boy “learn something by heart" is a sufficient and satisfactory result, and that the choice of subjects in education should be guided by the ease with which the schoolmaster can thus apply them, and not by their value in feeding and developing the boy's mind, except as a subordinate consideration.

It also shows how entirely erroneous is the notion which a first-class classical scholar may have of the possibilities of perverting the instruction given as "natural science" into the form of "lessons to be learnt by heart." The list of the chemical elements, their atomic weights and the periodic law, endless lists of “physical constants," the enormous lists of the classification of animals and plants, of geological strata and their subdivisions, might all be used by the schoolmaster as "lessons to be learnt by heart" by his pupils without effort on his part, and with only a little more benefit to the schoolboy than the lessons in Greek and Latin grammar advocated by my friend.

Happily no teacher of natural science would at the present day tolerate such a degradation of educational methods in his subject, although it is to this pass that, after centuries of monopoly, our boasted "classical education" has come with the cheerful approval of distinguished scholars such as my friend. It is, of course, of value to the young student to acquire and retain in his memory such lists as those which I have cited above, but the mere storing of the memory with these details is only a small part of his training: its abuse is one of the dangers to which perfunctory teaching and "the examination habit" constantly expose the schoolboy and the undergraduate.

It was with genuine regret that I bade good bye to Gunga Singh. In him the regiment lost a good soldier and I a personal friend.

As I watched the stalwart figure of the young Sikh disappear round a bend of the drive, which led from the bungalow, I felt inclined to send a message down to the regimental lines and summon the Afridi company that I might tell them exactly what I thought of them. For it was they who had driven Gunga Singh to cut his name. He had borne their torments unflinchingly and with calm dignity for months, but the breaking-point had been reached at last, and now he was off to start life afresh overseas.

The trouble began whilst the regiment lay on the frontier, and Sikandar, the Mahsud, was the fons et origo of the mischief. Sikandar was a border ruffian of a pronounced type. Battle, murder, and sudden death were the salient features of his history. It is true an undercurrent of romance flowed beneath the turgid flood of his sordid brutalities, and at times, there was not wanting a dash of humor-at the expense, needless to say, of his victims-to relieve the grimness of the tale; nevertheless Sikandar was an unmitigated nuisance, and a source of terror to His Majesty's peaceful lieges along the border.

The cold-blooded murder of a Hindoo merchant on the Government road, which, even in the eyes of the clansmen, is regarded as holy ground, first placed Sikandar beyond the pale; and once he had fairly started along the road which leads to the gallows, he followed it hot-foot. Having rallied to his standard a posse of kindred spirits, he and his merry men soon established a lucrative business along the trade-route between India and Khoras

san. Caravans were robbed, the mails held up, and sentries stalked and shot upon their beats. A price was put upon Sikandar's head, and in the frontier posts our lives were made a burden to us. Patrols toiled unceasingly over the gridiron of hills and valleys which form the marches of India in its northwest corner, and at all hours of the day and night we were worried and harassed with sensational reports of the arch-robber's exploits. Zealous "Politicals" were continually discovering clues to his whereabouts, and we, with equal regularity but considerably more toil, were continually proving each clue to be a mare's nest. and foot, we labored incessantly to get on even terms with the miscreants, till the weeks grew into months and still Sikandar and his gang ran free amongst the hills, levying toll in blood and money.

Horse

But the hour of reckoning struck at last, and Sikandar was one day tamely captured by a small patrol. They came upon him alone whilst he was saying the evening prayer. For, as we discovered on better acquaintance, Sikandar was most punctilious in the performance of his devotions. He had despatched his merry men upon an errand, and it was whilst awaiting their return that he allowed the patrol to surprise him. The surprise was at first mutual. Sikandar had laid aside his rifle and sandals in order to repeat his prayers, and when the patrol appeared he hesitated for one fateful moment between war and diplomacy. Diplomacy won the toss. Theoretically, it should have succeeded, as the chances were against his being recognized; for, in addition to the fact that none of us had the honor of his personal acquaintance, the most sanguine of patrols would have found it difficult to realize

that the redoubtable Sikandar would actually walk into their arms. On the other hand, had he decided to fight, the odds were heavily against him.

But Fortune is a fickle jade, and Sikandar's star was set. For whilst the non-commissioned officer of the patrol was passing the time of day with the devout stranger, an inquisitive young sepoy caught sight of the regimental number of the stock of Sikandar's rifle. Without more ado he threw himself bodily on the outlaw. In a few moments the prisoner was securely bound, and the patrol lost no time in placing as many miles between them and the spot as possible, for they were fully alive to all the possibilities of the situation, and had no mind to meddle just then with the smaller fry of the gang.

When the party arrived at the fort, the news of the capture spread like wildfire, and Sikandar's vanity should have been tickled by the amount of interest his appearance awakened. The joyful tidings were at once tapped on to the wires, and soon the whole frontier was throbbing with delight and calculating the additional "nights in bed" it could now enjoy and the arrears of sleep due. Meanwhile safe lodging was provided for the captive, pending the receipt of orders as to his disposal.

The summer was at its height. The heat within the walls of the fort was well-nigh insupportable. Inside the guard-room it was more than human beings could survive. We had caught the greatest criminal on the border, but we had no desire to roast him alive, so, instead of consigning him to a lingering death inside the guardroom cell, we bound him hand and foot and let him live in the open air like the rest of us.

In appearance Sikandar was not prepossessing. Of middle height, his broad shoulders, deep chest, and short,

sturdy legs conveyed an impression of vast strength. His hair fell in a tangled mass to his neck, and was cut off square at the nape. His face was of a light-brown shade, eyes deep-set, nose flat and fleshy, and mouth large, thinlipped, and cruel. A close-clipped moustache and scrubby beard did nothing to redeem a decidedly uncomely countenance. A rope of twisted red cloth, very greasy, was wound round his head. His body was clothed in a long dirty-white tunic of homespun reaching half-way between thigh and knee. A red waist-cloth, voluminous trousers, and a pair of palm-leaf sandals, completed his attire.

On first arrival our unwilling guest maintained a morose silence, refused food and drink, and behaved much as would a wild animal fresh taken from the jungle. But after he had recovered from the chill shock of capture he expanded genially and long before the expiration of the week which, thanks to the delays and formalities with which legal proceedings are ever to be identified, he spent with us, our captive was on terms of jovial familiarity with his gaolers. He appeared to become quite reconciled to his fate, and, as though anxious to make reparation for the past, threw himself with almost frenzied energy into the exercise of prayer. At his earnest request the services of the regimental Maulvi were placed at his disposal, and the repentant Sikandar passed many hours in the company of His Reverence acquiring merit. Needless to say, such extreme piety did not pass unnoticed, but made a deep impression upon the Afridi company. So exemplary, indeed, was the prisoner's behavior, that no relaxation compatible with his safe custody was withheld from him. Indeed we were all not a little fascinated by the wild border thief. Villain as he was, he had shown himself a dauntless leader of men, and the glamour of his