It is extremely vexatious, and very odd that the Doctor cannot make his son behave with propriety to the boys.' Hanson obeyed Mrs. Byron's appeal, and, forwarding Byron's letter, wrote to the Head Master. Dr. Drury's answer, dated the 15th of May, 1803, is of interest.

The perusal of the enclosed has allowed me to inquire into the whole matter, and to relieve your young friend's mind from any uneasy impression it might have sustained from a hasty word. I fairly confess I am sorry it was ever uttered, but certainly it was never intended to make so deep a wound as his letter intimates.

I may truly say, without any parade of words, that I am deeply interested in Lord Byron's welfare. He possesses, as his letter proves, a mind that feels and that can discriminate reasonably on points in which it conceives itself injured. When I look forward to the possibility of the exercise of his talents hereafter, and his supplying the deficiencies of fortune by the exertion of his abilities and by application, I feel particularly hurt to see him idle and negligent and apparently indifferent to the great object to be pursued. This event, and the conversations which have passed between us relative to it, will probably awaken in his mind a greater degree of emulation and make him studious of acquiring distinction among his schoolfellows as well as of securing to himself the affectionate regard of his instructors.

For the next few months Byron's life at Harrow passed uneventfully. But in September 1803 the boy did not return, and no explanation had been sent to Dr. Drury of his non-appearance. Weeks passed in silence. At last the following letter, which illustrates the strength of Byron's passion for Mary Chaworth, reached Hanson from Mrs. Byron at Burgage Manor :

You may well be surprised, and so may Dr. Drury, that Byron is not returned to Harrow. But the truth is, I cannot get him to return to school, though I have done all in my power for six weeks past. He has no indisposition that I know of, but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth, and he has not been with me three weeks all the time he has been in this country, but spent all his time at Annesley.

If my son was of a proper age, and the lady disengaged, it is the last of all connections that I would wish to take place; it has given me much uneasiness. To prevent all trouble in future I am determined he shall not come here again till Easter; therefore I beg you will find some proper situation for him at the next holidays. I don't care what I pay. I wish Dr. Drury would keep him.

I shall go over to Newstead to-morrow and make a last effort to get him to town. The effort, if made, proved a failure. Byron remained at Newstead, and his mother writes on the 7th of November to say, 'Byron is really so unhappy that I have agreed, much against my inclination, to let him remain in this country till after the next holidays.' It was not till January 1804 that he went back to Harrow. Six months later his half-sister, Augusta, writes of him to Hanson (the 7th of June, 1804)

Pray write me a line and mention all you hear of my dear brother; he was a most delightful correspondent while he remained in Nottinghamshire, but I can't obtain a single line from him from Harrow. I was much struck with his general improvement. It was beyond the expectations raised by what you had told me,

and his letter to me gave me the most excellent opinion of both his head and heart.

Mrs. Byron, writing about the same date (the 13th of August, 1804) to the family lawyer, speaks in similar terms. Never was a boy more improved in every respect; he is now truly amiable, and I shall not know how to part with him.'

For the last year, however, Byron's home life had been rendered miserable by the increasing violence of his mother's furious temper. He confided his miseries to his sister, who endeavoured to enlist Hanson's aid in removing him from Mrs. Byron's society. In a letter written from Castle Howard on the 18th of November, 1804, she apologises for troubling Hanson.

The reason [she says] that induces me now to do so is his having lately written me several letters containing the most extraordinary accounts of his mother's conduct towards him, and complaining of the uncomfortable situation he is in during the holidays with her. All this, you will easily imagine, has more vexed than surprised me. I am quite unhappy about him, and wish I could in any way remedy the grievances he confides in me. I wished, as the most likely means of doing this, to mention the subject to Lord Carlisle, who has always expressed the greatest interest about Byron, and also shown me the greatest kindness. Finding that he did not object to it, I yesterday had some conversation with Lord C., and it is partly of his advice and wishes that I trouble you with this letter. He authorised me to tell you that if you would allow my brother to spend the next vacation with you (which he seems strongly to wish) it would put it into his power to see more of him and show him more attention than he has hitherto been able, being withheld from doing so by the dread of having any concern whatever with Mrs. Byron.

I need hardly add that it is almost my first wish that this should be accomplished. My opinion is that, as they cannot agree, they had better be separated, for such eternal scenes of wrangling are enough to spoil the very best temper and disposition in the universe.

Arrangements were accordingly made that Byron should pass the Christmas holidays of 1804-5 with the Hansons. When he arrived he gave his host to understand that he should not return to Harrow, as, at his own wish, he had arranged with Dr. Drury to leave. Hanson, however, thinking that a boy of sixteen was too young for the University, wrote to the Head Master on the subject. Dr. Drury's answer gave a different colour to the matter.

Your letter [he writes, the 29th of December, 1804] supposes that Lord Byron was desirous to leave school, and that I acquiesced in his wish; but I must do him the justice to observe that the wish originated with me. During his last residence at Harrow his conduct gave me much trouble and uneasiness, and, as two of his associates were to leave me at Christmas, I certainly suggested to him my wish that he might be placed under the care of some private tutor previously to his admission at either of the Universities. This I did no less with a view to the forming of his mind and manners than to my own comfort; and I am fully convinced that if such a situation can be procured for his Lordship it will be much more advantageous for him than a longer residence at school, where his animat spirits and want of judgment may induce him to do wrong, whilst his age and person must prevent his instructors from treating him in some respects as a school

boy. If we part now we may entertain affectionate dispositions towards each other, and his Lordship will have left the school with credit, as my dissatisfactions were expressed to him only privately, and in such a manner as not to affect his public situation in the school.

6

Finally, however, Dr. Drury yielded to the appeal of Lord Carlisle and Hanson, allowed the boy to return to Harrow, and Byron remained at the school till July 1805, the last three months being passed under the rule of Dr. Butler. In the letter in which Dr. Drury made known his wish for Byron's withdrawal from the school he expresses his most sincere and affectionate attachment' to his pupil. The same feeling was shared by Hanson, who writes about him to Mrs. Byron at the close of the holidays, I assure you,' he says, the 29th of January, 1805, whilst he has been with me he has conducted himself with great propriety and good sense, and, much as I covet his society, I could have wished that he had devoted some part of his vacation to his mother.' On Lord Carlisle at the same period he made the same favourable impression. I hear,' writes Augusta Byron, the 31st of January, 1805, from Lady Gertrude Howard that Lord Carlisle was very much pleased with my brother, and I am sure, from what he said to me at Castle Howard, he is disposed to show him all the kindness and attention in his power.' His mother was often foolish; yet she judged her son correctly when she said, 'He is a turbulent, unruly boy, that wants to be emancipated from all restraints; his sentiments are, however, noble.'

The verdict was a true one. At this period of his life, and indeed throughout his whole career, there is evidence that Byron had in him the makings of a fine character. His better qualities were never entirely destroyed; again and again, on the contrary, they reasserted their sway. To the moralist the interest of his life lies in this perpetual struggle, which endured to the end. It adds to the pathos of his early death that he died at a moment when his enthusiasm for liberty had drawn him out of mean surroundings, and embarked him in a sacred cause which, whether hopeless or not, might have permanently strengthened and ennobled his character. His last year at Harrow under Dr. Drury's influence was another of those periods which promised to be turning points for good. But his violent dislike for Dr. Butler, who became Head Master in April 1805, the unrestricted liberty of Cambridge, the greater command of money, an idle life, and the temptations that beset a lad of seventeen threw him back. The years 1805-6 were spent, as his sister wrote in an unpublished letter (7th of February, 1807) to Hanson, in idleness and ill-humour with all the world.' His character deteriorated; he went from bad to worse, until ambition of literary fame or political distinction spurred him again to effort.

R. E. PROTHERO.

VOL. XLIII-No. 251

G

AT A TECHNICAL INSTITUTE1

I HAVE been thinking that your Committee, when they did me the honour to ask me to say a few words on this interesting occasion, were not fully aware of what manner of man it was whom they had thus invited. I am a professor, an academic person; and academic persons, as you know, live in a little world of their own, having but a slight hold on the things belonging to busy practical every-day life, and are fond of trying to judge every question which comes before them by the light of what they are pleased to call 'general principles. Moreover, I am a professor of physiology; my days are filled with questions as to how beings live and move; the whole world is to me a crowd of physiological problems, and I am apt to look at everything which comes before me through physiological spectacles. In the few words which I have to say to-day I shall not attempt to go out of my real character; I shall cling to general principles, and to a physiological point of view; and my theme being Technical Education I will not shrink from beginning with a general question, even though it may seem to have something of a Pontius Pilate ring-the general question, What is Education?

I came the other day upon a sentence, in which an old Latin grammarian attempts to define the word 'educate.' He says: The midwife brings you in the world, the nurse rears you, the schoolmaster puts you in the right way, the professor tells you what it all means.' Only the word which I have rendered as 'rear' is the word 'educates'-educat nutrix. And, indeed, education is rearing, is leading out. A child is born into the world possessed of certain powers, some obvious and actual, but others—and these the greater part-hidden and unfinished, mere germs of power, simple potentialities. It is the duty of the nurse so to bring certain conditions, which academic persons call the environment (to wit, adequate aliment, suitable exercise, and the like), to bear on the growing organism as to lead out these potentialities from their hiding place and set them forth as effective powers. And the leading of the true nurse is such that the powers so brought out are those which work for

Being the substance of an address delivered at the opening of the Technical Institute, Bradford-on-Avon, February 24, 1897.

the good no less of the world than of the child itself. This leading out of potentialities into powers, this development of the possible into the actual, is not wholly in the hands of the nurse, and does not begin with that which we call birth. Its origin goes back beyond that, and indeed lies behind the individual; it also stretches forward past childhood, youth, and even manhood, reaching right on to the grave.

In the lapse of time since the old Romans first used the word 'educate' we have fallen into the habit of narrowing the meaning of the word to the rearing of what we call the mind. Now to a physiologist at least the distinction between body and mind is shadowy and invalid; equally invalid seems to an academic philosopher the attempt to sever mental and moral training. And here perhaps it may be permitted to the physiologist and academic professor to say in passing that to attempt to train certain powers while others are neglected is to run counter to the precepts of philosophy, and that true education is that which brings forward together all the powers of the whole being-body, mind, and soul.

We may, however, for the present, without risk, turn our attention to education as more especially a rearing of the mind. And I will now put forward the question, 'What is the goal of education?' Here physiology helps to supply the answer. We are all members of one body. In a body each member has a double function. On the one hand it has a special work to do the eye to see, the hand to move, the lungs to breathe, and the like—a work which is in itself for the good of the whole body. On the other hand it has certain duties towards the rest of the body in consonance with which it performs its special task; the muscle, while working to move some part of the body, not only does that for the body's good, but also at the same time contributes in other ways to the body's welfare. And when we set about training the body regard must be had to the general and to the special task alike. So is it also with the education of the child. He or she needs to be reared on the one hand so as to fit him or her for the common duties of citizenship: this we call general education. He or she needs on the other hand to be reared so as tɔ be fitted for the particular task which, as to a particular member, falls to his or her lot: this is, in the broad sense, technical education. The two kinds of education are not or need not be antagonistic-indeed are at times convertible.

All education, whether general or technical, should be marked by certain common features, be guided by certain common principles. Of these the one which should be dominant is that to which we were just now led in attempting to define education, the recognition of the idea that education is the leading out of hidden powers. This may not be in accord with some systems of teaching, which seem to regard education as a 'pressing in,' as if the school were a mould into