remains with me most in looking back to those lessons is the quickened perception of natural beauty and law which is extremely dim in my own mind, and which I took in through his teaching in the same way that one takes it in from pictures, or the descriptions of a first-rate master. In this way, even where I have forgotten the particular things he said, I have always a vague feeling that I could be interested at once in some subjects not naturally attractive to me, because I learnt them from him. His love of nature I think brought me nearer to a love of nature-no part of my own intellectual endowment-than any other influence. Perhaps it was the very fact of its being allied with so much else which does not often belong to the same mind, which made me able to enter into it. I hardly used to care to ascertain what it was that he was announced to teach, I only wished to have things put before me as he saw them. I do not think I can better illustrate the effect, than by saying it always seemed to me like having a candle moved from the front of a transparency to the back of it. Through his teaching one seemed to see the thing as it was meant to be seen.

How well I recall, across the interval of nearly thirty years, the quiet deliberate definiteness of the words, of which I think I may say that I never heard one with inattentive ear-not one used to seem to me superfluous, and not one incomplete. He seemed always reading out of a book open to him (which literally he never did), where everything was familiar and everything in its place. All that he taught of literature seemed as literary as if he knew nothing of science, and when he gave us any lessons in science, one felt

as if that world also had been his exclusive study. suppose to his great love of knowledge was added a love of teaching, which is not I think often associated with it; and so he was the ideal teacher, and his work, I am convinced, must have been to many what it was to me. I had no special tie with him, and there was nothing to give me pleasure in the lessons that was not common to all his pupils.

I cannot close this recollection without trying to express the effect of the moral judgments which came across that calm, deliberate, descriptive teaching now and then, sometimes, though very rarely, with a curious vehemence always to me with a power that enhanced the repose of his love of nature and of law, and were in their turn set off by it. I am afraid that what I have written is at once diffuse and incomplete. It is the record of the interests which were at once the most healthful and the most lively of these early years. But I know how vain is often the attempt to reproduce them, and only make the attempt at your request. Make any use of it you wish, and believe me, ever affectionately yours,

F. JULIA WEDGWOOD.

In the summer of 1849 he married Ellen, daughter of Thomas Heath, Esq., of Andover, a lady who, like himself, had originally been a member of the Society of Friends and had joined the Church of England. The following year his first child was born.

During this time he continued at St. Mark's, and was in the habit of lecturing an hour and a half before breakfast every day, besides all his other duties. Over-exertion during these four years under

INTRODUCTION.

mined his strength.

xvii

Moreover, the house in which

he lived was not a healthy one, and he became so dangerously ill that he was forced to resign his position as Vice-Principal of St. Mark's in the autumn of 1850.

He had the heavy trial of losing his first child that winter, at the age of six months.

The fine air of Hampstead, to which he had moved from St. Mark's, and comparative rest from work, restored his health so completely, that he was able to accept the Principalship of Battersea Training College in the spring of 1851.

Under his supervision, Battersea gradually rose to take the first place amongst training colleges, a standing which it has ever since maintained. His influence there is well depicted in the following letter from the present Principal.

January 20th, 1877.

DEAR MRS. CLARK,-You have asked me to give you some account of Mr. Clark's work at Battersea. I gladly comply with your request, though I fear that no account that I could give would do it justice.

When he was appointed Principal, the college was, from various causes, but mainly in consequence of a long interregnum during which there was no Principal, in an unsettled and unsatisfactory condition. Mr. Clark set himself at once to improve the discipline and raise the tone of the college, as the primary and indispensable condition of all other improvement. This end he gradually attained, not so much by the punishment of offences, as by the removal of tempta

tions, the setting up of counter attractions, and the inculcation of healthy moral and religious principles. In the maintenance of discipline he relied much upon work, method and punctuality; and certainly, the time-table that he drew up for the work of the college left little room for that precise kind of temptation which is usually found for idle hands and idle minds. Every morning in the week, except Sunday morning, the students received a lecture before breakfast; and the whole of every day was well filled up with wisely-devised occupations. He himself gave one of these early lectures three times a week; and his punctuality on these, as on all other occasions, had a most salutary effect on both students and masters. By degrees he gathered round him a staff of able and tried men, who cordially sympathised with him in his aims, and loyally carried out his methods of teaching and discipline; and by the time I became a student, the college had been raised to a high pitch of prosperity and success. There was great competition to get admitted into it, so that there was ampler room than there had been in days gone by for the selection of promising candidates. The discipline was well established; the students were remarkably successful in the government examinations; and the tone that prevailed amongst them. was high and pure.

Mr. Clark usually lectured on divinity, Church history and the English language, but, by his close intercourse with his colleagues, exercised a powerful influence upon the whole of the teaching of the college. His lectures were always vigorous, clear, logical and incisive, admirably arranged and illus

trated, and enlivened by a free and constant interchange of thought with his class. He rarely mentioned a fact, or assigned a reason, or even employed a technical word that was new to his class, without first making sure that they were in need of it; his maxim being that the mind derives little profit from information for which it has no appetite. Whatever his pupils could do for themselves he compelled them to do. Hence he would often stop in his lecture to call upon them to interrogate themselves, and observe for themselves; and in this way, not only was the subject in hand better taught than if they were allowed to be merely passive reservoirs for the receipt of the information which he imparted, but their mental powers were constantly exercised and developed. Indeed, he set far more store on this development of power than on the communication of mere knowledge, however valuable the knowledge in itself might be. Very often we made apparently little headway with the immediate subject of a lecture, and many of us used to think that a great deal of time was wasted in eliciting by questions what might much more expeditiously have been directly communicated to us; but experience has convinced me that his method is the best that can be pursued, when the object of the teacher is rather to train than to teach. Lectures proper, by which I mean unbroken addresses, may be of great service when the audience and the lecturer are on an intellectual level, and the sole object of the lecturer is to convey information or state his opinions; but, in the case of young men, it is far more important that their mental faculties. should be cultivated by constant exercise than that