CHAPTER XIII.

HEREFORD AND SHERBURN.

WHILE in St Andrews on a visit, in the beginning of 1818, he was delighted and surprised by an offer, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, of a stall in Hereford Cathedral, "of good value." He had expected that the duties would be light, and that, holding this post along with his Mastership of Sherburn, he might still be able to give the larger part of his time to the promotion of his System and the foundation of new schools. But he found that the post was not without its duties. He had to preach four English and four Latin sermons; he had to sit for forty days in a prebendal stall, without any duty to perform (surely the hardest kind of work for his active brain), thrice every Sunday and Saint'sday, and twice every ordinary week-day; and all this time he was not allowed to ride or walk outside the walls of the city.

While residing at Hereford, he, of course, lost no time in setting to work on the schools of the placethe Grammar and the National Schools. For the latter he preached a charity sermon at St Peter's. His subject was The System. It was not a short sermon.

The

Doctor was in his element, and could have discoursed for days on the Novum Organon. He kept his amanuensis up night and day copying and recopying it; and he entered into a long and detailed history of the discovery of the System, of its progress in this and other countries, and of the reasonable expectations that might be formed regarding its future. The eager preacher went on reading for an hour, then made a short pause to wipe his spectacles. The congregation, who had sat on with considerable patience, now thought the sermon over and rose to go. But, "Dr Bell, suddenly recollecting himself, exclaimed 'God bless me!' and instantly recommencing, went on for half an hour. longer."

A new idea now came into Dr Bell's head. He had noticed, and rightly noticed, the great wrong and injustice done to children in the mode of bringing them up and teaching them. He accordingly wrote a little book on the subject and gave it the title, 'The Wrongs of Children.' The difficulty was to find a publisher. Lord Kenyon, in a letter to the Doctor about this time, remarks," Murray, I presume, like other booksellers, considers chiefly the likelihood of a sale, as I remember my revered friend Mr Jones told Rivington once, he believed if the d-1 was to write a book they would publish it; and Rivington said, 'To be sure, if it was a good thing.""

He was now sixty-six years of age, but with that indomitable freshness and eternal youth 1 that were his characteristics all through life, he became extremely desir

"Whom the gods love die young," because they live young.

X

Dr Johnson once

ous of correcting his Scotch accent.

remarked that much might be done with a Scotchman "if he were caught young; but surely he would never have tried to induce him to alter his way of speaking when he was nearly seventy. However, the Doctor set manfully to work. He requested his secretary, Mr Davies, to note down during sermon those words in which his Scotch accent most evidently appeared; and, when he returned home, he practised the art of pronouncing them in Mr Davies's English fashion. He was also very anxious to be able to speak so as to be heard in every part of the Abbey; and for this purpose, Mr Davies would take his seat in different distant parts of the building and report. But the voice of the enthusiastic Doctor, though of great volume, was never clear enough or articulate enough to be distinctly heard in the more distant parts of the cathedral. In fact, he did not speak-he roared.

There had been murmurs of complaint arising from Sherburn Hospital, to the visitor, the Bishop of Durham, in 1813; and now, in 1818, again stronger complaints were uttered by the ancient brethren. It was the beer. Dr Bell, assisted by his chaplain and the agent, set to work at once to inquire into the causes of these complaints. The brethren were examined individually and collectively, and their answers were written down. The result of the inquiry was that Dr Bell appointed two of the brethren to inspect the meat, and two to inspect the brewing, and to see that five bushels of malt went duly to the hogshead of beer. "But," says Mr Southey, "the flame, which had but slumbered,

burst out anew "in 1819. The flame was stirred up by a designing person called Michael Angelo Taylor; and this gentleman at length succeeded in inducing the bishop to appoint a commission. This commission discovered that only 1s. 6d. was allowed for the weekly allowance of bread, beer, and two pounds of cheese. On the other hand, it appeared that Dr Bell spent £35 a-year on each of the in-brethren; and that he provided each of the old men with greatcoats, to be worn in chapel in cold weather. The fact is that, though it was not the fault of Dr Bell, but of the traditional system, the hospital was farmed, and nothing was more likely than that an absentee master should get into all kinds of trouble.

In the beginning of 1819, Dr Bell was so fortunate as to obtain a stall in Westminster Abbey, in exchange for that at Hereford; and he was installed by the Dean of Westminster in the end of January.

As Prebendary of Westminster, Dr Bell had to attend. the coronation of George the Fourth in 1821; and here he was very nearly taking an unwilling part in a terrible socio-political scandal. The Queen had been refused admittance to the Abbey, and was waiting at a sidedoor, apparently for the purpose of effecting an entrance should an opportunity present itself. On approaching the door, some one announced him to the Queen—“ Dr Bell, your Majesty,"—and alarm seized the reverend Doctor lest the Queen should ask him to allow her to enter the Abbey. He was too loyal a man to take a side in these disputes; but he showed himself equal to the occasion. He hurried on, bowed to the Queen, and

F

rushed past her through the door, "leaving her outside." It appears that, after the coronation, certain of the properties were distributed among the prebendaries and other officials who took part in the ceremony. Dr Bell's share was a piece of carpet, some lamps, the gold cloth laid upon the coronation-chair, and one or two other things; and these he used long after to exhibit as "valuable relics."

1

It will be remembered that the Madras System had been introduced into the Charterhouse schools. In regard to the success of this experiment, it may be useful to quote part of a letter from Lord Kenyon, an old and stanch friend of Dr Bell's: "I maintained that the examinations at the Charterhouse were very striking; that the whole of Horace's odes, or a whole book of Homer, might be examined upon; and that no boy 1 in a class would be found deficient, either in the repetition, being called upon to go on after a few words were recited to him, or to render it straightforwards by memory into English, if required so to do. I mentioned also that every other matter connected with the subject, whether historical, geographical, mythological (or, if connected with the Sacred Scriptures, doctrinal), was to be explained by any boy who might be called on to do so. I added, likewise, the fact, that Dr Russell found 100 or 150 boys, and now had above 450; was quite overdone with his labours, and now found everything easy to him. I forgot to mention that he had now no corporal punishment, but did not forget to insist that no such was necessary, which, with respect to the Madras

1 The italics are mine.