a mere commitment of words, but from a system of intellectual training, which led to a good understanding of the subject.  In arithmetic and algebra the answers were so remarkable as to induce the belief in some that the boys must have been privately prepared on their questions; but the teacher desired Lord John Russell to write down any number of questions which he wished to have given to the toys to solve, from his own mind.  Lord John wrote down two or three problems, and I was amused at the zeal and avidity with which the boys seized upon and mastered them.  Young England was evidently wide awake, and the prime minister himself was not to catch them, napping.  The little fellows’ eyes-glistened as they rattled off their solutions.  As I know nothing about mathematics, I was all the more impressed; but when they came to be examined in the Bible, I was more astonished than ever.  The masters had said that they would be willing any of the gentlemen should question them, and Mr. B. commenced a course of questions on the doctrines of Christianity; asking, Is there any text by which you can prove this, or that? and immediately, with great accuracy, the boys would cite text upon text, quoting not only the more obvious ones, but sometimes applying Scripture with an ingenuity and force which I had not thought of, and always quoting chapter and verse of every text.  I do not know who is at the head of this teaching, nor how far it is a sample of English schools; but I know that these boys had been wonderfully well taught, and I felt all my old professional enthusiasm arising.

After the examination Lord John came forward, and gave the boys a good fatherly talk.  He told them that they had the happiness to live under a free government, where all offices are alike open to industry and merit, and where any boy might hope by application and talent to rise to any station below that of the sovereign.  He made some sensible, practical comments, on their Scripture lessons, and, in short, gave precisely such a kind of address as one of our New England judges or governors might to schoolboys in similar circumstances.  Lord John hesitates a little in his delivery, but has a plain, common-sense way of “speaking right on,” which seems to be taking.  He is a very simple man in his manners, apparently not at all self-conscious, and entered into the feelings of the boys and the masters with good-natured sympathy, which was very winning.  I should think he was one of the kind of men who are always perfectly easy and self-possessed let what will come, and who never could be placed in a situation in which he did not feel himself quite at home, and perfectly competent to do whatever was to be done.