first time; some for the second or third; and one for the sixth time. (I always date the time of reading of anything belonging to me.) A Collection of Letters of Thackeray, 1847-1855, To Mrs. Brookfield (mainly); Article in Encyclopedia Britannica by Walter Pollock; Article in Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature, by W. C. Brownell; William M. Thackeray, by Anthony Trollope, in English Men of Letters; Tribute of Charles Dickens to Thackeray in Swinton's Literature; Some Aspects of Thackeray, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 82, p. 707; Thackeray, in Yesterdays with Authors, by James T. Fields; Thackeray, in Essays in Little, by Andrew Lang; and, last but not least in charm, "To W. M. Thackeray" in Andrew Lang's Letters to Dead Authors.

It is probably well known to most of my readers that no biography of Thackeray, complete in any sense, has ever been written; that the great author especially desired this; and that his daughter Mrs. Ritchie, a well known writer, has not permitted the violation of his wishes any farther than to authorize Mrs. Brookfield to publish his letters to her; and that Mrs. Ritchie in a biographical edition of Thackeray's works has written brief memories of her father at the beginning of each volume, with special relation to its contents.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Calcutta, July 18, 1811.

In 1816 his father died, and a few years afterward his young mother married Major Henry Smyth whom Thackeray respected and loved. Thackeray was brought a mere child from India and was entered as a pupil at Charter House. In his earlier books he speaks of Charter House as Slaughter House; but as he grew older and his memory softened he changed its name to Grey Friars, where Colonel Newcome died. In February, 1829, Thackeray entered Trinity College, Cambridge. He left here in 1830, and either in that year or 1831 went to Weimar. Between this city and Paris he spent some portion of his earlier years. At this time of his life he desired to become an artist and he, therefore, studied drawing at Paris. However, Thackeray was destined to become a much greater artist with his pen than with his pencil.

In 1837 Thackeray married, and in time three little daughters came to his home, Anne, Jane, and Harriet. Of the eldest, who afterwards became Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, we have already spoken; Jane died as a child; Harriet lived to womanhood and married the well known writer Leslie Stephen. But she has now joined in brighter worlds the father who so tenderly loved his little daughters and worked so hard to make them happy. How the heart of the great author centered around his little girls after the dark shadow of his

wife's insanity was cast across his life, is one of the tenderest things in the stories of the lives of authors! The big man, six feet four inches high, kept the boy alive in his heart through his romps with his little girls; and his affection for them strengthened his natural love of children. He once wrote in a letter to a friend, "Children's voices charm me so that they set all my sensibilities into a quiver." And in "The Golden Pen" which is, perhaps, the truest portrait of him which has ever appeared, he writes:

"There's something, even in his bitterest mood,

That melts him at the sight of infanthood;

Thank God that he can love the

of the book has done another author a great deal of good." Side by side with this let me put what Dickens wrote when Thackeray died December 24, 1863:

"The last line he wrote, and the last proof he corrected, are among these papers through which I have so sorrowfully made my way. The condition of the little pages of manuscript where Death stopped his hand shows that he had carried them about, and often taken them out of his pocket here and there, for patient revision and interlineation. The last words he corrected in print were, 'And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' God grant that on that Christmas Eve, when he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done and Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished may have caused his own heart so to throb when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest!"

DRILLS.

By Ruric N. Roark.

The very atmosphere of pedagogy for years and years has been full of the haze of the saying that "Power rather than knowledge is the end of education," or words to that effect. But very few teachers get more than the haze of the idea. And there are several reasons for this state of the case. In the first place, there are so many of those

who plan the work which the teachers in the ranks must do, who themselves do not have enough knowledge to know which knowledge is of most worth, which kinds should be included and which excluded in making courses of study, and hence often leave out the very knowledge that makes for power. In the second place, the public generally, including more than a few teachers, are really convinced in their hearts that the saying is not wholly true, and parents measure the progress of their children by the amount of knowledge acquired. Here and there a few are found who are heralding the incoming of a better day. pedagogically. Among these few may be named Dewey and Parker, who, it will be noted, are working in Chicago and not in Massachusetts. This is by the way, however.

But, after all, power is only one of the chief practical ends of real teaching; skill is another quite as important, or more so. And being something is still another, perhaps most important of all. If these ends of teaching are arranged in the order of their natural development, which is the order of their importance, the list will read thus: Knowledge, Power, Skill, Character. Said a little less briefly, the young man and young woman of today or tomorrow should, as the result of having been through the American public school, be able to know something, to do something, and to be something.

But what has all this to do with "drills"? This,-exact knowledge, capacity to do well and quickly, and character, all are results of repetitions, repetitions, and making the right kind of repetitions in the right way in school is drill. The purpose of drill is to pass activities over from consciousness into automatic action,-which is simply one way of saying that the purpose of the school is to form and fix habits. No man can be said to know really unless his facts come as instantly as needed. The man who knows tomorrow or next day practically has no knowledge that is of any use to him or to the world. Facts and ideas must be like well-drilled troops, ready of mobilization. The general whose army can gather itself together quickest and "get there first" is the one who will win the most battles. The man whose knowledge is on hand as soon as needed is the one who will make the best use of what he knows, both for himself and for the world.

Knowledge can be made automatic only through repetitiondrill. Still more true is it that the capacity to do—which capacity is made up of both power and skillis the result of practice. We wonder sometimes how some men we know can do so much and do it so well. Their facility does not consist by any means wholly or even chiefly in superior brain power in itself, but in the capacity they have

developed in themselves or that has been developed in them to do things quickly. Almost anybody of fair average capacity can do a thing if he has time enough, but the point is to do it quickly. To be able to do a thing quickly is mainly a matter of repetition until the doing becomes automatic.

Of course, it is plain, as said above, that the result of the sort of drill here meant is habit, or rather habits. There must be thought habits, sense habits, muscle habits, and moral habits. To be something-and that is character-involves many repetitions of being that something. A man is not good until he is automatically good. Unless he is guarded by a certain automatism of thought, of doing, and most of all of being, there is no telling when he will go. away somewhere with another man's money, or something else. When it is said that a man is not, and cannot be, good unless he is in the habit of being good, the statement seems self-evident.

Now, it is in just these repetitions which secure automatic action that the average teacher— the writer included-so often falls short. We hammer along day by day in the class-room, imparting a small sector, an infinitesimal sector, of facts out of the whole circle of knowledge, and flattering ourselves that we are teaching and bringing up boys and girls to be strong and self-reliant, world-helping men and

women. We don't drill, drill DRILL, because it is very hard work, and because those over us measure our work by knowledgeresults instead of by power or skillresults. I wish that even one of my readers who may not yet have thoroughly tried the plan would test this matter for a month. Go at a snail's pace, so far as progress through the text-book is concerned, but repeat, have the pupils repeat, and re-repeat fact and process and courteous act, until some certain clearly defined matter becomes automatic in consciousness and performance. Then try it another month, and see how much faster these same pupils will grow in the acquisition of knowledge, as well as in these other things. Drill, drill, drill-but drill wisely-and all these other things will be added. unto you.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON OMAN'S ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Chapter VI-Early Victorian England-1852.

1. Compare the first half of the nineteenth in England with the last. 2. What brought about "Free Trade" in England?

Describe the growth and po litical effects of steam navigation. 4. Who was the father of the modern railway? Describe its growth.

5. How did "Trades Unions" originate?

6. Describe the social improvements made in the first half of the century.

7. When were the "penny post" and the telegraph introduced? Effect?

8. Name the great writers of this period.

Trace the great religious 9. movements of this period.

Chapter VII-From the Crimean War to the death of Lord Palmerston-1853-65.

1. How was the government organized at the close of Lord Derby's administration? Who was made Chancellor of the Exchequer?

2. Describe the events leading up to the Crimean War.

3. Locate Sebastopol. Describe its siege.

4. Give an account of the "Charge of the Light Brigade." 5. Describe the "Soldiers' Battle."

6. What change in the administration at this time? Cause?

7. Give the provisions of the Treaty of Paris of 1856, and the general results of the war.

8. What foreign troubles followed the Treaty of Paris?

9. Give the cause of Palmerston's defeat in 1858. When did did he return to office?

10. Describe the feeling in England relative to our Civil War.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS ON JUD-
SON'S EUROPE IN THE NINE-
TEENTH CENTURY.

Part III-The Third Revolution-
Reconstruction of Central
Europe.

1. Compare the Third Revolution in its character and effects with the First and Second

2. What four great results did it accomplish?

3. What influence made Louis Napoleon Emperor of France? 4. Give an account of his marriage.

5. What part did France take in the Crimean War?

6. Give an account of the war with Austria.

7. With whom did the French Emperor sympathize in our Civil War?

8. What did he attempt in Mexico?

9. What were the provisions of the Constitution granted to France in 1870?

IO. Who was Bismarck? What was his chief purpose? What policy did he pursue to attain that purpose?

II. What led to the "Seven Weeks' War?" Results?

12. Upon what pretext and with what object did France declare war with Prussia in 1870? Results?

13. Who were Cavour, Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi and Mazzini?

14. What important work did