feeling very like
Mr. Brooke when I attempt to balance the interests of teacher and
student. In that comfortable period, the 18th century, things were all
in favour of the teacher. The poet Gray, who was Professor of History at
Cambridge, could never decide whether to lecture in Latin or English, and
ended by never lecturing at all.

It is now easier to find cases where the teacher is the victim and slave
of his pupils, and has no time or strength to continue his own education.

This has at least two bad results, and probably more than that number:
(1) From want of time for reading the teacher can hardly avoid falling
behind in a rapidly progressive subject such as one of the natural
sciences, and consequently the University or College that enslaves him is
injuring its own property. (2) He has no time to do any original work,
and this is even worse for him (and therefore, as before, for the
College). He ceases to be on intimate terms with the plants or animals
or chemical substances with which he has to deal, and his teaching must
necessarily lose that vigour and freshness that comes from first-hand
personal knowledge. It is downright cruelty to deny time for research to
those who vehemently desire to add something to the fabric of human
knowledge.

The hampered teacher reminds me of a certain migratory bird living with
clipped wings in a Zoological Garden: when the migrating season came
round the unfortunate prisoner started to walk, and was to be seen
pressing its breast against the bars at the north end of its pen. I hope
that nowadays all Colleges realise that they must not prison their birds,
but give them the means of satisfying their natural instinct for fresh
and self-gained knowledge. The students are in one way better off than
their masters, since laboratory work is generally new to them and has
therefore some of the charm of discovery.

In what I have said to-night I have confined myself to Natural Science,
in which alone I have had experience of teaching or examining. On the
literary side of things I am, I fear, a Philistine, or _enfant terrible_.
I belong to that class of persons (which has at least the merit of being
very large) who have hardly opened a Greek or Latin book since the day
they passed their Little-go.

I grudge the time that is given at school to making small boys groan over
books not well suited to them, while French and German are, or were in my
day, all but untaught. If I had