4 MEMOIR OF 



master of eloquence, was so taken with the 

 matter of the discourse and the style of its 

 delivery, that he pointedly expressed his com- 

 mendation of both to those assembled around 

 him at the luncheon-table. 



"Yes, my lord," said a lady sitting next to 

 him, who happened to be nearly connected 

 with the preacher, and very well known as a 

 prominent rider in the hunting-field, "yes, Mr. 

 Russell is very good in the wood ; but I should 

 like your lordship to see him in the pigskin." 



But, having anticipated the period of his 

 middle-life by this anecdote, it will be necessary 

 now to revert to the boy's school days, and 

 follow him through the bright but not un- 

 clouded portion of that somewhat eventful time. 



An old-established grammar school was that 

 of Plympton, the go-cart of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 

 to which he was hrst sent. There, it would 

 appear, the head master maintained the block- 

 system in full force ; not, however, for the 

 purpose of checking, but rather of expediting 

 the educational progress of his pupils ; for, 

 when a boy's head appeared to be too hard 

 to comprehend and remember some crabbed 

 line of Phcedrus' Fables or Caesar's Commen- 

 taries, it was duly whacked into him at another 

 more sensitive point. 



Such, however, was the training at that 

 time, which scholars like Dean Gaisford, Bishop 



