4 THE RE V. J. O. WOOD. 



end and aim of education ; and the arithmetical talent, 

 if not cultivated in childhood, seldom attains to any 

 degree of perfection afterwards. So that when my 

 father had any sums to do, he always did them by 

 deputy. Euclid, however, he liked, and often worked 

 at it merely for the interest that he managed to extract 

 from it. But that was the only branch of mathe- 

 matical science of which he ever picked up more than 

 the merest rudiments ; and I have always had a 

 shrewd suspicion that he kept no account of receipts 

 and expenditure for the simple reason that he dis- 

 trusted his own power of adding up his columns. 



At four years of age the boy was taken to church 

 for the first time; and there an amusing incident 

 happened. He does not seem to have received any 

 preliminary instruction in the Liturgy, and did not at 

 all know what to expect when he entered the building. 

 He behaved very well, however, and joined in the 

 Lord's Prayer, which, of course, he knew by heart, 

 with much reverence and devotion. By-and-by, how- 

 ever, the Lord's Prayer was repeated again, and this 

 time he seemed a little bored, and took his part in 

 it only under protest. But when the Litany drew near 

 to its close, and the same Prayer was said for the 

 third time, his patience came altogether to an end, 

 and, rising from his knees, he sat down with an 

 air of great determination, and a very audible remark 

 to the effect that he " couldn't stand this no more ! " 



In 1830 it was deemed advisable, for more reasons 

 than one, that the Chemical Lectureship at the Middlesex 



