HOME TEACHING 327 



realised that his own boys, like so many others, had not carried 

 off any enduring and precious intellectual harvest from their 

 inevitable share in the classical routine. Their later bent was 

 towards practice, whether scientific or administrative. 



Hooker had always endeavoured to awaken his children's 

 interests and direct their minds by his own well-furnished mind, 

 for ' Nature he loved, and after Nature, Art.' Now that his 

 time was freer, he devoted daily hours to the early teaching 

 of his younger sons. As soon as they were established at 

 The Camp, he tells how the eight year old ' reads " Eobinson 

 Crusoe " and the " History of England " every morning with 

 me for one and a half hours, enthusiastically.' Again we see 

 him reading Mrs. Markham's History with one of them before 

 breakfast and some simple Eoman History after supper ; now 

 it is Ball's Astronomy for children Star-land or Huxley's 

 ' Physiography/ a book of which, he tells the author who had 

 just sent him the latest edition, ' I have had a copy for each 

 of my four elder boys but they disappear seriatim with the 

 youths themselves when they leave the paternal house. This 

 comes in the nick of time for Joe.' (December 27, 1887.) 

 He started them also, and very successfully, with colloquial 

 Latin from an Ollendorffian French handbook, in pursuance 

 of his belief that only a language spoken is a language learnt. 

 Having found companions for Joe in the grandsons of Colonel 

 Hannay, 1 he carefully watched their progress under a private 

 tutor, and when the elder boys went to school the same system 

 was continued for the youngest. 



His lighter reading, ' Novels, Histories, Lives, an old man's 

 proclivities,' comes in for frequent mention in the letters, in 

 the absence of any friend to talk science or philosophy with, 

 or to contradict ! Novels run the gamut from W. D. Howells 

 and Mrs. Humphry Ward by way of the 'Briar Bush ' to ' Peter 



1 Colonel Hannay had much correspondence with Sir William Hooker on 

 botanical matters ; he evinced much interest in various departments of agri- 

 culture in India, but more especially in fibre-yielding plants and cotton, respect- 

 ing which several of his papers were published in the Journal of the Agricultural 

 and Horticultural Society of India. He also brought a small experimental garden 

 of the China tea plant to a high state of perfection, and thus demonstrated what 

 was deficient in the adventure of the Assam Tea Company. 



