880 RETIREMENT, TO 1897 : OF BOOKS, ETC. 



heads. Tyndall used to say that you had only to show boys 

 scientific experiments to make them love science. Bence 

 Jones l was nearer the mark when he said, * all the boys care 

 for and call Chemistry is a blaze, a bang, and a stink.' My 

 view is, to teach the mass the 3 Es, and something technical, 

 picking out for a higher education the very few who have 

 shown talent or taste for higher things, and educating them 

 on as high as you can. As it is we are throwing away millions 

 of money, and racking the brains of thousands of admirable 

 teachers, male and female, in attempting the impossible. 

 I do pity a Board teacher. 



To the Same 



Christmas, 1894. 



I have just received as~a present, from his sister (Mrs. 

 Hodgson), Townshend's ' Agricola and Germania ' of Tacitus. 

 I had never seen the little work before, and am very much 

 interested in it. It is a great pity that boys were not made 

 to read such translations. They can get no notion of the 

 subject or author by grinding at the original as in school 

 exercises of grammar. It always amuses me to hear the 

 ' tall talk ' of schoolmasters about the value of teaching 

 the Classics because it instructs boys and men in the genius 

 of the Greek and Eoman authors and their languages and 

 literature. The fact being that 19 boys out of 20 do not get 

 even an idea of the subject they translate by halting efforts 

 to put it into English and as to the genius of the language, 

 they do not know what that means, and no one at school 

 cares to tell them. Joe has been learning Mechanics. I 

 asked him what was meant by Mechanics his answer was 

 that it meant Hydrostatics, &c., &c. but what it was he 

 had not an idea ! Turning to ' Chambers ' I find the 

 definition ' The Geometry of motion.' A very little explana- 

 tion would make this clear to a boy. 



I have just opened B. Stewart's 2 Primer of Physics. 



1 Henry Bence Jones, M.D. (1814-73), was an accomplished physician and 

 student of chemistry, making many researches into the relation of chemistry 

 to pathology and medicine. He became F.R.S. 1846, and from 1860 onwards 

 Secretary to the Royal Institution. 



* Balfour Stewart (1828-87), physicist and meteorologist, was Director of 

 the Kew Observatory 1859-71, and Professor of Natural Philosophy in Owens 

 College, Manchester, 1870, till his death. His most important researches were 

 in connexion with radiant heat. In collaboration with Professor P. G. Tait he 



