EARLY YEARS. 5 



To the education which he received under his father's 

 superintendence, Dr. W. B. Carpenter always looked back 

 with gratitude. Those who recall the tall spare figure and 

 the iron-grey hair of his later years, will find it difficult to 

 think of him as a child of rounded limbs and golden locks, 

 who grew into a stout and chubby boy. In the home dis- 

 cipline no time was lost. He used to say that he " knew his 

 " Latin grammar at five," though the extent of this know- 

 ledge was never defined ; and he had already before that 

 gained a firm mastery of certain external realities, to which 

 he attached the highest value. In a discourse delivered in 

 connection with University College, Bristol, in 1880, he 

 recalled one of these items of early acquisition. 



Our whole fabric of geometrical knowledge is based upon 

 ideal representation. My own feeling is very strong diat all 

 geometrical teaching ought to be from time to time shown to 

 consist with actual objective facts. Going back to my own 

 experience, I can remember the fact of our having in our 

 nursery a box of cubes, which my father had happened to pur- 

 chase from a lecturer who was disposing of some articles of 

 the kind. The box of cubes was ten inches each way, and 

 each cube an inch, and therefore the box contained a thousand 

 cubes ; and this plaything of our nursery has been of the 

 greatest value to me through life, in giving me a conception of 

 the relation of solids to each other, for I have found continually 

 that young people who have learnt and can repeat glibly 

 arithmetic tables, have not the least idea what these tables 

 mean. Hence the importance of bringing the reasoning 

 powers of the mind to bear upon the facts which observation 

 reveals to us. 



This was one of the aims which Dr. Lant Carpenter 

 invariably held up before the boys under his care. His 

 school was remarkable for the prominence assigned to the 

 enforcement and illustration of scientific principles. This 

 side of knowledge was more congenial to his son William 



