LITERARY STRUGGLES. 167 



till then, he would proceed to the geography of large areas. 

 Whether this idea, which proved exceedingly efficacious in 

 the case of his own pupils, has been often carried out in 

 schemes of education, I am not aware. So far as my 

 father knew, it was original to him. In the summer of 

 1 841, as he was growing very weary of solitary lodgings, he 

 took a small house, called Woodbine Cottage, close to the 

 school, and brought his mother up from Dorsetshire to 

 keep it for him. It stood surrounded by a pretty little 

 garden, full of perennials in geometric beds, with thick 

 box edges. From this house he would frequently, in the 

 warmer months, start with all his boys on entomologizing 

 excursions, commonly to the borders of Epping Forest, 

 and he began a collection of English butterflies which 

 soon comprised most of the local species. All this while 

 he was busy enough, since he still had a few pupils in 

 flower-painting, and exercised his leisure to the full in 

 scientific and literary study. These years make little show 

 in 'the record of his life, but they were full of intellectual 

 energy. He was making up for time lost in Canada and 

 Alabama ; he was fitting himself to compete on equal 

 terms with men who had been better equipped than he in 

 starting. 



More than anything else, however, he was training and 

 cultivating by ceaseless miscellaneous notes his powers of 

 observing and recording natural facts. To print the 

 multitudinous records of small scientific observations which 

 he accumulated for his own use would be tedious and 

 useless to the general reader. Yet some example ought, 

 perhaps, to be given here as a specimen of his process of 

 self-education. I select at random, and transcribe from the 

 almost microscopic writing in faded ink, one little series of 

 consecutive notes, one brick out of the immense edifice 

 of his records : — 



