qualifications: a perfect temper and a qualified omniscience; a man's knowledge, that is, must extend over the whole field of University requirements, but need never penetrate below the surface.

The rooms in which the trade is carried on give you some picture of the occupant's mind. A huge sheet of paper pinned against a wall contains the evidence of the Christian religion reduced, like portable soup, to a small compass. It is to be hoped that it is not used as stock for making sermons. Two or three mechanical toys stand upon the table; for the poll man, having a general impression that a thing in a book corresponds to nothing in earth or heaven (the last is specially unlikely), shows an almost infantile delight at the sight of a real pulley or inclined plane. The oneounce weight, it is true, does not accurately balance the six, as the book says it should; but the "coach" has judiciously secured equilibrium by inserting a surreptitious pin into the mechanism. Certain manuscript books on the table contain the results of boiling down human knowledge into shreds and patches, for the "poll coach" is ready to prepare

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his pupils for any known pass examination; if they gave him a day's start to learn it, he will teach them Sanskrit, Chaldee, or German metaphysics.

You find, therefore, mechanical propositions written in the fewest possible words, lists of the early heretics and their tenets, a short account of the Reformation, a statement of the four causes which make the division of labour desirable, and of the three causes of the economical disadvantages of slavery, pet translations of classical fragments, with marks against noted pitfalls, a short history of the German tribes, &c., besides various other information at which my knowledge does not enable me even to hint.

It is bad enough to have to acquire this information, but a man requires the temper of an angel to stand cross-questioning about all parts of it at random from sixty or seventy distracting youths from eight in the morning to any time at night. Like other artists, however, the "poll coach" learns to take a pride in his work. He looks upon a refractory youth with the feelings of a Rarey regarding Cruiser. The poll youth is shy of any instructor,

NO VIMU

much as that redoubtable beast had an aversion for grooms. He considers them as curious pieces of mechanism, standing in some unknown relation to a whip and a bit and bridle. The victim has therefore to be tempted into the lecture-room by gentle means to be tempted even by occasional indulgence in beer or tobacco in a retired part of the establishment; when he makes a frantic plunge and gives up study altogether, the tempting must be repeated. When tolerably tamed, he still requires incessant attention; the great difficulty of those whom destiny has marked for plucking is that they can neither keep their minds to one subject nor their bodies in one place. They are incapable of steady attention or steady habits. The object of the coach is first to fix them down in his workshop, and then to go through the exhausting process of assiduously hammering knowledge into a fool. The most distressing case is when a man's mind is so constructed as to contain five subjects at once, but not six. I have known a youth of this kind who was plucked seven times for his Little Go, and every time plucked in only one subject. Once he succeeded in every

thing but Euclid, another time he got up his Euclid and forgot his Scripture history; a third time he managed both of these, but failed in his Greek Testament. He was like a child trying to pick up six marbles when its hand was only big enough to hold five.

Driving refractory pigs always wanting to stand still or to bolt in the wrong direction is known to be trying to the temper. Pigs is awkward animals to drive-specially when there's many of them-very,” according to Thucydides; and the same observation applies to the equally refractory and lazy animal called a poll man. I once tried my hand at the work; but happening to describe some men who were chattering round me in a senseless manner, as a

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set of gibbering maniacs," I found that they did not like it. I have ever since respected the men who can go on from year to year, all day long and almost every day, in vacation and term time, carrying on this most irritating occupation without learning to hate and despise their species. I saw a statement the other day, that when Dr. Dodd had broken down in preaching, tuition, and every other employment

except forging, he "descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper." I am not certain that I would not have tried this climax of degradation before the tuition. I would rather be tormented even by contributors, vexatious as they must be, than by pupils.

Teaching of course improves as an employment, with the improvement of the raw material. It is pleasanter to teach a clever man than a stupid one, or rather it is not so exquisitely disagreeable, for even the highest branches of the art have troubles of their own. The thorough idiot wants to be kept up to his work, gently but firmly; if he doesn't understand a thing you say, "Learn it by heart; " if he forgets it you say, "Learn it again," and so on until seventy times seven. The clever youth goes through a routine equally vexatious after a little experience. I remember the time when a burst of military ardour led me to display my portly form in the becoming uniform of the University Rifle Corps. That stately person the serjeant-major must, I fancy, have had a poor time of it. The first thousand times or so that he explained to us the correct way of forming fours,