to become active discoverers.  The discouragement caused by bad teaching having been diminished by a little sympathy, and sufficient perseverance excited to achieve a first success, there arises a revulsion of feeling affecting the whole nature.  They no longer find themselves incompetent; they, too, can do something.  And gradually as success follows success, the incubus of despair disappears, and they attack the difficulties of their other studies with a courage insuring conquest.

A few weeks after the foregoing remarks were originally published, Professor Tyndall in a lecture at the Royal Institution “On the Importance of the Study of Physics as a Branch of Education,” gave some conclusive evidence to the same effect.  His testimony, based on personal observation, is of such great value that we cannot refrain from quoting it.  Here it is.

“One of the duties which fell to my share, during the period to which I have referred, was the instruction of a class in mathematics, and I usually found that Euclid and the ancient geometry generally, when addressed to the understanding, formed a very attractive study for youth.  But it was my habitual practice to withdraw the boys from the routine of the book, and to appeal to their self-power in the treatment of questions not comprehended in that routine.  At first, the change from the beaten track usually excited a little aversion:  the youth felt like a child amid strangers; but in no single instance have I found this aversion to continue.  When utterly disheartened, I have encouraged the boy by that anecdote of Newton, where he attributes the difference between him and other men, mainly to his own patience; or of Mirabeau, when he ordered his servant, who had stated something to be impossible, never to use that stupid word again.  Thus cheered, he has returned to his task with a smile, which perhaps had something of doubt in it, but which, nevertheless, evinced a resolution to try again.  I have seen the boy’s eye brighten, and at length, with a pleasure of which the ecstasy of Archimedes was but a simple expansion, heard him exclaim, ‘I have it, sir.’  The consciousness of self-power, thus awakened, was of immense value; and animated by it, the progress of the class was truly astonishing.  It was often my custom to give the boys their choice of pursuing their propositions in the book, or of trying their strength at others not to be found there.  Never in a single instance have I known the book to be chosen.  I was ever ready to assist when I deemed help needful, but my offers of assistance were habitually declined.  The boys had tasted the sweets of intellectual conquest and demanded victories of their own.  I have seen their diagrams scratched on the walls, cut into the beams upon the play ground, and numberless other illustrations of the living interest they took in the subject.  For my own part, as far as experience in teaching goes, I was a mere fledgling:  I knew nothing of