TOILING AND DEVOTED,

57

accumulated and overflowed in vehement and fiery fits. Food, too, was continually required to nourish those notions of his selfimportance which stationary friends, by too great intimacy, might neglect or refuse to gratify.

It is true, that disregarding all personal care, and toil, and expense, wherever his services could be useful, however distant the place or unknown the applicants, no selfconsiderations restrained his zeal, or came into competition with his eager desire to bring his system into public notice and favour, and to keep up its character and reputation with others. In process of time, however, this craving for admiration from diversity of persons increased into a strong and overpowering feeling. It was not surprising, therefore, that he wrought himself into a belief that, as he was signally appointed by Providence to be the means of bringing to light such an instrument for the education of the body of the people, and the consummation of the blessed Reformation, so it was his duty personally to give his assistance whenever it was desired or likely to advance his great object.

Still, perhaps, it had been better for himself and the cause in which he was engaged, either to have confined his instructions to fewer places, or to have communicated them.

58

BUT ARROGANT AND VAIN.

with more grace. Previously to his arrival in any town he was, from his public character and his disinterested employment, regarded as highly as his own pretensions could desire; but a first or second visit most commonly lessened the respect or checked the ardour of those who had given their time and money towards the establishment of the schools, and who found themselves and their labours frequently depreciated, censured, and offended. Instead of delivering his instructions and making his remarks in a gentlemanly and conciliatory mode, so as to gain upon adult masters by his suavity, his personal behaviour was such that he was almost universally dreaded and disliked. His treatment of them in their schools, in the presence of their pupils, was frequently calculated to create any other sentiments than respect and attention. His conduct not only at the time alienated them from him, but it created a dislike which embittered and rendered heartless all their subsequent endeavours. It might be commonly true that there was ground for his observations; but his style of talking to them, and his remarks, with a kind of boundless rage and bluster, were, in their estimation, not only unkind and unnecessary, but vexatious and oppressive.

His passion for money was inordinate, and it deservedly brought upon him, especially in

BELL IS UNAMIABLE.

59

his management of Sherburn Hospital, annoyance and obloquy. His views of human nature were affected by this propensity, and were consequently low and mean. • He regarded money as the primum mobile, and only efficient stimulant in the world. He excited masters by a negative kind of threat. He did not say, 'Do this, and you shall have so much beyond your regular and fixed salary:' which, at best, might be barely sufficient to command the necessaries of life-but, Do this, or you shall be mulcted, or lose your situation.' He would have had all the masters under such an arbitrary kind of control, that if the school did not weekly and monthly increase in numbers, and order, and attendance, and improve in progress, the master should be subject to weekly and monthly fines, and be paid according to the periodical state of the school. I can do more,' said he to the Archbishop of Canterbury, taking a half-crown out of his pocket, 'I can do more with this half-crown than you can do with all your fixed salaries.''

He never appears to have lived happily with his wife, and in June, 1815, a regular deed of separation was drawn up, and finally executed. He nowhere exhibits amiability of character. Few, if any, loved him.

His vanity was prodigious: sometimes it is hateful, sometimes amusing. Mr. Davies, his

60

BOTH ARE ABSURD.

amanuensis, whom he would keep employed for months together almost night and day, apparently regardless of his health or comfort, having on one occasion written to him an account of the progress he was making in the wearisome task assigned him of compiling from an immense mass of papers a complete edition of all the Doctor's works, receives the following consolation: Go on. You must be well aware how instructive, how exceedingly instructive, your present task is to you, and must still further be when I come to criticise and correct all you shall do.' Davies writes that he is at work from six in the morning till ten at night; to which the Doctor replies: You must work; not as I have done, for that I do not expect, but as you can. Your labours in no other way can be so profitable to the world, or so improving to yourself."

Mr. Bamford's account is equally ludicrous. 'He triumphantly displayed the mighty advantages with which I was favoured in being allowed to copy and transcribe, from little scraps of paper and backs of letters, the chaotic effusions of his ardent mind. This was real training, far better than being at the university; and nobody knew where it might end, or what you may come to, if you give yourself up to this thing.' He would remark, after he tried my fidelity,- Now you know all my concerns; other people require oaths

EXAGGERATING TRIFLES.

61

of secrecy; no man engages a common clerk, without having security for his faithfulness: but here I allow you to see my papers, and trust only to your honour. Though I do not ask you to swear, yet I expect that you will consider yourself as fully bound as if you were sworn to secrecy.''

In this respect alone, the attaching of vast importance to supposed discoveries in education,- Lancaster resembled him. He, too, had his mysteries,' known only to the initiated. He, too, was a moral spectacle, and a wonder to himself. If Bell wielded one of the most stupendous engines' known 'since the days of our Saviour and his apostles,' Lancaster was not a whit behind in celebrity. He could instruct a thousand children at the same time out of one book ;' -his youngest pupil could teach arithmetic with the certainty of a mathematician, without knowing anything about it himself:' and by these wonderful inventions' the world was to be regenerated. If Bell'attached an overweening importance to trifles, and insisted with vehemence on all his notions being adopted,' Lancaster, (we were about to say,) outdid him, but that was impossible,-in this species of extravagance. Yet his boasted methods of punishment were radically bad, and have long since been abandoned as degrading and mischievous; and his system of

G