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a nice hamd writing, and my first Head Master, who himself wrote a very fair hand, took great pains with the boys in this respect. My superintendence consisted in going from one boy to the other and in saying now and then:„Take pains“, or„Take more pains.“ With our German Teachers, by far too little stress is laid upon a good hand-writing, and in consequence our boys are very negligent, and the hand-writing of Germans is mostly indifferent. It is true that another reason for it lies in our double characters, Latin and. Gothic. The English were wise enough to abolish the Gothic characters, which threatened, at one time, to invade England.

Once a week, on Friday nights, a Singing Master came from a neighbouring town and gave our boys a singing-lesson. At the end of each lesson, all the boys sang, in a loud voice, the English National Song of James Thomson:„When Britain first at Heaven's com- mand.“ They especially used to shout the refrain:„Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves,“ very loudly, as if to manifest their strong national pride, which had already taken deep root in their hearts.— A Music Master also came from the same neighbouring town, once a week, to give some of our boys Piano lessons. My Head Master asked me during the first days of my stay at the School, if I could teach Music, but, unhappily for him, I was not able to do so.

In Religion, special instruction was given, consisting chiefly of reading and explaining the Holy Scriptures. Once, the clergyman of the village visited our School, made a little speech and asked for a certain passage from the Bible, but no boy could give the required answer.

As regards the accomplishments of our boys in their mother-tongue, I found them to be much below those of our Elementary Schools. They did not write compositions. In their place, the boys wrote, about every month, a letter to their parents. It was first written upon the slate, corrected by the teachers, then copied by the boys and sent home. The contents were nearly always the same. In the little boys' letters I used to correct, I always came across the phrase:„I hope you are well as I am at present“, or„I hope you are well, as this leaves me at present“.

In Public Schools, according to Mr. Raydt, the pupils write essa, corresponding to our German compositions, but not in all classes, nor regularly during the whole year. Speaking further on this matter, Mr. Raydt says:„Jedoch werden solche im allgemeinen bei weitem nicht so eingehend ausgeführt als bei uns, und wird denselben nicht das Gewicht für die Beurteilung des Schülers beigelegt, wie bei uns mit Recht geschieht. Dass die englischen Schüler trotzdem durchschnittlich besser als die unsrigen im stande sind, mit Leichtigkeit ihre Gedanken in guter Sprache wiederzugeben, hängt vielleicht einmal mit der grösseren Einfach- heit des englischen Stils zusammen; andererseits wird die Gewandtheit des Ausdrucks durch die schriftstellerische Thätigkeit für die Schulzeitungen und durch die Debattierübungen in er- heblichem Masse befördert.“9¹¼ As regards the first reason, Mr. Raydt is quite right, but as to the second, I suppose that only few well-gifted boys distinguish themselves, and I fear, the majority of the pupils may be altogether apathetic to these good mental exercises. But I doubt, whether English boys are abler than ours to express their ideas with ease in good terms. I have had just the contrary experience. Neither has a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph? a good opinion of English schoolboys in this respect, for he says:„As far as the English schoolboy is concerned, correspondence is notoriously not his forte. He is rarely taught to express his ideas or describe his experiences with ease, accuracy, and free- dom in well-chosen terms and coherent phraseology.*

As I have already mentioned, I was teaching together with my first Principal in one and the same room. We could only instruct part of the boys at a time, and the others had to be left to themselves. Of course, some of them were chattering, others were studying, others doing nothing at all. There was a continual noise and bustle. Although my first

¹ Page 179. ²¹ August 1, 1890.