Selected Writings of Thomas Godolphin Rooper. With Memoir by R.
G. Tatton. (Blackie and Son. 7s. 6d. net.)—T. G. Rooper was one of the men who develop late. At Harrow he was as good a boy and as loyal to duty as could be wished ; at Oxford he attracted special interest from his teachers, but did only moderately well in the schools. For five years or so after leaving the University he was a private tutor to a young noble. This work finished, he found his right place. The post of school inspector was offered to him. This was what be had long wanted, and that exactly suited him. He brought to it his characteristic sense of duty, and an energy and industry that were beyond the common measure ; but there was something more. We cannot do better than give a part of what his biographer tells us about his views on manual training. This may be said to have been the chief point. Manual training may be prized as tending to make a skilful workman. This was not Rooper's way of looking at it :—" In advocating manual training he wishes to emphasise the ideas of its first founders, namely, that all education must be spiritual,' and that its aim must be nothing less than to make the child as perfect a human being as nature permits him to be made' Time was when every household was a 'miniature technical school.' But in the present day 'machinery saves hand labour, and nothing is done at home. If the training of the hand is omitted at school, the hand is never trained at all.' This means not only the loss of manual dexterity, but a cramping of the intellectual powers, so close is the relation between brain and hand. The necessity of counteracting the dwarfing effect of the subdivision of labour is of the very first importance." Mr. Keeper's career was cut short by the failure of health,—he died in his fifty- sixth year; but he had made his mark. That might have been said of him if he had left nothing behind him beyond the quaintly entitled essay, "The Pot of Green Feathers."
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