WILLIAM BALLANTYNE HODGSON.* THERE is only one thing about this

book that is quite satis- factory ; it consists of a single volume of modest dimensions. Professor Meiklejohn, who describes himself, not as its author, but as its editor, warns his readers in his preface that, "as in the lives of most men who have given themselves to thought and study, there were in the life of Dr. Hodgson very few events." We should have said that Dr. Hodgson's life was one of activity, rather than of thought. But, letting that pass, why should Professor Meiklejohn, or who- ever is really responsible for this book, make such a mystery of the " few events " that actually took place in the life that is here recorded P We are informed that "from both sides of his house" Hodgson "inherited a powerful intellect, extreme sensitiveness of temperament, and almost volcanic passions." He styled his mother a second Mrs. Poyser, and described his father as " a man of a most powerful intellect, and passions of tremendous energy and depth." Yet we are told nothing of the life of these parents ; their Christian names, the very occupa- tion of the father, are not given. Then there seems to have been an ogress of a half-sister, who tortured Hodgson in his earliest days ; might we not have had some in- formation as to her life after her half-brother escaped from her influence P Dr. Hodgson resembled George Combe in some respects, and was, to a certain extent, the propagator of Combe's doctrines on education. Would that his biographer had imported into his work a little of the minute.

ness of Combe, who tells us that "his father was George Comb, brewer ; and his mother, Marion Newton, daughter of Abram Newton, of Curriehill ;" that his father was " six feet two inches in stature, and proportionally strongly formed in the trunk and limbs ;" and that his mother was " a short, well-formed woman, with a highly nervous and bilious temperament, a dark, fine

skin, dark hair, and fine, dark eyes, and an energetic step !" The years that intervene between a man's leaving college and his

settling down to the business of life are generally reckoned as of

the highest importance; during these his moral nature, as a rule, is being formed. What would Trollope's Autobiography or Carlyle's Reminiscences be without the "early struggles"

recorded in each, dissimilar as these are P But all we are told of this period in Hodgson's life is this :—" For a few years after leaving college, young Hodgson was chiefly engaged in lecturing, education, and phrenology ; and he was for a few months at work on a newspaper, as editor. His lecturing and editing were, however, confined chiefly to the county of Fife, where he made many useful and valuable friendships, which he retained throughout his life." If we know every detail of Car- lyle's Kirkcaldy schoolmastering, why should we not be given some definite information about Hodgson's editing, "confined chiefly to the county of Fife," the more especially as we are subsequently informed that he was "a born journalist," and had special aptitudes for what some of us will be surprised to hear is " that most seductive of professions."

Dr. Hodgson, it may be presumed, had his money difficulties and his love-affairs early in life. His attachment for his younger brother, Thomas, who was drowned while quite young, was warm and deep. He says in one of his letters (p. 33), "I have loved as deeply as I think it was possible to do, and more

• Life and Litters If William Balla/thine Hoitinion, LL.D., late Profeeeer of ECOTIOMiC Science in the University of Edinburgh. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn, M.A., Professor of the Theory. History, and Practice of Education in the Uni- versity of St. Andrew's. Edinburgh : David Douglas. 1583. deeply than I can do again," and "when I had not a shilling

certain in the world, I was careless of money and extrava- gant." The most enjoyable, because most naive, thing in the whole biography is an extract from Hodgson's diary when he was sixteen :—" I never saw her look so beautiful. Had a very excellent sermon Went to church in the afternoon.

The ladies were not there. Had a most wretched sermon." We confess to being rather sorry to find that when Hodgson ap- proaches his nineteenth year, " the ecstasy of intellectual insight and appreciation rises np in strong morning light," in this fashion :—" Mr. S— gave a most magnificent lecture on The Importance of Intellectual Culture.' The admiration I felt at different parts was so intense that the tears started from

my eyes. My delight was inexpressible. I sat on the left of Miss S—. I forgot her presence in the depth of my atten- tion." But Dr. Hodgson's biographer may think that what he terms his "passing love-fits," and early history generally, are not worth giving particulars of. Why, then, does he lift the veil from the sober loves of his hero at forty-seven P 'Why print from private letters addressed to the lady who became his second wife such Grandisonian sentiments, oddly though mildly dashed with heterodoxy, as these?— "I am sure that your experience coincides with mine, and that we grow dearer to each other the more and the longer we are together. So may it ever be, my darling, as years go on ; and thus old age will have only one terror for us—the fear of an approaching separation. Even that thought, when it does cross our minds, will but make us cling more closely and fondly to each other, so as, at. once, once to make the most and the best of what time may be granted to us in the order of Providence, and to give the least possible cause for self-reproach to the one whose fate it may be to survive the other. Neither, my beloved, shall we fail to look forward to a reunion hereafter, if not with the certainty of conviction, at least with the fond yearnings of hope, and full faith in the unspeakable goodness of God, who has so strangely, and yet so naturally, united us in love so tender, so blissful, and (I fear not to say) so enduring. Thoughts so solemn will purify and hallow, not mar or sadden, our union. If we do not much frequent churches, we must try to make our home a church, not for weekly ceremonials, but for daily offerings of good deeds and high thonghts, and love which, ever springing in oar own hearts, shall run over on all around, near and far."

We have in this book, in short, the portrait of Dr. Hodgson not as a man, living, loving, struggling, and it may even be blunder- ing and sinning, but as one of Providence's automata, getting through an enormous amount of work in the shape of teaching, talking, lecturing, organising, platforming, pamphleteering, and letter-writing. There may have been another Dr. Hodgson than this; some who may have met him in society or have seen him in his pleasant northern retreat of Bonaly may be certain that there was. Yet Professor Meiklejohn, though he testifies to Dr. Hodgson's brilliancy—he was unquestionably a good talker, of a school rapidly dying out—his geniality, and the like, can hardly be said to let us see this other side of his character. A few puns, some readable letters about his travels, and a rather laboured account of a students' breakfast at Bonaly, by one who attended his lectures as Professor of Economic Science in Edinburgh, are practically all the materials we have here given on which to form a judgment as to the inner life of a man who cannot have been absolutely devoted to essentially objective activities. This book is, indeed, a lengthy notice of the kind that appears in biographical dictionaries, padded out with extracts from letters. We learn that Professor Hodgson was born in Edinburgh in 1815, and died in Brussels in 1880 ; that after being educated in his native city, he did some editing and lecturing in Fifeshire ; that he filled in succession the posts of Secretary and Principal of the Liverpool Educational Institute; Principal of the Chorlton High School, Manchester ; Assistant-Commissioner in Primary Education ; Examiner is Political Economy in the University of London, and finally, Professor of Political Economy and Commercial Law in the University of Edinburgh. For the rest, he was an intense lover of Mr. Gladstone (though he does not seem to have understood Mr. Bright), and an equally intense hater of Lord Beaconsfield- Professor Meiklejohn might, indeed, have refrained from repro- ducing so many of the epithets that Dr. Hodgson hurled at that deceased statesman. Many of ns had to do a good deal of heavy firing, in the days that preceded the fall of the late Con- servative Government. But does it serve any good purpose to pick up and preserve the bullets of hot controversy ? Dr. Hodgson was, according to his lights, a friend of religions toleration, and his resignation in 1867 of his seat on the Council of University College, on account of the treatment accorded to Dr. Martineau in connection with the vacant Chair of Logic, is not yet forgotten. It is not very easy to say what theological opinions he held before his death. He had been driven from the traditional Calvinism of his country by his

early family experiences—" the worst features of my character are due to my never having known as others do the feel- ings which make home and the family"—and he was critical and almost bitter towards it to the last. He wrote to Dr. Martineau. in 1853 that his views most closely agreed with those of the Unitarian body, but that he had been " chilled and repelled by the majority of the Unitarians whom he knew." In his later years he gave utterance to opinions that seemed to

to many savour of the popular agnosticism of the day; yet his family prayers, which are given as an appendix to this volume, are essentially Theistic.

Dr. Hodgson was, above all things, an educationist, though in the largest and most liberal sense. Professor Meiklejohn evi- dently consider him a far-seeing politician and a profound economist as well; but we doubt this very much. He was an omnivorous reader, indeed, and took an intense interest in the political questions and economical problems of his day ; he was, in fact, intense, imitative, and industrious, rather than sagacious or original. There is no evidence that he was anything more than

a clear expositor of the economy in vogue, when he became ex- aminer in and ultimately Professor of that subject. Professor Meiklejohn sees a proof of his political sagacity in his pre- dicting the fall of the Second Empire ; but then he had been in Paris at the time of the coup tractt, and had seen the rotten- ness of the foundations of the Imperial edifice. He was all at sea about the issues of the Civil War in America ; he calculated that Mr. Gladstone would in 1874 come back from the General Election with a reduced majority ; and he was doubtful about the result of the Midlothian candidature in 1880. Into

education and everything connected with it, however, Hodg- son threw his whole heart, and soul, and strength, and mind. It may be doubted if any work in the way of organising secondary and higher education was ever better done than that which was accomplished by him in Manchester and Liverpool. It is to his exertions mainly, his ceaseless activity, and his unflagging enthusiasm, that Scotland possesses even the two Chairs of edu- cation it now has. His letters, indeed, show him to have looked at almost everybody he came across from the educational point of view. On his travels on the Continent, he meets with a self-indul-

gent young blockhead ; he does not rest till he traces the unsatis- factory condition of the poor boy to the bad discipline of a private school in Surrey. Although frugal almost to penuriousness, he was generous in a variety of ways, and assisted many strug- gling persons. Yet when a lady- applied to him for help, whose father, although connected with an Insurance Company, had not insured his life, he must, before giving her what she needs, comment on the phenomenon in this style,—" Pardon me, if I say that my already strong conviction is greatly strengthened that our systems of teaching and training at home and at school must be radically defective, in failing to prevent, in not even trying to prevent, the recurrence of such a state of things." He was didactic, even at the expense of taste. Pro-

fessor Meiklejohn's account of Dr. Hodgson's work at Man- chester is worth quoting, as giving us the man in his true element :—

" His attention to the smallest details is something wonderful. He suggests to one teacher the propriety of showing his pupils how to fold and address letters properly; explains to another how geography may be made interesting ; invents and prescribes sets of exercises for many of the classes ; shows how difficult lines from Milton's Paradise Lost may be best explained ; teaches the French master how to teach French ; cuts down the 'theory' of a singing-master, and induces him to give his class more practice in the art itself ; gives valuable lessons in discipline to masters who are pedantic, lifeless, vexatious, irritable, or too woodenly strict; shows another bow to invent and put questions ; gives a lesson in the art of reading ; maps out a Latin sentence ; shows how drill in the accidence may be best conducted ; introduces easy and workable pens; is equal to the highest and careful of the very lowest element. Mena agitat molem, totoque infunditur orbs. Nay, he spends even his holidays in study- ing the profession of teaching and in picking up plans and ideas in other schools. He visits the High Schools of the larger towns of Scotland ; and, by careful inspection and diligent questioning, learns what to aim at, to follow, or to avoid. Everywhere he combines in a quite unequalled degree the most orderly business habits with the constant demand that thinking shall permeate every part of the school-work ; he makes himself acquainted with each pupil ; and takes a real interest in the progress of each member of a school of nearly seventeen hundred."

Hodgson was an incessant letter-writer ; indeed, his warmest admirers must have wished he had written less, and brooded, or even mooned, alittle more. In the course of a life full of varied activity, he must have seen many leading men of his time. Yet in this volume there is disappointingly little of a quotable char. acter about his contemporaries. He dismisses Lord Shaftesbury (when Lord Ashley) as a " dandified, fiddle-faddle humanitarian." He finds Carlyle an " unsatisfactory man," while he is favour- ably impressed by Leigh Hunt. His account of Douglas Jerrold is perhaps the most interesting, and it certainly is the most curious, of his London jottings :—

" Douglas Jerrold's house is the further part of a double cottage, with gardens before and behind. It stands on rather a lonely way on Putney Common, but it is a pleasant little place. I sent in my card and Clarke's letter, and in a minute or two out came a little, round-shouldered, sharp-faced man, who offered his band, and said he was glad to see me, and asked me to come in. I went with him into his library, a pretty little room about the size of mine ; one side is lined with book-shelves, with a very nice collection of books ; two windows look out upon the common, and over the chimney-piece hangs a portrait of himself, not very like. I told him that I knew of his arrival from Mr. Dickens, whom I had met the day before at the exhibition in Westminster Hall. He said he was going to see it this very day. I immediately proposed that we should go together, and to this he at last assented. So he went into the other room to put on his walking dress, and allowed me a few minutes to glance over the titles of the books. On hia return, he looked much improved in appearance. Before we set out, he gave me a copy of his Time Works Wonders,' and I gave him a copy of our last report. As we walked along to the boat, we talked of the death of Hood and Lamar' Blanchard. The latter was Jerrold's most intimate friend, and they were to have met at two p.m. that very day when the dread- ful suicide was committed. As we passed through the village of Putney, an outrider passed us in scarlet or crimson livery and then another. We stood and saw the Queen pass in a char-d-banc, containing twelve people. Prince Albert sat in the second row and the Queen in the first. My eye was distracted among so many persona, and not know- ing which was the Queen, I cannot say that I saw her. The impulse to raise my hat was strong, but as D. J. did not, I too refrained. I was unwilling to be deficient in any usual or proper mark of respect to established authority, though, as you know, I am a pretty staunch republican in sentiment. At the same time, I think that neither has the season come for agitating the question with success, nor would it do any great good at present to destroy the Monarchy. We want many other reforms first ; so long as a people are contented under a monarchy, so long is it unfit for a republic. The Queen was naturally the subject of our conversation. D. J. told me she had turned ' Punch' out of the Palace, though at first she liked it very well ; that she is extremely indifferent to the claims of literary men ; that she would not go to see the Belgian Company at Covent Garden, on account of the Anti-Corn Law League's connection with that house, and that they were consequently removed to Drury Lane, where she went to see them the very first night ; that she would not go to the theatre to see his play, though she went the very first night after its performance was discontinued."

•