An Old Educational Reformer t Dr. Andrew Bell. By Professor
Moiklejohn. (Blackwood,)—It is not every one in these days who knows what is meant by the "Madras System" which some eighty years ago made the name of Boll famous. Briefly, it meant teaching by monitors, a plan which has been very extensively adopted in our primary schools, though not carried to the length which its originator contemplated. The name of "The Madras " System it got from the fact that it was at Madras that Dr. Boll, then a chaplain in the East India Company's Service, first put it into execution. The life which Professor Meiklejohn, who himself enjoys an endowment furnished by Dr. Bell's munificence, has bore given us is an interesting one. The son of a barber at St. Andrew's—not a common barber, it must be understood, but a friend of Professors—Andrew Bell dis- tinguished himself throughout life by a practical sense which enabled him to achieve success in more ways than ouo. Ho wrought a great change in education, and did what, perhaps, was more valuable than any improvements of detail, gave a great impulse to popular feeling in its favour; and he attained a position of considerable dignity, holding at the time of his death the Mastership of Sherbtrne Hospital and a Canonry at West- minster, and he realised a very handsome fortune. Much of this fortune he bestowed in his lifetime on the furtherance of tho cause to which he devoted himself. The life is well told, in moderate compass, without any °Misie° hero-worship. Dr. Bell, indeed, though a most uaeful citizen, was scarcely a hero. Ile had through- out life a too evident eye to the main chance—though, as will have
been seen, he was capable of generous acts—and ho was not above jealousy. In any case, ho deserved commemoration, and Professor Meiklejohn, utilising the materials to be found in the volumes put, together by Southey and his nephew, has given him his desert in a very satisfactory manner.
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