take the lowest class in Greek for him, and I was obliged to tell him I did not even know the Greek alphabet. But these little unpleasantnesses once got over did not recur. There were two assistant masters in the school, both pleasant men, but as they did not live in the house I did not see a great deal of them. In drawing, I had only beginners; but I soon found I had to improve myself, so I sketched a good deal, but could never acquire the freedom of touch of my brother William, and before I left, one of my scholars drew very nearly, if not quite, as well as I did.

I had a very comfortable bedroom, where a fire was lit every afternoon in winter, so that with the exception of one hour with the boys and half an hour at supper with Mr. and Mrs. Hill, my time after four or five in the afternoon was my own. After a few weeks, finding I knew a little Latin, I had to take the very lowest class, and even that required some preparation in the evening. Mr. Hill was a good mathematician, having been a rather high Cambridge wrangler, and finding I was desirous of learning a little more algebra, offered to assist me. He lent me Hind's algebra, which I worked all through successfully, and this was followed by the same author's trigonometry, which I also went through, with occasional struggles. Then I attacked the Differential Calculus, and worked through that; but I could never fully grasp the essential principle of it. Finally, I began the Integral Calculus, and here I found myself at the end of my tether. I learnt some of the simpler processes, but very soon got baffled, and felt that I wanted some faculty necessary for seeing my way through what seemed to me an almost trackless labyrinth. Whether, under Mr. Hill's instruction, I should ultimately have been able to overcome these difficulties I cannot positively say, but I have good reason to believe that I never should have done so. Briefly stated, just as

no amount of teaching or practice would ever have made me a good musician, so, however much time and study I gave to the subject, I could never have become a good mathematician. Whether all this work did me any good or not, rather doubtful. My after-life being directed to

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altogether different studies, I never had occasion to use my newly acquired knowledge, and soon forgot most of the processes. But it gave me an interest in mathematics which I have never lost; and I rarely come across a mathematical investigation without looking through it and trying to follow the reasoning, though I soon get lost in the formulæ. Still, the ever-growing complexity of the higher mathematics has a kind of fascination for me as exhibiting powers of the human mind so very far above my own.

There was in Leicester a very good town library, to which I had access on paying a small subscription, and as I had time for several hours' reading daily, I took full advantage of it. Among the works I read here, which influenced my future, were Humboldt's "Personal Narrative of Travels in South America," which was, I think, the first book that gave me a desire to visit the tropics. I also read here Prescott's "History of the Conquests of Mexico and Peru," Robertson's "History of Charles V." and his "History of America," and a number of other standard works. But perhaps the most important book I read was Malthus's "Principles of Population," which I greatly admired for its masterly summary of facts and logical induction to conclusions. It was the first work I had yet read treating of any of the problems of philosophical biology, and its main principles remained with me as a permanent possession, and twenty years later gave me the long-sought clue to the effective agent in the evolution of organic species.

It was at Leicester that I was first introduced to a subject which I had at that time never heard of, but which has played an important part in my mental growth-psychical research, as it is now termed. Some time in 1844 Mr. Spencer Hall gave some lectures on mesmerism illustrated by experiments, which I, as well as a few of the older boys, attended. I was greatly interested and astonished at the phenomena exhibited, in some cases with persons who volunteered from the audience; and I was also impressed by the manner of the lecturer,

which was not at all that of the showman or the conjurer. At the conclusion of the course he assured us that most persons possessed in some degree the power of mesmerising others, and that by trying with a few of our younger friends or acquaintances, and simply doing what we had seen him do, we should probably succeed. He also showed us how to distinguish between the genuine mesmeric trance, and any attempt to imitate it.

In consequence of this statement, one or two of the elder boys tried to mesmerise some of the younger ones, and in a short time succeeded; and they asked me to see their experiments. I found that they could produce the trance state, which had all the appearance of being genuine, and also a cataleptic rigidity of the limbs by passes and by suggestion, both in the trance and afterwards in the normal waking state. This led me to try myself in the privacy of my own room, and I succeeded after one or two attempts in mesmerising three boys from twelve to sixteen years of age, while on others within the same ages I could produce no effect, or an exceedingly slight one. During the trance they seemed in a state of semi-torpor, with apparently no volition. They would remain perfectly quiescent so long as I did not notice them, but would at once answer any questions or do anything I told them. On the two boys with whom I continued to experiment for some time, I could produce catalepsy of any limb or of the whole body, and in this state they could do things which they could not, and certainly would not have done in their normal state. For example, on the rigid outstretched arm I would hang an ordinary chair at the wrist, and the boy would hold it there for several minutes, while I sat down and wrote a short letter for instance, without any complaint, or making any remark when I took it off. I never left it more than five minutes because I was afraid that some injury might be caused by it. I soon found that this rigidity could be produced in those who had been mesmerised by suggestion only, and in this way often fixed them in any position, notwithstanding their efforts to change it. One experiment was to place a shilling on the table in front of a

boy, and then say to him, "Now, you can't touch that shilling." He would at once move his hand towards it, but when halfway it would seem to stick fast, and all his efforts could not bring it nearer, though he was promised the shilling if he could take it.

Every phenomenon of suggestion I had seen at the lecture, and many others, I could produce with this boy. Giving him a glass of water and telling him it was wine or brandy, he would drink it, and soon show all the signs of intoxication, while if I told him his shirt was on fire he would instantly strip himself naked to get it off. I also found that he had community of sensation with myself when in the trance. If I held his hand he tasted whatever I put in my mouth, and the same thing occurred if one or two persons intervened between him and myself; and if another person put substances at random into my mouth, or pinched or pricked me in various parts of the body, however secretly, he instantly felt the same sensation, would describe it, and put his hand to the spot where he felt the pain.

In like manner any sense could be temporarily paralyzed so that a light could be flashed on his eyes or a pistol fired behind his head without his showing the slightest sign of having seen or heard anything. More curious still was the taking away the memory so completely that he could not tell his own name, and would adopt any name that was suggested to him, and perhaps remark how stupid he was to have forgotten it; and this might be repeated several times with different names, all of which he would implicitly accept. Then, on saying to him, "Now you remember your own name again; what is it?" an inimitable look of relief would pass over his countenance, and he would say, 'Why, P of course," in a way that carried complete conviction.

But perhaps the most interesting group of phenomena to me were those termed phreno-mesmerism. I had read, when with my brother, George Combe's "Constitution of Man," with which I had been greatly interested, and afterwards one of the writer's works on Phrenology, and at the lecture I had

seen some of the effects of exciting the phrenological organs by touching the corresponding parts of the patient's head. But as I had no book containing a chart of the organs, I bought a small phrenological bust to help me in determining the positions.

Having my patient in the trance, and standing close to him, with the bust on my table behind him, I touched successively several of the organs, the position of which it was easy to determine. After a few seconds he would change his attitude and the expression of his face in correspondence with the organ excited. In most cases the effect was unmistakable, and superior to that which the most finished actor could give to a character exhibiting the same passion or emotion.

At this very time the excitement caused by painless surgical operations during the mesmeric trance was at its full height, as I have described it in my "Wonderful Century' (chapter xxi.), and I had read a good deal about these, and also about the supposed excitement of the phrenological organs, and the theory that these latter were caused by mental suggestion from the operator to the patient, or what is now termed telepathy. But as the manifestations often occurred in a different form from what I expected, I felt sure that this theory was not correct. One day I intended to touch a particular organ, and the effect on the patient was quite different from what I expected, and looking at the bust while my finger was still on the boy's head, I found that I was not touching the part I supposed, but an adjacent part, and that the effect exactly corresponded to the organ touched and not to the organ I thought I had touched, completely disproving the theory of suggestion. I then tried several experiments by looking away from the boy's head while I put my finger on it at random, when I always found that the effect produced corresponded to that indicated by the bust. I thus established, to my own satisfaction, the fact that a real effect was produced on the actions and speech of a mesmeric patient by the operator touching various parts of the head; that the effect corresponded with the natural expression of the emotion due to the phrenological organ