of themselves. For myself, however, I find him fully as interesting and attractive when introducing us to the men and women of his own day. His pictures of contemporary life, while very gloomy, cannot, I think, be set aside as the mere reflection of his own sad feelings, the outcome of personal disappointment; nor can they, in his case, as they might in the case of many another poet, be discounted as the dreams of a recluse who took no part in the actual business of life. The evils which he depicts are evils which he was in a position to have personal knowledge of, and are just the same sort of evils which we find lamented in his contemporary Gascoigne's poem, called "The Stele Glass." However, if a study of his works tends to dissipate some delusions respecting the Elizabethan court and the Elizabethan age generally, as we fancy them, for example, when we read the pages of Charles Kingsley, the fact is not without its consolations. It is somewhat reassuring to us, when disheartened by the contemplation of the many glaring evils which are to be seen in society to-day, to remember that, to the eye of an observant and high-minded man, there were clouds as dark, or darker, over the moral and intellectual sky of that bygone age, which yet shines out upon us one of the grandest periods in the whole of our country's annals. title of this paper rather than its con verse. The whole subject of the Philosophy of Blunders, it must be confessed at the outset, is at once too wide for this paper and too deep for its writer. The blunders to be discussed are only some of those which come under the notice of an examiner in the course of oral and written examinations of various grades. The process of examination may be regarded as a kind of thinking by proxy, or of co-operative thinking, either in the form of reminiscence or of reasoning. If the examination is mainly on matters of fact, or a revisal of matter previously committed to memory, it takes the form of remembering by proxy. If the question assume the form of what would be described in arithmetic as a problem, or in geometry as a rider, the process is that of reasoning by proxy. That is, of course, looking at it. from the examiner's point of view. From the side of the examiné there is, unfortunately, nothing vicarious in the proceeding-it is severely personal. The expression "thinking by proxy," however unjustifiable or inexact, has been used to bring out the fact that the examiner does not merely ask questions, as one would do who desires information. His mind has already performed a certain course of reminiscence or of reasoning regarding the subject under review. He then initiates the same process in the mind of the pupil or candidate by suggesting to him the first links of the same chain of thinking, with the object of discovering how far that mind is qualified by training and information to complete the chain. Now it is clear that the required chain of reminiscence may fail in the case of the pupil from a variety of causes. In the first place, there may be ignorance of certain facts or events embraced in it. Again, the clue given by the examiner may be insufficient to suggest the next link in the series; and this may result either from a real defect in the form of the question, or from a relative defect as regards some individual pupil who has been accustomed to a more suggestive form of as distinct from mere failure to answer, the examiner is responsible rather than the pupil. The latter takes the words of the former literally, and without the qualification which an adult mind would probably feel to be necessary; the result is, from the examiner's point of view, a blunder. But in dealing with immature minds one should be careful to say what he means. Examples of blunders due to this cause will doubtless be easily recalled by such readers as have had anything to do with elementary school-work. One may be The performance of a chain of reasoning, which is more or less new to the pupil, may also fail from various causes. Some of the more obvious may be mentioned. The data supplied by the examiner may be insufficient, mis- | quoted. A little boy in the course of leading, or misapprehended. There may be a weakness of the reasoning power which might fairly have been expected from the pupil, either general or confined to the subject of examination. Or there may be a want of information as to the subject, or an imperfect memory of the facts required, due to any of the various sources of incorrect reminiscence mentioned in the preceding paragraph. So much for the more obvious causes of partial failure in this process of thinking by proxy-thinking begun by the examiner and continued by the pupil for him. Partial failure is all that concerns us at present. Total failure does not amount to blunder or error, which is always a partial truth. Mere ignorance is never equivalent to blunder; that is always error or falsehood masquerading in the garb of truth. It is literally a mis-take. In mere ignorance there is nothing to take, either amiss or otherwise. The pupil who is merely ignorant of a subject, and knows he is ignorant of it, does not blunder; he holds his peace. It is he who is ignorant, and does not know it, that cheers the examiner's heart with those refreshing blunders, the gleaning of which is sometimes supposed to form the favorite occupation of professional examiners. It has already been stated that any stoppage or divergence of the desired train of thought may be due to the examiner as well as to the pupil. It may even be broadly asserted that in perhaps a majority of cases of blunder, his reading lesson came to the word "widow," and called it "window," a word more familiar to him. The teacher, who was acting as examiner, corrected the blunder, and then, wishing to improve the occasion, put the question, "What is the difference between 'widow' and 'window'?" The boy's answer began, "You can see through a window, but-" and then stopped. The amusement plainly visible on the teacher's face prevented this miniature Sam Weller from completing the contrast. Now, the blunder here, so far as it was a blunder, was entirely due to the teacher. He did not mean to impress on his pupils the transparency of a window as contrasted with a widow, but the difference in spelling between the two words. The following instance, taken from a school in the same village as that just referred to, though it is not an actual case of blunder, serves to illustrate the fact that the younger mind is sometimes the more accurate. The teacher of an infant class was talking to her children one morning about birds. The fact had been dwelt on that birds have wings where we have arms, and that by these wings they have the power of flying. In winding up the lesson, just before dismissing the class for lunch, the following question was put in order to stimulate the imagination of the children regarding the subject, "Now, would you not all like to have wings, as the birds have, so that you could fly straight home as soon as you get out?" There was a chorus of assent, euphony we leave the answer in the boy's own dialect. The teacher was somewhat shocked, no doubt, and the class somewhat amused, but the question was not answered. And so the teacher began the quotation again, this time filling up the ellipsis himself, "Now, then," he concluded, "Simon was a-stonished." And no doubt so were the pupils, as well as the other listeners. but one cautious little fellow shook his, replied the boy, and for the sake of head and answered "No." "Why not?" asked his teacher, surprised. "Because I could not sup." And this little dissentient had alone grasped the bearings of the question. The choice suggested was wings in place of arms and hands; had it been wings in addition to these he would have felt safe to answer Yes; but without hands how could he sup his kail or his porridge? Better walk home with that pleasure in view than fly home without it. Besides the unconsciously incomplete question in examining or in teaching, we often have the intentionally incomplete question, or elliptical question, as it is technically called. It is not really a question at all, but a form of the "missing word competition," which still survives. The examiner makes a statement which he asks the children to complete for him. The clue is either so obvious as to make the exercise quite worthless for the end in view, or else so obscure that nothing but a lucky guess can discover the missing word. In either case it is worthless for the purposes of examination, and pernicious for those of teaching. The following is selected from among many as an example of how this kind of question sometimes works. The subject of lesson was the "Miraculous draught of fishes." Simon said, We have toiled all night and caught nothing,'" quoted the teacher; "then they let down the net, and enclosed a great multitude of fishes; now, then, Simon was a" "Disciple," replied one lad. "Apostle," another suggested; but these answers were waved aside. The quotation was given again, and this time the apparently pertinent answer "Fisherman" was offered, but not accepted. The class was now quite at a loss to see what particular aspect of Simon was in the teacher's mind. One more trial he made, emphasizing the contrast between "catching nothing" and "enclosing a great multitude of fishes." One boy saw the contrast clearly now, and drew a startling conclusion; "now, then," the teacher repeated, "Simon was a-" "Leear," Another question may be quoted, not, indeed, elliptical, but admitting a yet wider variety of answers. The young teacher wished to lead up to the word "Labor," the subject of his proposed lesson, and began, "If anybody does anything, what does he do?" No articulate answer was offered to that question. Coming next to blunders for which the examiner cannot be held responsible, it must be admitted that many of these defy classification. But they generally fall into two groups-those due to defective memory, and those due to defective reasoning. In so far as there is error and not mere failure to answer, these might be otherwise described generally as the substitution of reasoning for memory, and the substitution of memory for reasoning. By far the most numerous group will be found to be that which consists of blunders due to the substitution of memory for reasoning. This is the most common type of blunder due to defective training in reasoning, the remainder of this genus usually consisting of blunders due to reasoning from a false analogy. But the substitution of reasoning for memory is perhaps productive of specimens which are more amusing. In the examples immediately following, defective memory and analogical reasoning are together responsible for the blunders. The child was in each case expected to answer from memory, as the matter had been previously explained in the class. In the first instance, the subject of examination was Jesus and the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. "What were they doing on the seashore?" was asked. "Gathering buckies," was the answer given by a child, whose recollection of the seashore was more vivid than that of his previous lesson. The second example comes from the same school. In rehearsing the story of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the question was put, "Why was there no room in the inn?" "Because it was pay-day," came at length from a little fellow, who seemed to know well the appearance of the "inn" on the fortnightly pay-day in the mining village where he lived. The third example of this kind is drawn from a northern Sunday-school. The subject of lesson was the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. "Why did the people strew palm-branches in the way?" asked the teacher. One pupil, impressed no doubt by the hostility of one section of the Jews rather than by the enthusiasm of the other, gave the startling explanation, "To trip the cuddy." This kind of blunder, it may be noted, is perhaps more common in Scripture | lessons than in any other kind. And the reasons for this are plain. Analogies from personal experience are certain to mislead when applied to scenes SO different in every way. At the same time, and often for the same reason, the subjects are less clearly understood, and less vividly present to the imagination, so that memory has to work under serious disadvantages. In such a case memory must be almost entirely verbal memory, and verbal memory does not seem to satisfy intelligent children. They refuse to be mere tablets on which words may be recorded. If the words convey no meaning, they will put a meaning into them, right or wrong. Some such instinct it must have been that led a little boy recently to repeat the children's favorite psalm with a variation of his own, thus: My table Thou hast furnished -not an unreasonable rendering if he Similar reasons help to make the sub | ject of history a fruitful source of blunders among children. The memory is apt to be purely a verbal memory, which is always apt to lead to more or less ludicrous errors. But unfortunately children do not have any monopoly in this class of blunder. Some of the quotations which follow are taken from the papers of pupil-teachers seeking admission to training colleges, and the others from those of students who had been in training in these colleges for one or two years. In each blunder the point where memory began to go wrong is easily seen, and the slip is generally due to a similarity in sound between two words. "Tyre was destroyed by fire and brimstone; its site is covered by the Dead Sea." The groups "Tyre and Sidon" and "Sodom and Gomorrha" had evidently got mixed up. "John Wesley joined the navy in 1779, and by degrees rose to be Duke of Wellington." John Wesley is here, as is not at all uncommon in such papers, confounded with Sir Arthur Wellesley, and the navy has been put in place of the army. "Pope is celebrated for his Essays on Man and on the Human Understanding." This is quite a typical example of the results of cramming up literary history. A more extreme case of confusion may be added: "Sir Thomas More lived in the | reign of William; he was a great poet; some of his poems were 'Colebs in Search of a Wife,' 'Ye Mariners of England,' and 'The Descent of Man.' He was also one of the greatest preachers of his time." Such answers will continue to be given so long as students are encouraged or allowed to discuss, criticise, classify, or even mention works which they have never seen, much less read. The name More is frequently confused with Moore, and Moore the poet with Sir John Moore, as in the following: "Sir Thomas More, a famous general, born in Ireland, wrote several essays and poems. He was killed at the battle of Corunna.” Further examples of confusion of names may be given: "Gibraltar was seized by Richard Hooker," instead of Admiral Rooke; "Charles I. impris oned nine members; among these was George Eliot," instead of Sir John Elliot-this not an uncommon blunder among women students; "The Maid of Norway was the granddaughter of Alexander the Great," for Alexander I.; "Pym was a companion of Hampden in the ship called the Pilgrim Fathers which sailed to America in 1620," where the confusion of the name given to the passengers with that of the ship is responsible for part of the blunder; "The Culdees were fire-worshippers," possibly the name Parsees was in the student's mind here; "Their religion [that of the ancient Britons] was Druidism, and they firmly believed in Transubstantiation," perhaps transmigration of souls is meant. The following answers show the result of memorizing historical or political events without understanding their import: "The evidences which still remain of the Roman occupation are the building of houses and the making of shoes," arts which are said to have been introduced among the ancient Britons by the Romans; "In 1867 the Second Reform Act was passed, which conceded fair rents, fixity of tenure, and free sale of public holdings," in which among other things there is evidence that the technical meaning of "Reform" is unknown. Even chronology, which is the crammer's strong point, goes astray under the effort to reproduce statements seen somewhere in a text-book. For example, "During the reign of Queen Elizabeth one of her most able supporters was Cranmer, a Protestant. During the reign of Queen Mary, Cranmer was burned for heresy," a statement made by a student who could not possibly be ignorant of the fact that Mary's reign preceded that of Elizabeth. Again, "Montfort was the chief man in getting the Constitutions of Clarendon passed in 1158, fought at Lewes in 1264, was killed in 1265," a statement made by one who must have been aware that she was assigning to the good earl a public career of one hundred and seven years. But these students had determined to rely on memory for their answers, and it did not occur to them to apply their common sense to check the result. In subjects of a scientific cast, blupders, it might be expected, would arise chiefly from faulty reasoning. But experience shows that in examination papers they are almost entirely due to the absence of reasoning, and to the substitution of an attempt to remember phrases and statements seen in the text-book, even when these are glaringly inapplicable. And however ungallant it may be to say so, experience seems to indicate that this vice is more prevalent among women than among men students. Papers in Euclid, among others, indicate this. Girls are more ready than boys to inform the examiner that "a circle is a figure bounded by one straight line," and perhaps only a girl could have defined a point as "that which has length and breadth but no magnitude." In arithmetical problems more errors are due to this tendency than to incorrect figuring. Memory suggests a "rule" apparently applicable to the terms of the problem, and this rule is applied with a trust so implicit that the result is never examined in the light of common sense. So the examiner is informed, for example, that an ounce of tea costs as many pounds as it should do pence, or that a poorrate of over twenty shillings in the pound, instead of as many pence, is necessary to raise a given sum. But these blunders are too common to require illustration. Geography, more especially in its physical aspect, is the subject which perhaps affords the best opportunities for science teaching, among all the subjects of the elementary school curriculum. It, therefore, provides most pitfalls for those who aim at producing a maximum of "results" with a minimum of thinking. Blunders in this subject give ample evidence that "science falsely so called" did not pass away with the apostolic age. The explanation of common physical phenomena such as the seasons, day and night, the tides, and so forth, form part of the course of study in most schools, and of pupil-teachers and |