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biographies were compiled to read to small sets of boys, varying in age from fifteen to eighteen: it was found that many boys appreciated a certain literary precision, which could hardly be attained in discourses delivered extempore from notes; and the time at our disposal being necessarily somewhat short, it was found difficult to secure harmony and proportion in biographical lectures, unless the limits were carefully laid down beforehand. But it is intended that the lectures should be assisted by oral explanation and questions from time to time, and if a teacher were to see that any set of boys found interest in a particular biography, the sources from which it can be illustrated and supplemented are easily available.

It is no doubt the experience of many teachers that biography has the power of arresting and retaining the interest of a class to a degree that hardly any other literature possesses; and at the same time the well-known biographies are, as a rule, both too copious and too advanced both in expression and thought to be adapted for reading aloud to boys of average intelligence; so, in compiling these lives, we have kept in view the advantages of the learner rather than the pleasure of the lecturer, a point of view which a teacher is apt to overlook, the more enthusiastic for his subject he is.