LIEBIG'S BOYHOOD.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 187, 24 January 1877, Page 4

LIEBIG'S BOYHOOD.

0 Lietuo was distinguished at school as ‘ booby,’ the only talent then cultivated in German schools being verbal memory. On one occasion, being sneeringly asked by the master what ho proposed to become, since he was so had a scholar, and .answering that he would be a chemist, the whole school hurst into a laugh of derision. Not long ago Liebig saw las old school-master, who feelingly lamented his own former blindness. The only boy in the same school who ever disputed with Liebig the station of ‘ booby ’ was one who never could learn his lesson by heart, but was continually composing music, and writing it down by stealth in school. The same individual Liebig lately found at Vienna, distinguished as a composer, and conductor of the Imperial Opera House. I think las name is Renling. It is to bo hoped that a move rational system of school instruction than that is now gaining ground. Can any tiling be more absurd or detestable than a system which made Walter Scott and Justus Liebig 1 boobies’ at school, and so effectually concealed their natural talents, that, for example, Liebig was often lectured before the whole scfiool on his being sure to cause misery and broken hearts to his parents, while he was all the time conscious, as the above anecdote proves, of the possession of talents similar in kind to those he has since displayed.—Dr Gregory.