sudden as unexpected: it was preceded by no terrible accident, no exciting adventure, no lingering illness; but the hand of Providence was calmly stretched forth, and our young schoolfellow ceased to be: a bad cold and sore throat, a slight blue mark on his temple, and in a few hours he was no more! Deeply beloved by the elder boys, whose favourite he was, we watched around his bed during the last night he stayed with us. He had only entered a short year before, and we trembled as we heard his last few words, which showed that his mind strangely rambled about a stolen Latin grammar whose pages had been torn out. With painful recollections of our life here, were mingled descriptions of his home, and of his mother-who arrived too late, unfortunately, to receive her boy's last breath.

His words rang in our ears, and touched our hearts: we saw that all could not regard school morality in the light we viewed it; and in long and anxious conversations we planned how to improve it. Serious thoughts filled all the household; and then, if ever, was the time to reform the old lax rules, and to set up a new and higher

standard. It was done almost entirely by the monitors, who were hand and heart with the elder members of the house in their endeavours to purge the morality of the house. The new ideas were at first introduced by no lickings, and enforced by no bullying: only by the proper influence of the leaders of the commonwealth. But, alas! We soon found we had acted like the Girondins, and had inaugurated a reign of terror. The tyranny which was practised during the next few months under this regime of virtue was appalling.

"Once in six years," wrote the first of living essayists, "our virtue becomes outrageous; we cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated; we must make a stand against vice." Accordingly, every slight infringement of rule was most severely punished; a single strong expression was made an excuse for a cuffing, and the slightest instance of boyish tyranny was visited with retribution. In short, the new-born zealots watched for backslidings, rather to punish than to prevent them. The very use of "a crib," or English translation, was deemed criminal by those who for five years had never learned a lesson

Q

without one; it was unpopular not to belong to one of the many little Bible-reading societies; and every sort of goodness was forced upon every member of our house with every kind of hardship. By the end of the half year, all this straitlaced severity had died away; and, to quote Mr. Macaulay again, "Our virtue went quietly to sleep for seven years more."

Meanwhile, the rest of the school sneered at this new-born goodness, and hated us for the airs of superiority and pride which we assumed; they stigmatized our almost super-schoolboy virtue as humbug, and the schoolboy-like tyranny which enforced it, as priggishness. However, the house certainly never, during my stay, relapsed into its previous state; and in so much it was a gain to us: but I am not sure that our sudden fit of purity did not, to some extent, lower the moral tone of the rest of the school.

CHAPTER XVII.

66

THE SIXTH FORM.

"Hence, to repose your trust in me was wise."

DRYDEN.

'Quelque rôle qu 'y joue la force, ce n'est pas la force qui les gouverne, qui préside souverainement à leur destinée; ce sont des idées, des influences morales, qui se cachent sous le accidens de la force, et règlent le cours des sociétés."-GUIZOT.

THE subject of fagging at public schools has lately elicited so many remarks, and occupied so much of the public attention, that I cannot be content with merely leaving the reader to gather such incidental details as may be found in the preceding pages of my School Experience.

I am aware that Englishmen are indignant, and most rightly so, at all illegal violence and arbitrary exercise of power. Not only does a mother's heart throb, at the recital of a story

of schoolboy tyranny; but every honest man's spirit is roused when he sees the might of the strong prevail over the right of the weak. All who have the feelings of Englishmen, are equally ready to enlist the columns of the morning papers in defence of the oppressed fag, as to rush to arms to succour an oppressed nation.

But as one swallow does not make a summer, neither should one well authenticated case of atrocious abuse of monitorial power suffice to brand the system with infamy. Besides, as we all judge of life by our individual experience of itby the trials we ourselves have undergone--so each man judges of fagging by his recollections of his own school-days, and the impression of his own youthful troubles.

Of the various public and private schools, which are the pride of this country, each is differently governed; the discipline of one would be considered tyrannical or feminine by another; the same, terms do not express the same ideas in all. The favourite game of one would be voted infra dig. in the other; and cricket, football, rackets, hockey, or even marbles, may be