PART II. THE PUBLIC SCHOOL.

CHAPTER VII.

I GO TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL.

"Ma fortune va prendre une face nouvelle."-RACINE.

“Ah, happy hills! ah, pleasing shade!

Oh, fields beloved in vain,

Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain!

I feel the gales that from ye blow

A momentary bliss bestow,

And redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring."

GRAY.

I REMAINED at home about six months recruiting my strength, which had been sorely tried by the treatment I had experienced at Weston, and by the excitement of my hurried exit from that (to me)

dreadful prison. My parents took a great deal of pains and trouble in the selection of the next school I was to go to.

My father went to one which had then a very considerable reputation, and was spoken well of on all hands; and, by talking not only with the masters, but with the leaders of the school, he did all in his power to obtain an insight into the working of the system of fagging which was prevalent there, as well as to discover the morale of the school itself. He did not make such particular inquiries about the learning, for he well knew that if a schoolboy wished to get on and do himself credit, he might do so at any school; and if he chose to neglect his lessons and to waste his time, no schoolmaster and no school rules would effectually make a well-informed man of him.

But even after he had fixed that he would send his son to the great public school of Harby-onthe-Thames, he had also to select a house to which to send him. At Harby, as at most of the public schools, the school itself is a college, and the masters of this college receive boys into the houses where they live, from whence they attend

lessons daily at the schools. The houses are entirely under the control of the masters to whom they belong; and it was no easy matter to decide which house was the best. In theory, the masters told him, the merits of a house depended entirely upon what boys were at that time at the head of it, and that the houses went up and down in their moral positions according as the elder boys left for Cambridge or Oxford, or remained at Harby. In practice, the boys he questioned, one and all, informed him that their house was far the best; demonstrating it past all contradiction by various little anecdotes, showing the immorality of all other houses and the perfect propriety of their own.

So my father, having collected as many suffrages as he could, fixed on Mr. Oswell's house as being the one which most of his informants considered the best after their own, and about which he had heard the fewest anecdotes-though when he related one or two of them to me they made my hair stand on end.

But even now that the school and the house were fixed upon, we found that no vacancy would occur till the end of the summer vacation, now

five months hence. I was highly delighted at the prospect of being nearly half-a-year more at the home I had so easily quitted eighteen months before.

But happily for me, as I was being sadly spoilt and wasting my time dreadfully—for it is quite hopeless work to get a schoolboy ever to settle down to work again at home—a letter arrived one morning from Mr. Oswell, announcing a vacancy, and a week after I was en route.

The great public school of Harby-on-theThames is situated on a rising ground in one of the grass-growing counties of England, and was a long day's journey from my home.

We arrived in the evening-for my father accompanied me-and walked up from the station to the schools, which were beyond the little village of Harby and on the other side of the river.

The whole playground-bounded at one end by the chapel, the long range of schools, and schoolnouse, and the head-master's house-was quite full of boys playing or looking on at a great school match: the monitors against the school, I think it was.

Hundreds of boys were lying on the

slope, from which they could command the best view of the game, and ladies and children were walking about in places which were considered safe from the incursions of the hard-struck balls. Crowds of amateurs sat round the scorer, and applauded or hissed each success or failure. The clear space in front was occupied by the players in the game; the monitors in their pink flannel shirts and white dresses and the school champions in their white shirts and straw hats.

It was a most beautiful scene. The sun had sunk behind the fine old elms-some of the finest trees I have ever seen in this country-and the cool evening breezes reminded you how oppressively hot it had been all day. The magnificent range of buildings at the end of the playground were tinged with a red light, which contrasted well with the dark shade behind the Gothic arch of the chapel and the ivy-covered battlements of the head-master's house. Through the painted windows of the chapel streamed all the colours of the kaleidoscope, and the bright spring grass looked autumnal in the shade.