visits to it since. Still three years spent at a University may leave a definite stamp upon a man-may modify decisively his opinions and feelings. But if the London University is always to continue an examination, what possible excuse can there be for giving it a member? You might as well give a member to the Indian Examination, or to the Little-go, or to the Voluntary Theological.

AN OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL.

By J. W. HALES, M.A.

THERE is an old school-house still standing, though I believe its use is now altered, somewhere in England-why need I give the exact geographical latitude and longitude?—which, both in its external form and in its inner life, so to speak, was so capital a representative of what an old English grammar school often used to be, that some account of it ought to be placed on record for the benefit of posterity. The class to which it belonged, once most numerous, is rapidly decaying. Education has turned or is turning over a new leaf. The old school-houses are demolished. Their queer old furniture has been knocked down by the auctioneer's hammer, or destroyed. Their quaint customs have been abandoned. Of course, there are many persons that are well qualified, both by experience and literary skill, to be chroniclers of these old institutions. The image of one or other of them rises before the minds of many a grave paterfamilias as he thinks of his early years. When he falls a-dreaming of that extraordinary period when he, now so staid and well-established a householder, was a noisy schoolboy, he finds himself in an old room of the style of Edward the Sixth's time, and perhaps is aroused from his trance by the vividness with which he recollects certain peculiarities of the method which was, for the most part, adopted in such time-honoured buildings. Meanwhile I will in some sort essay the chronicler's part. Let me relate fragments of the vision I see when I throw myself back in my chair, and bid Memory entertain me with the pictures of the old days which she has collected.

I need not describe my old school-room at any great length. It formed the second story of a fair-sized two-storied red brick building. The side walls were fringed with long, much-carved desks, intermitted, on the one hand, to make room for a huge old fire-place; on the other, for the usher's official seat. At the one end of the room arose a sort of dais, in the middle of

'which stood the head master's desk. Never, O Rhadamanthus, Minos, and Æacus, shall your tribunal be more terrible in my eyes than that desk! At the other end stood the desks of the second master, and of the writing master. The centre of the room was, for the most part, an open plain of boards, except that here and there lay the boys' boxes, which, in the absence of forms, were occasionally used as seats when a lesson was being said; and in another place there stood a sort of moveable scaffold, to which was attached certain maps. This simple and simply-garnished apartment was supplemented by a little room, popularly believed to contain a library, known to be the theatre of certain extremer punishments. Ah, that room! How often have I seen its door close on my dearest friends, who, after an interval which seemed ages, have returned to our wistful gaze, certainly sadder, if not wiser boys. I do not think we should have been surprised if they had not returned at all. I remember no farewells so touching as those we took of our fellows who were summoned to visit that appalling inner chamber. When I went to see the old school some three years ago, I could scarcely muster up courage even then to peep into it. This first floor, which I have briefly described, was reached by a pair of roofed stone steps. The roof was of great value on a wet day, when the scholars came early, or the masters late; we crouched, and crowded, and tumbled about beneath it. How we survived those frightful crushes-those of a London season are nothing to them!-why every wet day was not attended by the breaking of some innocent's bones, or indeed the utter extermination of all the smaller boys, are questions whose difficulty has only grown greater as I have grown older, whose solution will not, I fear, be ever attained by me. The ground floor of the building was occupied by certain almswomen. What a peaceful hermitage they must have found their quarters! Remembering all the graceful consideration for the feelings of their elders which characterizes boys, I think I need hardly say their windows were not broken more than once a day. Ah! good dames! do ye forgive us where ye now are? The smash of your panes cannot now disquiet you. Add to the scene a large gravelled playground, spreading on two sides of the school-house, and the school premises are complete. They stood in a quiet old lane, facing a garden wall, whose unscaleable height provoked much indignation, for there were traditions of wonderful fruit-trees growing on the other side. The dragon that guarded the orchard of the Hesperides was never voted a greater abomination than that high fence.

Here for many a generation the boys of the town and the -neighbourhood had received the elements of "sound learning

and religious education." Here for many a generation they had groaned over their Accidence, had played the games of the period, had plagued and been plagued by their respective masters and other natural enemies. This world whose geography I have sketched had never lacked a busy, eager population, which lived its life with due ardour and intensity, dreaming not much of things beyond its frontiers. It could boast of a rich, eventful history, rich in stubborn fights, in boisterous tricks, in direful feuds.

The

Never shall I forget the day of my own entrance into this vehement, noisy world-if indeed the lad, just preferred to the honour of a jacket, (what is a Cardinal's Hat to a Jacket?) climbing with tremulous feet up those old stone steps, is me. test of a candidate's right to admission in those days was simply his ability to read a passage of the Bible selected by the head master. The horrors of examinations were not well developed in those guileless times. There was still some pity in human breasts for the young and thoughtless. So on entering that first great arena of my life, I was conducted into the room by one of the big boys. Oh! so big! What has become, I wonder, of those sons of Anak who abounded at my old Grammar School? They were too tall for this world even then. Perhaps a considerate Providence removed them timely to some more spacious sphere, that their lofty heads might not be too cruelly bumped and battered by our grovelling ceilings. One of the giants graciously led me up to the head master's desk, and introduced me to the most awful presence of all my life. What seemed his head had on a few grey hairs and a pair of spectacles, and a ruddy complexion. So much I gathered in subsequent years, when my eyes ventured to regard him from a distance. More than this I never knew of his upper man. As to his nether parts, he consisted superficially of a pair of low shoes, occasionally gaitered, white stockings--perhaps I should say hosen-dark inexpressibles, and what is called a tailcoat. He never appeared on the school premises, so far as I know, in any other costume. In other respects he was, I believe, a portly man of small stature. I can testify that his portliness was by no means of a nature to interfere with the activity of his movements. He was the very spirit of activity. You could never say where he was not. He surrounded you. His voice was sharp and penetrating. His temper was, partly by nature, partly on principle, of a highly inflammable kind. He had cultivated irascibility with great care for many years, and with such success that he could burst out into a storm of wrath, and sink down into a serene calm in a few minutes at any time. His rages were not so much tempests as squalls.

For erudition he was looked up to by his scholars as a prodigy such as seldom appeared. It was well known throughout the school that there was not a word in Cæsar, or the Delectus, or the Analecta Græca Minora, that he did not know the meaning of, and probably not a question of any sort about anything that he could not dispose of "standing on one foot," if it were submitted to him. Society was much to blame for floundering perpetually about amongst unsolved problems, when there was such an authority to be consulted. He had enjoyed the inestimable blessing of three years and a half's residence at Cambridge at some far remote period, shortly after the Deluge, I think, when the subsidence of the waters once more uncovered the lofty summits of the Gogmagog Hills, and presently permitted men to go up again to the University. What degree he took was a much-vexed question wrapt in the mist of ages. It was a favourite subject of discussion with the local antiquaries. I hope nobody thinks we boys cared a fig about the matter. We could have understood his conferring a degree on Cambridge or Oxford; but as to his receiving one from either of those institutions, we never dreamt, in our least reverent and worshipping moments, of any such excess of condescension. It was enough that he had once honoured Cambridge for awhile by residing there. The presence was not unkindly, I remember, the morning it was my fortune to be introduced to him. He gave me some easy verses to read from one of the gospels, was good enough to be satisfied with my reading of them, and then set me a lesson in the Latin grammar-the old Eton Latin grammar. After this manner began my life at the old school.

What a strange world to find oneself in! The boys varied in age from seven or eight up to an amount of years sufficient to make a freshman. The staple of the studies was Latin and Greek; or rather these languages were the only studies that could be said to be pursued. To be sure, other subjects were recognised. Once a week a collect was learnt by heart, or one of the pieces from Enfield's Speaker. About as often a Frenchman appeared on the premises, and some few boys sat at his feet (very metaphorically). Then the writing-master had his hour. Ah! what a masterly penman was he! Another of his functions was, as I have since surmised, not to teach us spelling. This duty he discharged with eminent success by the dexterous employment of a work called the spelling-book. Lastly, this accomplished person was the representative of mathematical science in our school. The term mathematics, being interpreted, meant arithmetic in all its artful and inscrutable branches, as Tare and Tret, Position, Double Position, 'and, furthermore, the most primary rudiments of Algebra, should there

arise any boy of extraordinary genius. Except the time occupied by these studies-is there not an opening for a sum in Tare and Tret here?-all our school-hours were given up to Latin and Greek; and the school-hours averaged some five hours a day. This devotion to these languages was crowned with such complete success that the cleverest boys, by the time they were of age to proceed to the university, had not unfrequently read part of a play of the tragic poet Euripides! They could construe anything in the Delectus-that is, of course, anything that did not absolutely transcend a mortal's abilities. One or two fellows, I know, had gone right through the Exempla Moralia! One had read a bit of one of the speeches of the Attic orator Demosthenes, before he left; but he died soon after. There are limits to a fellow's powers. The three years I spent at the school were passed in the perusal of that charming-but perhaps too exciting-work, the Latin Accidence, of the Latin Delectus, of Cæsar's Commentaries on his Gallic War, of Eclogues from Ovid, of a Greek grammar written in Latin, of the Greek Delectus, and the Analecta Græca Minora. I trust that when I was removed in my twelfth year to another school, I wore my weight of learning like a flower. I do not remember being conscious that it felt heavy.

The dismissal customs of our school were curious. The head master could let us go at any moment he pleased by uttering the talismanic words Abire licet. This right he exercised with great discretion, always to our huge delight, especially if there were bears (inside Wombwell's vans), or anything of that sort, in the town. The afternoon school could be dismissed only in the above way. The morning schools, supposing the Dictator did not use his prerogative, were dismissed by a youth rushing into the middle of the school-room, and shouting Sonuit nona, and Sonuit prima, as the case might be. What uproar followed either cry! What desk-o'ervaulting! What glad clamours! To perform that office of proclaiming the hour was everybody's ambition. As the hour drew near, one would humbly approach the writing-master, and petition to be allowed to go and "listen." Should the honour be vouchsafed, you bounded down the old steps, and assumed a sort of hour-stalking position. The instant you saw the minute-hand of the church clock complete its twelve-spaced circuit, and heard the clapper begin to announce the glorious fact, then on the wind's wings you flew back and gave the signal of deliverance. One might live long without doing welcomer service for one's fellow-creatures than were these old heraldings.

Of course the Saints were respected at our old school. Well known to us were they then, at least their days. But in respect