This is perfectly true: and if there were no other means of securing this knowledge of a boy's habits and general character, so far the connection of tutor and pupil would be very desirable in every public school. But every boy is, from his entrance to his leaving school, the inmate of a boarding-house, of which some one of the assistantmasters is the head, with whom in many cases at Harrow and Rugby, as well as at Eton, he takes all his principal meals, and under whose notice he must come continually more or less from day to day, and may come, if desired, upon a much more intimate and domestic footing than as master and scholar; so that, when he is compelled by the rules of the school to take this master for his "private tutor" also (of course with an additional payment), it is really very difficult to see what advantages this second relationship gives which ought not to have been already secured to him; and which are so secured, as the evidence shows, in schools where no private tuition exists.* And it is plain from the cross-examination of several witnesses, that in the few exceptional cases where a boy's tutor is other than his house-master, he is quite as likely to apply to the latter in any real difficulty as to the former, and that the periodical reports of conduct sent in to the parents (on which some stress is laid) fall quite as much within the housemaster's province as the tutor's.†

The Commissioners have probably been not a little influenced by Dr Temple's favourable opinion as to the system of private tuition as modified at Rugby; yet they speak everywhere in their Report in very cautious language. They had already distinctly recommended at Eton that the boys should cease to construe their lessons in the pupilroom before taking them up to the class-master;" and the same recom

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mendation must be intended to apply to Harrow, where that practice is used in some pupil-rooms only. But even of the Rugby plan, all that they can bring themselves to say in its favour is comprised in very qualified terms, when they speak of "the advantage which is ascribed at Rugby, as elsewhere, to this relation;" and they are only "not so convinced that the tutorial system, if allowed to exist in its present highly developed form, could be more satisfactorily arranged, as to propose any specific changes with confidence."

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There is one peculiar feature of Harrow which deserves notice, as combining to some extent, much more really than the tutorial system can be said to do, the advantage of private with public education. This is the establishment of small" boarding-houses (strictly limited to seven boys in each) kept by some of the junior assistant-masters with the head-master's sanction. It is quite a modern arrangement, having been in operation not more than ten or twelve years. The inmates of these smaller houses enjoy almost of necessity considerably more domestic and home-like supervision than would be either possible or desirable in large houses containing forty or fifty boys. It is usual for them to take all their meals with the master and his family, of which, in fact, they may be said to form a part; our pupils live with us constantly," says one of these masters, Mr Westcott,- we have no privacy." Not only does this exempt a boy from many of the hardships of public-school life, but his moral character and general habits are more under observation and control. In fact, as it seems very fairly put by Mr Westcott, they "extend the advantages of a public-school education to many boys who from delicacy of organisation, physical or intellectual, would not otherwise have enjoyed them." Mr Butler

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has even himself, "in more than one instance, recommended boys of a peculiarly delicate temperament, who seemed to be suffering from the rougher system of the large houses, to remove to a small one; and that has, beyond all question, been attended with the happiest results." For these advantages, parents who can afford it, and who think that their sons, for any reason, require such exceptional treatment, are not unwilling to pay; and the average yearly expenses of a boy at one of these small houses are stated at £210-some £50 above the average of the larger houses. There is, of course, another side of the question. There may be some loss to set against the gain. Mr Butler says-and few public-school men will gainsay him

"I have a strong conviction that if a boy is thoroughly qualified by temperament and by health to gain the full amount of benefit which the publicschool system is capable of affording, he will gain that benefit and that bracing influence most thoroughly as a member of a large house.'

And he has occasionally found it advantageous for a boy to be transferred from a small house to a large

one:

"It not unfrequently happens that boys who have begun their course in a small house, and may be supposed to have been there fairly habituated to the public-school system, are, by the advice of the small-house master, removed, during the latter part of their career, to the freer system of a large house."

Plainly there are disadvantages in too much of the master's supervision, and the hardier and more independent elements of a boy's character may lose in development. Mr Butler, indeed, has observed 66 no material difference in the tone of the boys in a small house and a large house;" and Mr Westcott, as a master of one of the former, is naturally and honestly loth to admit that his boys lose anything in social position amongst their schoolfellows. But to form anything like a trustworthy estimate of the inner

life of any of our public schools, it is quite necessary to take, as the Commission has done, the evidence of schoolboys as well as schoolmasters if these latter (as may be hoped) know a great deal more than the boys on most points, there are some few matters on which the boys will always be able to teach the masters. And the late captain of Harrow, who seems to speak very fairly and without any foolish prejudice, gives it as his opinion that the small houses have their necessary disadvantages, and that the boys who are lodged there do not get the benefits of a public school at all, "except with regard to the intellectual education." He thinks "they are a good deal led to shirk the games;" "they do not so easily become known to the other boys ; he will "hardly use so strong a term as to say they are looked down upon, but they are not considered as being equal to the others;" "they are upon a different system altogether-more like the system of a private tutor; they have no fagging to begin with" (ie., house-fagging at breakfast and tea). Lord Clar endon suggests that probably "they are rather treated as muffs?" to which Mr Ridley, who must have had the word in his mouth all the time, but shows a reticence from slang which we have only the weakest hope may be a characteristic of Harrow, replies-"Yes-something of that kind."

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We thoroughly agree both with Mr Butler and Mr Ridley, that the 'roughing it" at a large house is a valuable element of public-school education. The Commissioners are also unquestionably right when they say in their Report that, 66 were the number of these houses permitted to increase beyond what is required for the particular class for whom they are supposed to be adapted, it would become a serious evil, by increasing the expensiveness and diminishing the usefulness of the school." Still there seems to be, in this "small-house" system, something which may be very well

If not

adapted for special cases. abused, it appears to provide, for boys who are somewhat below the mark in physical health or strength of character, a share, if not in all, yet in some of the benefits of education in a public school, without the risk of breaking down in the training. And that old "loco parentis" formula, which seems to us so little applicable to the relation between tutor and pupil, becomes no longer a formula when applied to the footing on which a master stands to the half-dozen inmates of his house, with whom he is continually brought into intimate association. We must give Mr Westcott's examination on this point:

"1189. (Lord Clarendon.) You consider you stand [to the boys in his house] entirely in loco parentis ?-Absolutely. The idea of a small house is that of a family. 1190. You think, then, that you would be able to put yourself in the place of a parent more effectually than any of the masters of the large houses who are de facto private tutors to their boarders?-It could hardly be otherwise. My boys would feel less scruple in consulting me, and they have free access to me at all times. 1208. Have you many private pupils beyond your own boarders?— Yes. 1209. You have as many as forty, have you not?-Yes, but the number is variable. 1210. Paying how much?— £15. 1211. Do those include the boys in your house?--Yes.

1213.

You do not consider, with reference to

your large and onerous duties in the school, that these are more than you can stand to in loco parentis ?—I have, as a rule, only seven boys in my house. My relation to the other boys is the same as that of any large-house master to his pupils. 1214. To them your relation is merely official; it is their studies you look to ?-That is all I feel myself bound to do, though personal influence variously exercised must be connected with this. 1215. It is the schoolboy, not the individual boy?— Yes; not a member of my family. 1216. You draw a distinction between

the boys in your own house, and the boys to whom you are private tutor only?—I make a distinction by considering my obligations to the one much greater than to the other."

Mr Westcott says, a little before

VOL. XCVI.-NO. DLXXXVI.

that he considers the small boarding-house "a means for making it possible for a junior master to live at Harrow-in fact, a payment for his school services." We think it has advantages beyond this; but there is one more question we should have liked to ask so plainspoken a witness, and which we wonder that some one of his examiners did not ask him :-Did it ever occur to him to look upon the private-tutor arrangement in that light?

The system of promotion at Harrow, unlike that at Eton, is almost entirely a matter of competitive merit. The removes from form to form depend upon a regular system of marks, of which half are given for the work done during the quarter, and half for the examination at the end. A certain proportion of the removes are, it is true, assigned to boys who have remained in the form below for three whole school quarters. The intention of these charity removes" (as they are called) is to prevent boys of dull abilities being continually outstripped in the race of promotion by boys younger than themselves; but practically the cases are very few of boys who would be left in the same form for above three quarters; and even then the promotion is refused if the boy has been notoriously and ostentatiously idle."

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At Rugby, not even this small amount of "charity" is shown to the dunces, and a boy may look in vain for any kind of promotion on the ground of mere seniority. The evil of his being "utterly and hopelessly thrown out in the fair competitions of the school" is met there by a very different remedy. "Boys, on failure to reach the Middle School at 16, or the Sixth Form at 18, are required to leave, unless the head-master, after inquiry made, deems it right to suspend the rule on special grounds." The limits of indulgence appear to be fixed with a charitable allowance for incapacity, and the rule, we are assured,

is not strictly enforced, except when idleness or other faults are combined with slowness; but it is a rule quite peculiar to Rugby, and however beneficial it may be to the school generally, we are by no means sure that in point of justice the Harrow system is not more fairly defensible. The Commissioners have not given us their opinion upon this question. When the modern plan of competitive examinations was first introduced into the public service, some journalist asked the very pertinent question, What was to become of all the stupid men? And some such question may be asked in the interest of the stupid boys at Rugby. If a public-school education is considered to have other good effects besides the mere intellectual training-such as the formation of a manly and independent character by a free intercourse with his equals, and the social advantages which undoubtedly follow from such intercourse in after life-it seems rather hard to cut a boy off prematurely from these benefits, merely because he cannot keep his place in the race of mind. A public school has a duty to the public as well as to itself; and so long as a boy conforms to the school discipline, and is guilty of no moral delinquencies which make his removal a matter of justice to his companions, it seems something like a breach of contract to say it will have nothing more to do with him. No doubt such a regulation works well for the general proficiency of the school; and in a popular school like Rugby, into which admission seems almost as difficult a matter as into a popular club (Dr Temple says he has three times as many applications as vacancies), it is easy enough to enforce it; but may it not press very unjustly upon individual boys? Dr Temple says that "the system is not well adapted" for such cases; but what system of teaching (except those of quack advertisers) is adapted for dunces and where are the dunces to go to

They are be sent, says Dr Temple, "where they can receive more individual instruction;" but could not the inevitable private tutor at Rugby supply something of this?

Another feature peculiar to Rugby amongst the schools to which the Commission extends, but adopted also at Cheltenham and Marlborough, is the "parallel forms," first introduced at Rugby by the present Bishop of London when head-master, and now revived by Dr Temple. In a very large school, where the subdivision into anything like manageable classes or forms makes these very numerous, it is apt to involve what cannot be described more clearly than in Dr Temple's words :

"I found, when we had so many forms, one under another, two bad effects - the clever boys went up through the forms with our system of promotion so rapidly, that no one master saw a boy of that sort for more than a quarter of a year; he never got hold of him at all, and the result was to encourage a great deal of very superficial working. On the other hand, the slower boys got disheartened by the sight of the terrific ladder which they that they would never get to the top. had to climb--they had a sort of feeling

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A boy at Eton, for instance, has to gain ten steps of promotion to reach the Sixth from the Lower Fourth Form. About the same would be necessary at Harrow; and at Rugby, owing to the greater number of forms, the necessary steps would be more than this, but for the parallel" system. Four of the larger forms are subdivided, not into an upper and lower, but into two parallels, both doing the same work, both holding the same rank in the school, but each having its separate master. For all purposes of promotion they are still one large form, an equal number from each parallel being moved up at each remove into the form next above. There are some difficulties in the working, owing to the two parallel masters being not always supposed parallel in efficiency; and this may encourage (as Mr Barry

fears it does in some degree at Cheltenham) "invidious comparisons on the part of the boys," not always without some foundation in fact; but, on the whole, the system seems well adapted for a very large school.*

The question of punishments presents more difficulties to a conscientious schoolmaster than that of promotion. Flogging-once supposed to be the universal remedy for all schoolboy disorders-is now reserved at nearly every school for grave or repeated offences. At Rugby, it now rarely occurs so often as eight times in the year;' at Harrow, the cases may amount to as many as sixty-"about twenty in each school term." But at Rugby caning (on the hand) is used in some of the lower forms, though very sparingly. The Sixth Form in both schools are exempt from all corporal punishment; at Rugby the Fifth enjoy the same exemption, "by the courtesy of the school;" and Mr Butler, at Harrow, rarely decides to flog any boy in the Fifth.” But masters and Royal Commissioners both admit the difficulty of selecting a good form of punishment for minor offences. Setting impositions-i.e., lines to write out,

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en

is objected to, either as couraging that slovenly handwriting which is one of the disgraces of our progressive age, if the master never notices the style of the performance, but will take, as a young witness says some Harrow masters will, "anything that is black and white;" or entailing additional demands upon the mas

ter's time, if he is to examine every imposition brought up to him. Learning lines by heart is open to more objection still on the latter ground. Extra school-as imposed at Harrow-which consists in setting a boy to write out grammar for an hour or two on a half-holiday "in the presence of a master". gives the victims the compensatory satisfaction that the master is being punished too. Solitary confinement-used in the Lower School at Rugby-seems to be the most objectionable of all. It was an idea of Dr Arnold's, apparently quite at variance with his general principle of treatment; and we imagine that nothing but the acknowledged difficulty of finding a substitute for the rod could have led so judicious a master as the present head of Rugby to adopt it. Dr Arnold once went so far as to propose that a special place should be built for the infliction of this punishment; but the trustees of the school, much to the credit of their good sense, declined to sanction it. It is equally to their credit that this is quoted as an exceptional instance of interference on their part with the discretion of their head-master.†

(Parallels.) Lower Fifth 1st Upper Middle 2d Upper Middle

(Parallels.) Lower Fifth. 1st Upper Middle. 2d Upper Middle.

Lower Middle

+ Mr Hefford's Evidence, 137.

Lower Middle.