of Goethe, or even of Victor Hugo. The name of George Eliot was nearly unknown in France; she had lost ground in America; and at home her triumph did not pass unchallenged, when men like Beaconsfield, Ruskin, Arnold, Swinburne denied her claims, Lewes himself doubted the final estimate, for he announced with some excitement that she had been compared to Wordsworth, and that somebody thought the comparison inadequate. Men very far asunder -the two Scherers, Montégut, Mr. Spencer and Mr. Hutton, Professor Tyndall and Mr. Myers-have declared with singular unanimity that she possessed a union of qualities seldom, if ever, exceeded by man, and not likely to be seen again on earth; that her works are highwater-mark of feminine achievement; that she was as certainly the greatest genius among women known to history as Shakespeare among men. But George Eliot did not live to recognise, in the tribute of admiring friends, the judgment of history.

She has said of herself that her function is that of the æsthetic, not the doctrinal teacher-the rousing of the nobler emotions which make mankind desire the social right, not the prescribing of special measures. The supreme purpose of all her work is ethical Literary talent did not manifest itself until she was thirty-seven. In her later books the wit and the descriptive power diminish visibly, and the bare didactic granite shows through the cultivated surface. She began as an essayist, and ended as she had begun, having employed meanwhile the channel of fiction to enforce that which, propounded as philosophy, failed to convince. If the doctrine, separate from the art, had no vitality, the art without the doctrine had no significance.] There will be more perfect novels and truer systems. But she has little rivalry to apprehend until philosophy inspires finer novels, or novelists teach nobler lessons of duty to the masses of men. If ever science or religion reigns alone over an undivided empire, the books of George Eliot might lose their central and unique importance, but as the emblem of a generation distracted between the intense need of believing and the difficulty of belief, they will live to the last syllable of recorded time/Proceeding from a system which had neglected Morals, she became the pioneer in that movement which has produced the Data of Ethics and the Phänomenologie. Her teaching was the highest within the resources to which Atheism is restricted, as the teaching of the Fioretti is the highest within the Christian limits. In spite of all that is omitted, and of specific differences regarding the solemn questions of Conscience, Humility, and Death, there are few works in literature whose influence is so ennobling; and there were people divided from her in politics and religion by the widest chasm that exists on earth, who felt at her death what was said of the Greek whom she had most deeply studied—σκότον εἶναι τεθνηκότος.

ACTON.

THE ETON TUTORIAL SYSTEM.

THE Eton master who has made a confessional of this Review can scarcely be said to appear before his confessors in the special attitude of humility which we are wont to attribute to penitent sinners on such occasions. What he, qua Mr. Salt, the Eton master, has confessed, is not exactly obvious; it might, indeed, appear to some that he has made a mistake in spelling, and that it would be no more than the fair exercise of the privilege of a commentator, anxious to reconcile the title with the text of the paper, to substitute Professions' for Confessions' in the former. As the self-constituted albeit perfectly qualified exponent of the Eton system, he has, no doubt, confessed a great deal too much to be agreeable to everybody, and has evidently deemed the subject of his confessions or professions far more important than the question which may suggest itself to some minds, whether a junior lieutenant is justified in thus promulgating his ideas as to the best mode of navigating the ship. But whatever may be the difference of opinion respecting Mr. Salt's views, or the manner in which they have been given to the public, there can at least be no doubt as to their thoroughness; the spirit of this remarkable essay is manifestly genuine, its language is bold and unequivocal; either it commends itself to the warm approval of old Etonians and well-wishers to the school, or else it merits their stern condemnation. I propose briefly to state why, in my judgment, it deserves, not the condemnation, but the best thanks of all who wish well to Eton.

And now, first, a word for the present writer; first, because whenever aught of egotism has to be written, the sooner it is despatched and done with, the better for all concerned. My excuse for venturing to offer any ideas of my own to the readers of this Review must be that I am able to lay claim to a position of impartiality which may help to place any expression of mine above suspicion of undue prejudice. Having 'done verses' when at Eton with some success on my own account, and I fear with too much success on account of others, and having been in a quiet way a votary of the classics ever since, I am not likely to err in the anti-classical direction, nor is a predilection for classical pursuits anywise inconsistent with the advocacy of other branches of learning; I am further well known by

my friends to be very far from unfriendly to distinction out of school, i.e. in athletics, at which, by the way, it is quite unnecessary to sneer when talking of education; there is a time and a place for distinction of either kind. I may add, while wholly repudiating all connection with the coterie described by Mr. Salt on page 182, of "parents ... imbued with all the prejudices of the place who frequently visit their old school . . . and thus pose as representatives of the parental class" (I have no knowledge or idea to whom the writer alludes), that I have through the medium of three sons in succession, and by constant visits to Eton, as well as by the pleasure of acquaintance with successive head-masters, and several of the assistant masters, kept up my intimacy with the school as fully as is well possible, and may venture to believe that I know pretty well, broadly speaking, what Eton is, and what it is not, at the present day.

The tutorial system' is, as readers of Mr. Salt's paper need not be told, his main point of attack; the evil with which it is fraught has been portrayed by him in severe and scathing language, but language not one whit too severe, me judice, for the abnormal monstrosity, as I am fain to call it, against which he hurls the shafts of his invective. To my mind, the only puzzle is how, apart from the influence of early habit and the force of ingrained prejudice, this tutorial system can be treated as matter for argument at all. It must, at least, be very hard to argue in its favour à priori. No one in his right senses would, I presume, now propose such a system for a newlyestablished public school, aspiring to a share in the education of English gentlemen, or Englishmen of any class; indeed, it is scarcely too much to say that anyone so making such a proposal would run some risk of being taken not to be in full possession of those right senses. And if such is the case-if, as I feel assured, the most ardent supporter of the present system must admit, it is potentially and prospectively indefensible-what, in the name of common sense, remains to be said in its favour? Very much the same as could be said in favour of retaining the rotten boroughs in 1832. The prestige of long existence, the force of habit, the glamour of tradition -these are common to the one rottenness and to the other, as are also certain incidental advantages-although the only advantages to which Mr. Salt confesses are, as he has pointed out, by no means of the essence of the tutorial system now in vogue. It may be said that upon the whole the tutorial system has worked well. But has it worked well? What does working well mean? Does it mean that a comparatively small number of boys, with ability and inclination for work, have profited by the advice and assistance of their tutors, and thereby been enabled to excel, so to speak, in their own excellence; or does it mean that the average Eton boy has thereby in the long run been so instructed that it has been his own fault if he has not attained the average standard of liberal education? Tested by the

last construction, it would be a bold assertion, indeed, that the tutorial system has been found to work well. My own tutor was one of the cleverest men and best scholars that have ever appeared at a desk in Eton (a description of him under the sobriquet of, if I remember aright, the Rev. Vickers Rahab, from the pen of Mr. F. C. Burnand, may be found in Macmillan's Magazine, September 1873). He was a somewhat eccentric personage, and no doubt had his faults; but it is only justice to say that his tutorial duties, in the sense now under notice, were discharged with exemplary diligence. There are many living who must well remember that active figure, in tall hat and (frequently) dressing-gown, hurrying with nimble feet through the long passage which led to the pupil-room, with books and papers under his arm, to construing,' to 'private,' or to 'looking over,' as the case might be. And first a word, in passing, as to 'private,' which, as old Etonians need not be told, means extra work, wholly independent of the regular school-work, set by and prepared for the tutor, and for him alone; compulsory, I believe, as a part of the tutor's duty, but still without result or recognition outside the walls of his house. Whether private,' or to use the more orthodox phrase, 'private business,' is a speciality of Eton, I am not aware; but, be this as it may, I should be the last to say a word against it; and it is only fair that the tutorial system should at least be credited with what there is in it of real good-it being at the same time remembered that Mr. Salt's paper, upon the lines of which I am now writing, only purports to discuss that system in its relation to the school work; its abolition pro tanto, be it noted, would by no means involve the discontinuance of private business, as can easily be shown: but a word as to this hereafter. That private business' is an excellent institution in its way, can scarcely be matter for two opinions; indeed, we may safely go further and affirm that, taking the curriculum of Eton as it is, or as it is likely ever to be, 'private' or house work is an indispensable supplement to such curriculum. It not only provides useful employment for a certain portion of the somewhat superabundant leisure hours which the school work leaves on hand, but it may also serve, if judiciously administered, to give the boys at least an inkling of those books and branches of learning for which no provision is made in the normal, or, to use a military phrase, regulation work of the school. It was, for instance, in my day, whatever may be the case now, the only opportunity which most of us-i.e. all below the head-master's division had of seeing a Greek play before going to the University. My tutor, who bestowed very great attention on 'private'-holding examinations and giving prizes periodically for proficiency therein— used, in addition to what took place in the pupil-room, to give us a kind of 'private' peculiar, as I believe, to himself and of his own invention, which consisted in reading modern history aloud at prayers.

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I call to mind Robertson's Charles the Fifth as an example. The incongruity may appear somewhat startling, but it is unquestionable that had we not read that book, seated round the dining-room table, by way of prelude to saying our prayers, we should, most of us, in all probability not have read it at all at that time of life; if the fashion and circumstance were somewhat singular, we may at least be said to have scored. Then, as to construing.' At the appointed hour, each division in turn found itself assembled in the pupil-room for the purpose of construing the school lesson; the cleverest and most industrious boys were usually put on' to construe, the less ambitious meanwhile taking notes for their subsequent guidance in case of being 'called up' in school, the only restriction being that such notes had to be written on slips of paper and not on the books. Distinctly, 'construing' was not treated as an exercise; it was rather of the nature of a lecture conducted by the tutor and a staff of skilled assistants for the edification of the multitude; but in saying this, it is only fair to add that it could not well be otherwise-time did not admit of any prolongation of the process for didactic purposes; the lesson had to be got through, and the tutor was obliged to adopt the readiest means of getting through it. Of course I cannot speak as to other pupil-rooms, but I have no reason to suppose that my tutor's was materially different from the rest, or that the above description would not be of general application. And now I come to verses. Some of us, no doubt, I trust it may be said the majority of us, did our own verses. The present leader of the Conservative party in the Lords was then an inmate of the house, and I have no reason for doubting that he did his own. Another of our number, a well-known public man, equally distinguished although in a different line, not only did not do them, but took occasion, a year or two since, before a distinguished audience, playfully to parry the possible imputation of having wasted his time at Eton in doing verses, by boasting that during the whole of his Eton career he had got them done by other agency. Those who had the happy (or unhappy) knack of running off passable hexameters and pentameters, as a baker might turn out gingerbread nuts, were at all times greatly in request; it was, in fact, a regular race for their services when the appointed hour for showing up' drew near. I have some reason to believe that my tutor more than suspected what was going on, but that, earnest as he could be where work of real usefulness was concerned, he did not think it worth while to be severe where the task was, to the particular boy, a mere grind and the possible result nil, beyond satisfying school requirements. But by whomsoever composed, the verses were duly 'looked over' and corrected; this was not always done in the pupilroom; my impression is that the exercises-verse and prose-of the lower boys only were, as a rule, 'looked over' in the pupil-room, and that those of the fifth form were attended to in the study or else