less distinct. The Oppidans, numbering many sons of Henry's courtiers, increased under such Headmasters as Thomas Aldrich (1515) or John Newborough (1690), whose pupil Sir Robert Walpole (K.S.), in his long tenure of office, made the nation wealthy and the school popular. Andrew Snape (1711-1720), Hoadley's adversary, attracted further attention and drove out Thomas Thackeray as Headmaster to Harrow. Then came a critical and uneasy time, till harmony was restored by the ability, fashion and wit of Dr Barnard (1754-1765), for Horace Walpole 'the Pitt of Masters,' for Dr Johnson 'the only man who did justice to my good breeding.' Some held him superior to Garrick, but Mrs Berkeley declared him to have a black heart' ('Etoniana,' XVIII). Much had been owed to Provosts Savile, Wootton, Rouse, and Allestree, and much to the genial scholarship of Headmaster Goodall, to the cordiality of George III and William IV, and something to the stormy fame of Keate.

During all this time the oppidan boarding-houses were gradually becoming more closely connected with and recognised by the school. Extant bills of early Etonians show rough but adequate attention paid to the boys' wants. For the Collegers, on the contrary, it would seem that the Fellows could spare neither fit accommodation nor sufficient food. Clerks, choristers, conducts had been excluded from college buildings. Head and Lower masters were unsalaried. As the cloister lodgings were absorbed, so also were the College emoluments. It was the fashion of the times. In the days of non-resident bishops and pluralist parsons, and the deadness of the social conscience, it was the natural thing for the Fellows to divide among themselves the annual income of the estates-no very large sum after all: W. H. Roberts's average (1771-1783) was 1247. plus 2217. for 'fines,' or 345l. in all. Later, the fines increased under a bad system of leases. The commutation of fellowships in 1870 was 1000l. The Fellows did as a matter of course what everyone did; it would have been strange indeed for a colonel to forgo profit from his regiment or the army paymaster to carry none of the soldiers' pay to his own bank account. That William Pitt should not present himself to a sinecure office was surprising. No such surprise is recorded in Eton audits.

Meanwhile the scholars starved in squalor. Nor was there anything strange in that. The women and children of the poor slaved like dogs in harness underground, and the miseries of little chimney-sweeps and their like had not attracted general notice. Yet the awakening was at hand. In 1830 Lord Ashley was in Peel's cabinet; and Wesley, Howard, Wilberforce, Pitt had secured the great revival of the preceding century. Blake's 'Chimney Sweeper' is dated 1787, Mrs Barrett Browning's Cry of the Children' 1832. Once more, and not for the last time, the splendid tenacity of England had saved Europe from a world-tyranny, and the new morality reached Eton. In 1840 Hodgson, as Provost, drove up the Shooting Fields to take possession, with his oftenquoted vow, 'Please God I will do something for those poor boys.' It was high time. Carter's Chamber is more beastly than ever,' wrote John Lonsdale in 1812. Cruel at times the suffering and wrong, and wild the profligacy,' said Edward Thring. The inmates of a workhouse or a gaol are better fed and lodged than the scholars of Eton.' 'Fagging had become an organised system of brutality and cruelty. I was frequently kept up till one or two o'clock in the morning waiting on my masters at supper and undergoing every sort of bullying. The rioting, masquerading and drinking that took place in College can scarcely be credited.' 'My master was a beast and a bully, and the reign of terrorism on certain occasions was a horror I shall never forget.'§ The lads underwent privations that might have broken down a cabin boy and would be thought inhuman if inflicted on a galley slave.'||

Yet from scenes like these came such men as Edward Balston, Edward Thring, Wharton Marriott, Henry Bradshaw, Sir Alfred Lyall, Henry Polehampton, F. St J. Thackeray, E. D. Stone, and the like. That is no apology for the badness, but it is proof that there were intervals of peace amid the abominations which catch the eye, and gentle spirits escaping the brutal tyranny

'Parkin's Life,' i. 24.

+ Quarterly Journal of Education,' 1834.

Old Colleger, 1824,' in Maxwell Lyte, p. 455.

§ Dr Okes, in Eton in the Forties,' A. D. Coleridge.

Sir Edward Creasy, Historical Account of Eton College.'

which seems (and no wonder) to dominate the records. Whether Tennyson's tale of the sow on Chamber roof be true or not, there is less doubt that a donkey was brought up to Long Chamber and took part in a burlesque. The late Harry Tarver, who entered at the age of six (c. 1830), remembered a baby-no less a person than Samuel Evans, afterwards Drawing Master-being kidnapped from the 'Beeves' nursery to spend a night with the revellers. He used also to tell how one night he woke up in Chamber and wondered to see the stars overhead; presently there entered the Provost in canonicals and some Fellows, and he heard the former say, 'God forgive me! I knew of this before.' The roof had given way and might have caused serious ruin. According to Mr Tarver, the windows were not glazed; and in bad weather they closed the shutters and worked darkling. But certainly, whether the glass survived or no, the windows had been glazed in 1746. It all sounds incredible to us, but, like the usurpation of the Fellows, it was very much the usual thing. Nor may we think there was no relief to it. It was not all horrible, if Sir John Byng, a young Oppidan, went up into Chamber voluntarily for the fun of being tossed in the blanket which scalped 'Taffy Williams (Rowland), and if we get a glimpse of enthusiastic talk between boys 'pacing the greasy boards of Long Chamber till eleven at night, which opened my myopic mind and revealed to me such a hero as I have never known since.'

And the Masters? To generalise about them would be as fallacious as about the boys. Shelley's tutor was the stupidest, but he always stood up for the unpopular cause of the scholars.' Drury, Knapp, Cookesley, were very clever and fine scholars, but set too frisky an example for boys. On the other hand, Hawtrey with his literary elegance, Chapman, Abraham, Marriott were genuinely religious reformers. Edward Coleridge, and no doubt others, took pains in the preparation of their pupils separately for Confirmation. In fact, many different sorts were represented there, but one thing they had in common. Gladstone's mature judgment in 1897 is recorded by Dr A. C. Benson :

'The teaching may be narrow; in one point it was admirable, its rigid, inflexible, relentless accuracy. A boy might learn

something or, if he chose, nothing; but one thing he could not do-learn anything inaccurately.'

With which we may compare what Huxley laid down, speaking as one of the new Governing Body in Hall on Founder's Day, 'I care not what subject is taught if only it be taught well.' The Masters' relations with the boys were no doubt far more distant than now; how could it be otherwise? The number of their pupils was much greater, the exercises more numerous, more difficult, and much longer; and at that date the relations between parents and sons were also different. Buckram was not the garb of schoolmasters only. Underneath it 'human nature,' to quote a well-known Eton sermon, 'was human nature still.' The buckram wore pretty thin when Drury and Knapp posted up with pupils to the Play, and, if scandal be true, were bailed out of the lock-up by the Chancellor's clerk. Kegan Paul, 'bodkin from time to time' in his Headmaster's carriage, must have been on terms easier than his seat. Praed was not too shy to work with Hawtrey for the Apis Matina' and the inception of the Boys' Library. Keate could meet at breakfast a boy fresh from his block; and over the hospitable sausages was Hawtrey's comment on the fox, 'Cunning fellow, he knew what he was about.' Arthur Coleridge gloats over the memory of delicious pies sent from his tutor's to the hungry scholar; and a few years later the good Abraham in a boy's room would stand leaning against a bureau and discourse at length in a thoroughly friendly way, disarming us of all fear of him as a Master, and manage dexterously to introduce topics of high interest so as to rivet our attention.'*

The Chapel services and the religious teaching were for the most part deplorable; that was not unusual, except among the Evangelicals. The Oxford Movement was only beginning. Sermons are always among the readiest subjects for ridicule. The Fellows' sermons in a building of difficult acoustics were not spared and did not deserve much mercy; but even here it is best not to be too sweeping. Of Plumtre most fun is made in many of the books, yet Ralph Nevill † says:

• Memoir of Hawtrey,' by F. St J. Thackeray, 1896.
+Floreat Etona,' p. 306.

'F. P. was an excellent man, learned, and of original thought, so that his sermons were interesting, while his peculiar style and delivery, always attractive, was often amusing. He was a great favourite with the boys.'

Some of these preachers we saw rather than heard in the fifties. It must be remembered that they were younger in the thirties, and that Church feeling was undergoing a great change. Some of Hawtrey's sermons and lectures are in print and win the approval of his biographer, himself no mean judge of sermons.

Thus far we have tried to glance at the growth of Eton and its general condition down to, say, 1840. We find a strange mixture of good and bad, high culture and ignorance, happiness and misery. This was not inconsistent with the social habits of the time, and did not prevent warm attachment to the place, so that, when Long Chamber was broken up, the scholars, even including A. D. Coleridge, whose condemnation has been among the severest, were furious at the desecration. If we may compare with this a sketch of what the school was at the end of the century, we shall have the best gauge of the progress made under the good Queen.

The turning-points were Hodgson's Provostship (from 1840), New Buildings (1844), Hawtrey's Headmastership to 1853, the Royal Commission (1861), new Governing Body (1869), E. Warre as Headmaster (1884), new Statutes (1871), purchase of Agar's Plough (1895). The Commission came in large measure from the newspaper attacks of Sir John Coleridge and J. M. Higgins. The evidence taken before it is an invaluable mine of facts and feelings, but the Statutes resulting from it are said to compare ill with the careful and accurate work of the Founder. The ecclesiastical character of the foundation suffered most. The presence of 'emeriti' of distinction may be venerable among young people and sometimes useful, but it is the fashion to abolish institutions rather than restore their original use and discipline, and so the old Fellowships were deleted. The new Statutes made no attempt to renew the eleemosynary character of the scholarships. It was thought better to raise the standard of competitive cleverness, rather than to make Eton accessible to poorer parents. There is much to be said