again. He tried to find the meaning in every turn of each sentence. He guessed what was in his mother's mind in each word she wrote to him.

"They would be together"-could they possibly, then, be apart? Trouble and losses-what did these mean? Why should there be losses? If his father was no longer there to make money. . . . Investments, Income, Capital, Interestthings in mathematics. If you had no income. If you could not pay bills. School bills. But School bills were not the only bills. There were shops, servants, Tanyate. . . .

"They would have to leave Tanyate. They would never go to Tanyate again. They would never see the garden and the woods: he would never bird's-nest again there with Anne.

'He thought suddenly of his father as he remembered seeing him last at Tanyate. He was sitting under a haystack smoking; he had on an old tweed coat-the Harris tweed coat that smelt of out-of-doors and shooting-he had a crimson apple in his hand which he was just going to throw to him, and he was looking at him with his merry eyes. 'That was what it meant.

'He sat looking at the letter in the evening. He heard steps coming up the stairs-Guillesley [his fagmaster].

"The door opened. He could not turn round.

'Guillesley touched him on the shoulder. He said nothing. He stood there a minute. He went down again.'

The scene of Martin's first afternoon at his private school is equally perfect. Mr Parker is not afraid to put down the silliest bits of talk that pass for wit at the age of nine or ten:

"Hullo! here's a new squit! A new squit, you chaps! . . . What's your name?"

"Martin Wardon."

6.66 Martinwardon Ma's in Jordan.*

He says his name's Mamma's in the Jordan. I say, you chaps, here's a new squit says his name is 'Little Mamma Martin Crossing the Jordan.'

Turn to the closing pages of the book and you will find the answer to Mr Leslie's jibe about school novels. Martin and his friends are having their last bathe at the

* How large that small stream loomed in our imagination in the days of our boyhood, and how full of its name was our (occasionally profane) boy-language!

Sixth Form swimming pool at Boveney Weir, on the last day of their Eton lives. Their silence is barely broken by such remarks as 'It's almost too hot. The sun's like a hat-iron' (Eton boys still wear the ridiculous top hat, and such headgear needs a periodical application of the iron). 'I'm ironing myself' . . . Hay, you're a waterfunk. Come and sit under the weir.' At last (after they had dressed) Martin broke the silence:

"I wonder if that's the last time."

"That's what I was thinking."

'They crossed from the bank to a cart-track. Martin stooped to pick up a wisp of dry clover.

"Curious thing, you know, how it's all gone?"

"All what gone?"

""One's time here. It's gone differently from what one expected."

""You mean we haven't done what we meant." ""Not exactly. But we've done what we didn't expect. And we haven't done what we thought we- At least I-" "You've spent your time shooting [rifle-shooting] when you meant to play cricket."

""And failed at that. And Crundall didn't get his Eight and he might have."

you

""But he nearly won School pulling."

""And Hay's got his Eleven and he ought to have. And

"What about Speeches? And 'The Mask'?" [a School Magazine].

"That's what I say. I wasn't thinking only of myself. I was trying-I was thinking of what one thought it would be and how it's different. Fellows one thought would do things and they didn't. Like Blakesey. And fellows one knew must do things."

"Like Lidden getting the Newcastle."

""Yes. Well, it's all like that. I mean that's what happens. It was what Massinger was saying the other day. About stories of schools. How they're not like school because the people who write them seem to think that you can't make a story without impossible rot like people climbing out of windows at night, and climbing back dead drunk-"

"And the head prefect being caught cribbing. And

a g-girl [Crundall had a slight stammer, of which very effective use is occasionally made by the author] in a shop or a village or something. And O yes! the hero making a hundred in the great match and doing the hat-trick on the stroke of time. It's always the hero who makes the hundred. You know he is going to do it when the book starts."

""Yes. Well, I mean it s really true what Massinger was saying. That you don't get plots in school life. You don't get extraordinary things happening. You just get people going on day after day. And sometimes they do things and sometimes they don't. And there are hundreds of people who don't do things and two or three who do. And the real school story's about the people who don't."

'Hazier said nothing. He was walking faster, stooping with his head bent, as he walked when he planned things for "The Mask." He was frowning. He spoke absently.

"You do get plots."

""Well, I mean you don't get

"You do get a plot. I could give you a plot."

""What then?"

"The wrong person being punished. The real person getting off."

'They turned the corner of Common Lane.'

The plot just mentioned-a school tragedy of the grimmest (and a thousand times grimmer as presented by the reticence of this consummate artist than with all the t's crossed and the i's dotted as it would have been presented by the blatant type of school novelist)-is handled in Chapter XXIII; there had been foreshadows of it. But the delicacy and pathos with which Mr Parker handles it is unrivalled. And the best thing about it is that we are not at all definitely prepared for it when Leverer, the villain (never was secret villain sketched with such few, such powerful touches), first appears as a new boy. The new boys (in Martin's fourth half-term) were

'weaker somehow. There was no one among them who was interesting.

'Except perhaps Leverer. Leverer was rather a curious sort of fellow. When you saw him first you rather hated him. He had a long not exactly crooked, but not quite straight nose. He had very regular white teeth. His hair was shining and wavy, and he had a way of laughing quickly and showing his teeth and then becoming serious again. But his eyes. . . . There was something odd about his eyes. They were rather a jolly sort of brown. But-they were difficult. They looked at you too hard.'

Faunt, the caricaturist of Martin's year, drew animalpictures of all the new boys and made Leverer into a fox. The name 'foxy' stuck to him, especially after Faunt had made him into 'St Foxius' in a painted-window sketch. But Foxy (and this is art, as well as too often truth) goes placidly up the school, scattering mischief on his path and wrecking more than one career, occasionally suspected but never detected in his evil ways, plays for the Collegers in the most important football match of the year, and ends by getting one of the Scholarships at Cambridge which Martin himself fails to get.

It has been said of Jane Austen, and it might be said of Mr Parker, that he knew his own limitations. There is one aspect of school life that he makes no attempt to describe the religious aspect. Eton College Chapel was for Martin Warden and his friends a thing of beauty and a place in which you behaved with decency, but either it was not a place whose services or sermons powerfully affected their lives, or else something sealed the lips of their evangelist. Almost the only reference to the chapel services is a conversation between the two boys, in Martin's second year (Chapter XVI), first on the comedy afforded by the procession of the Sixth Form boys to their seats, then on the idiosyncrasies of the choir-men, then on their own delight in shouting in certain Psalms ('Yes, and the next day its "Oh that men would therefore." Ripping. I simply howl'), and then on the probable changes to be introduced by a new headmaster. Crundall pondered, "I always like hoods, don't you? And those scarlet and pink ones. On surplices. And watching Holy P-poker going in front of the Head up chapel." Now, nearly every other schoolnovelist has harped on this theme, of the effect of chapel services, the innocent chroniclers naïvely, the

sentimentalists sentimentally and often ad nauseam, the blatant ones blatantly and profanely after their kind. Compulsory attendance in the school chapel, and all-but compulsory Confirmation according to the rites of the Church of England, after due 'preparation' by the headmaster, or by some other master whether fit or unfit for this extremely delicate task-these things are the greatest of grievances to writers like Mr Waugh and Mr Leslie. Were it not for some hints thrown out by the latter of belonging to another Communion (whose priests would probably make short work of any boyish scruples on such points) you would suppose religion itself and the appurtenances thereof to exist mainly for the purpose of affording an agreeable tickling to the 'blasphemious' nature of the species boy. Mr Parker would, we think, answer with a ne sutor supra to the perfectly reasonable and valid charge of having omitted all serious reference to this subject; which, nevertheless, we take, from many sources of information other than those afforded by Messrs Waugh and Leslie, to be a burning one at the present day. Among the older books which we have mentioned an extreme instance of naïveté is shown to us by Mr Portman in the otherwise thoroughly sensible fifteenth chapter of 'Hugh Rendal,' which is headed by an admirable quotation from Edward Bowen, and deals with the episode of Hugh's confirmation. His master, Mr Gurney,

'gained more attention than his chief from the boys. For he did all he could to avoid saying anything that could be branded as "pijaw." pijaw." With as little mention of religion as possible, he spoke, as friend to friend rather than master to boy, of general principles of conduct with special reference to the pitfalls awaiting the adolescent male.'

The above italics are ours, and we must leave each of our readers to interpret their meaning according to his own opinion on such matters; perhaps what is wanted is a new definition of the word 'religion.' More than one lay schoolmaster of our acquaintance has, however, said to us that preparation for confirmation was by far the most difficult (one said 'the most odious') task he was called upon to perform; and herein, no doubt, Catholic schools, whereat religious