never be wanting a due supply of fit persons to serve God in Church and State,' or, as Mr Wasey Sterry puts it, 'to get the world's work done, to spread the blessings of the pax Britannica and the imperium Britannicum among the less fortunate nations of the earth, to cultivate that religion which consists in loving mercy, and doing justice, and walking humbly with our God.' A noble programme indeed; what we have to ask is whether the due supply is of as high merit and as ample as is warranted by the material furnished to the greatest school in the world.

'It is in her public schools and universities,' said George Canning, 'that the youth of England are, by a discipline which shallow judgments have sometimes attempted to undervalue, prepared for the duties of public life. In my conscience I believe that England would not be what she is without her system of public education, and that no other country can become what England is, without the advantage of such a system.'

By what steps had Eton reached its high position of the 19th century? They are too well known and described by too many writers to need detail here. It was planned and replanned by Henry VI after the model of Winchester as a religious foundation for a College of secular priests with clerks and choristers, a school for his boys and a retreat for his almsmen. He built and rebuilt the Chapel to be the choir of a huge church, and left it the most beautiful and dignified Chapel in Britain, the shell of it architecturally as much superior to King's College, Cambridge, and to Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster, as the internal fittings of it are inferior to both. St George's, Windsor, has, of course, far more magnificence and far more ingenuity of construction, but in severe purity of design the Eton stonework is, with the possible exception of vaulted Lancing, unsurpassed.

The lodgings for his priests and a schoolroom and chamber for his scholars claim also to be the Founder's work. More was prevented by the troubles and ruin of the saintly and sorrowful King. Surviving with difficulty the Yorkist attacks the Foundation maintained its rights till the Tudor peace. Of College Hall the stately fabric of stone stops abruptly at the top of the great

oriel window. The next course and the roughly built parapet are in brick; all the wars of the Roses had intervened. The provostship of Roger Lupton added to the cloister the exquisite west front and state rooms. This was in 1520. Then came the royal supremacy and Reformation. Henry VIII stripped the church of its ornaments, the inventory of which has just been recovered by the diligence of the learned Provost of King's. Under Edward VI suppression was threatened, and Protector Somerset intruded into the Provostship Sir Thomas Smith. Hoc fonte derivata clades.' Sir Thomas was a married man-'quidam laicus et conjugatus.' It was his successor, Dr Bill, who wiped out the precious mural paintings, but it was Smith who cleared away the High Altar, abolished the Founder's festivals, and grabbed rooms from his neighbours to house his wife.

From that time there has been steady trespass on back-premises by claustral residents. It would appear from the plan that the lodgings, probably built for forty members of the College, now house three resident families, and that the Provost's Lodge, having extended a new suite to the north and annexed the election state-rooms, even intruded its kitchen into a portion of what was built by the Founder for his scholars. Thus Lady Smith secured her husband's company at dinner, and the High Table lost it. Of course a celibate clergy may be an objectionable adjunct to a school, though a large majority of the masters is now unmarried, but it must be owned that a married clergy is more expensive. We do not grudge Lady Savile the attractive house (1603) which bears her husband's name, but the addition of an upper storey for families (1750) to Cloisters cut off sun and air from a very beautiful court. Meanwhile Upper School had completed the quadrangle of Schoolyard (1680-90); and Provost Henry Godolphin had repaired hall and kitchen, and lined Chapel with fine oak wainscote, incongruous but handsome. About a century passed before the next great building era. This dates from 1840 and may be taken as beginning Victorian Eton.

These, then, were the chief epochs in the growth of the College buildings. They show the distinctive characters of 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th century styles. In the growth of the school there were epochs hardly

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