My own idea of a common repast in my grand hotel of the future (Leicester-square, W.C.), while looking to France as its culinary basis, approximates nearer to the American than to the continental type as regards the manner of its service. A grand' table d'hôte that is to say, one where from a hundred to two hundred and fifty guests are solemnly planted at a horseshoe table, to have the contents of so many dishes-the majority of which they have little liking for-passed under their noses, is to my thinking a grand mistake. The dinner seems intolerably long; the meats are mostly in a tepid condition; the tit-bits of favourite plats are so eagerly snapped up that your own chance of getting anything succulent is reduced to a minimum; and at the conclusion of about an hour and a quarter of hope deferred and heart-sickness, aggravated by the circumstances of your neighbour to the right being deaf, and your neighbour to the left a bore, while the waiters have been either inattentive, sulky, or innocent, you find that you have paid (wine included) about eight or nine shillings for a banquet chiefly consisting of artificial flowers, electro-plate, and ratafia cakes, flavoured by stale bread, a dubious vintage, and some splashes of gravy from the dish which the careless fellow behind you did not know how to hold properly. Sixty guests are, to my mind, the very largest number of diners who can be properly accommodated at a single table; but there is no valid reason why, in a banqueting-hall of sufficient size, six hundred guests should not dine amply, elegantly, and comfortably from a common bill of fare, paying a fixed price for the meal. Tables accommodating from eight to twelve persons each, and to each of which tables a certain quota of waiters is told off, are all that is requisite to carry out the system properly. The hours should be moderately elastic, say in a grand' London hotel from two until six or seven in the evening.

I am perfectly well aware that such a system as that which I have sketched has been for some time in operation at more than one London restaurant, notably at the London in Fleet-street, and by Messrs. Spiers and Pond's, at Ludgate-hill railway station; but a restaurant, I may point out, is not an hotel; and some extraordinary aberration seems hitherto to have prevailed in the minds of the managers of hotels, that a traveller should be made to pay much more for taking his meals in the house in which he sleeps, than in an establishment where he does not occupy a bedroom. The consequence of this perverse error in judgment is that every day in London hundreds-I might almost say thousands of travellers are driven from the hotels in which they sleep and breakfast to the neighbouring restaurants, simply because they find the ordinary' hotel coffeeroom dinner to be dear and bad, and the grand' table-d'hôte dinner, unless it is of inordinate dimensions, intolerably cumbrous, tedious, and yet inadequate to the satisfaction of their hunger.

THE prosperity of private tutors is not a bad test of the wealth of their country. For many fathers and most mothers would send their sons, if they could, to those teachers who receive only a few pupils at a high charge. In these gentlemanly little bowers of Academe the swish of the cane is not heard; and this is an especially desired point in our very humane days (that pardon crime and punish poverty). Then, again, it is not unreasonably supposed that the tutor of a few boys devotes more time to each than does the tutor of many; and that, whereas the latter has no time for religious or moral training (though a Scotch schoolmaster walked out of kirk some time ago with his train of boys on hearing this assertion from the pulpit), the former is not prevented from instructing the soul as well as the mind of each of his few pupils.

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But except where the pupils are old enough and cultivated enough to be sympathetic with their tutor, the latter's influence is, I fear, comparatively small with most boys. Their ideas are too far remote from his, and they take his excellence as a matter of course; and their notion of his character is confined to any little peculiarities which may possibly possess of manner, and to the point whether or not he is a jolly fellow.' And religion is not what they especially look for as the characteristic of a jolly fellow. The fact is, that his companions and not his tutor are the examples which a boy follows. And hence it usually happens that the morale of a private tutor's establishment is either distinctly good or as distinctly bad; for where only a few boys are brought together it is a chance what their characters The smaller a community, the harder to correctly conjecture what standard it may have of morals. Large communities (the influences being the same) have but one standard, and large schools, of course, are included in this general statement. Where there are many boys, there are all sorts balancing each other; where there are few, one sort or the other predominates.

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Our great public schools possess to my mind only two special recommendations. The lesser of these two is the gentlemanly tone of the boys; the greater, the efficiency of the masters. All the teachers in these over-praised establishments are picked men; a mastership at Eton or Rugby, or even at such newer seminaries of sound learn

ing' as Marlborough or Cheltenham, is a thing coveted, a post much desired by the honour-men of Oxford or Cambridge; because these positions, though onerous enough, remunerate, one way or the other, those who have the good luck to be elected to them, amply. The opportunity of selection having thus been afforded, the masters of the great public schools are usually both able and conscientious men, who do their duty, and do it neither blindly nor rashly, but considerately.

But the masters, at least the undermasters, of the great run of public and private schools are often of a different stamp. To begin with, they are a mixed and somewhat dubious class; clever men who have been idle or dissipated at college; stupid men who have been industrious in vain; men with some greater or less flaw about them; recruited, in brief, from the residue after the élite has been skimmed off. Then, in addition to these disadvantages, their salaries are so small, and the tenure of their position is so uncertain, and the prospect it offers so blank, that they do not work with an easy mind, and, therefore, not with a will. Their headmasters can get rid of them at pleasure, and are probably mere utilitarians who will do so whenever it suits their purpose, whether the undermaster deserve his dismissal or not. Indeed, it is much to be regretted that the scholastic profession is not, like other professions, organised, so that some little protection may be given to its subalterns against the caprices of their superiors.

If the parent's object be to find the sort of school where the most work is done, commend him (trusting he has no such intention) to the large private schools. Boys are forced at some of these establishments as severely as they were at Doctor Blimber's, for the obvious reason that the success of the headmaster entirely depends on the success of his pupils; whereas the headmaster of a public school, being in receipt of a fixed salary, and, holding his post by a sufficiently secure tenure, is less perturbed by the failure and less eager for the success of his pupils. As a general rule, too, it may be accepted that the poorer the class of boys is that attends a school, the harder they work. The great public schools, in spite of the superior efficiency of the masters, before alluded to, are by no means the most successful in all the kinds of open competition. The cause is the opulence of the parents of many of the pupils. These boys are sent to school not so much to be made scholars as gentlemen, and their influence diminishes the energy of the rest.

Still, I am of opinion that the parent whose first desire for his son is knowledge, and knowledge so acquired as to be lucrative, should send him to a public school of really high standing. More, indeed, may be taught at a private school; more may be learnt at a public school of a lower grade, where the boys are of a poorer and more industrious sort; the individual attention which is given nowhere else

may be given at a private tutor's. But against all these disadvantages the crack public school has this counterbalancing advantage, that it imparts scholarship,-gives a finish which can be guaranteed from no other quarter; because, from causes I have before pointed out, the instruction in other schools is given by men who are not necessarily, in the high sense of the term, scholars, or certain, if they are, to impart their scholarship. And this scholarship-this air of finish is so desirable a thing, because it is invaluable in all competitions. A boy without it, pitted against a boy with it, in a case where the former really knows more than the latter, is in the position of Roderick Dhu contending with Fitzjames. Roderick was the stronger of the two; but his superiority in rough strength yielded before the finished sword-play of the Knight of Snowdon.

To return from the intellectual to the moral aspect of the question. Those parents whose anxieties are deep upon this latter head may well pause before sending their innocent little sons forth to a place where, if honour is held sacred, holiness is a byword. Strong indeed are the objections that may be raised against all boarding schools, of whatever size, kind, or degree. Wilson says that a certain amount of immorality is to be condoned to boys-and Wilson was a professor of moral philosophy-which, by the way, seems, when its principles are examined, very like immoral philosophy to the ordinary mind. But letting that pass, we may make the allowance Wilson makes, and yet be assured that there is still, at boarding schools, much that is as lamentable as it is unmentionable. Is it not a suggestion worth turning over, that in every large dormitory a trustworthy adult should sleep? I do not envy him; but great evils must be cured even by small ones, and the one must suffer for the many.

As things are, I must profess that, for moral purposes, I prefer day schools. I am aware that there are special objections to these establishments. Necessarily they are situated in towns, and the temptations of towns draw the older boys, whereas the largest boarding school may thrive amid the wolds of Yorkshire; and though, as Thackeray says, temptation is an obsequious servant who has no objection to the country, yet, with regard to the members of its upper forms, the more a large school can be isolated the better. Besides, the esprit de corps of a boarding school being much higher than that of a day school, more interest is taken and minds are more absorbed in school sports, which, in a great measure, undoubtedly keep lads out of mischief.

Then, again, that feeling of independence which, with an eye to the future, it is so necessary to cultivate, meets exactly the attention which it requires when a lad of a dozen years or so is thrown upon the small world of a boarding school. But, in a large day school, where the boys are drawn together out of school hours by

amusements organised in connection with the school, this requirement is sufficiently met. Looking at the matter without prejudice, the principle of boarding schools may appear a bold one to adopt.

The reason which justifies a man in cultivating his child's mind by deputy, does not justify him in cultivating its morals by similar means. For not all parents are competent to give intellectual instruction; but all can give moral. A parent, therefore, incurs a responsibility of the gravest kind, by divesting himself of the moral supervision of his children during a number of years, and at a critical period. But boarding schools are an institution in England, and we English swallow our institutions. These establishments might be so arranged that the moral contaminations in which they are prolific could be abolished or efficiently checked. But no one at present has set his shoulder to this wheel. Till it is turned, all the advantages of boarding schools cannot counterbalance the one moral disadvantage which makes day schools preferable.

R. W. B.