must look to enliven and enlighten their work by introducing no small element of this into their teaching.

True, archæological societies, which exist in most schools, are of great use as an occasional stimulus; they teach boys how to explore their own neighbourhood, and enjoy old houses and old churches with an intelligent and discriminating enthusiasm. They can also organise lectures on Greek and Roman art and excavation.

But, we repeat, it is the classical masters with whom the chief opportunity and the main responsibility lies. Do they use it well? We fear they do not.

There are people, young and old, to whom true knowledge comes largely through the eyes, who never appreciate the spirit of a character or a period in history until they have seen some objective picture of the one or the other; while there are few indeed who do not gain, not merely pleasure, but an enhanced sense of life and reality from such vivid illustration.

To all such people, photographs, medals, even casts all tell their story, but the magic lantern is by far the most eloquent and attractive of showmen. Here we have a true magician, who can give, not life only, but double and treble life-all things else are for the moment dead-to his puppets.

Here, then, is the chance, but very few masters seize it. It must be convention, or apathy, or modesty, or "sheer ignorance " that allows a teacher to study, let us say, Thucydides' account of Pericles. and his age without any serious effort to set the Parthenon and the Elgin Marbles before their eyes. We can only echo the words of one who has grown grey in teaching, a great authority himself on art. "Hundreds of boys leave this place. without knowing that a great part of the Parthenon frieze is fixed round our walls.

While, as for our schoolrooms themselves, with some striking exceptions, masters would appear to have misrendered the motto of Thucydides from which we started, as "we spend little or nothing upon our art." Certainly we do not at present spend much effort, not enough to breathe fresh life into those classical bones.

Here, however, the movement of modern thought is with us; the public is apt to attach an even exaggerated importance to such topics, a fact which is bound to react before long upon the rank and file of the teaching profession.

To sum up, art has a great future before her in our public schools; she has arrived late in the day, and has found others in possession, but she has such a splendid environment and such innate power to illuminate our life and thought that it cannot be long before she reaches her rightful position.

XIV.

LIBRARIES.

BY W. KENNEDY.

No one man can give a quite satisfactory account of "Public School Libraries." Those libraries, and the systems on which they are worked, are as various as the other institutions of those very individual societies, whereas the librarians are chained to their own particular oar for life. A Public School librarian is usually a master, whose time is already fully occupied with his form and other duties. When the writer first added that function to other activities, he wrote to the other schools for information about their systems. From the answers received it appeared that in some cases the school library was also a reading room, with newspapers and magazines: sometimes more or less of a museum also. Sometimes it was used as a preparation room for part of the school, and the books might be taken out by anyone. In others, no books might be taken out; in others, again, they might be taken out by masters and upper boys only. Again, it might be open at any time to anyone or at any time to upper boys, and at certain hours to the rest. Some of the older schools had separate libraries of old and valuable books. In one case the library consisted of several rooms-for books, for reading rooms, and for chess respectively.

Sometimes each house, or dormitory, had its

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own library of novels and other popular books, while the school library was reserved for works of a more solid character. In some, subscriptions were levied for the support of the library, amounting to £160 or £180 a year.

In some cases there was a permanent paid librarian ; in others none. Some had several sub-librarians, who were generally prefects.

In some there was a printed catalogue; in some it was being printed; in some it was in MS.; in some it was a combination. In this respect, as in others, a great advance would, no doubt, be found at the present time.

In my own school the School Library is distinct from the lending libraries attached to each house, from which books may be taken out once or twice a week, the books being chosen and managed by the house masters. These house libraries contain some works of reference, some volumes of travel, natural history, and general literature: but they are composed chiefly of novels, for which the puerile appetite is insatiable. Can you wonder? How many "grown-ups" ever read anything else, except the paper? With what proportion of the good literature" they are so fond of recommending to the young have they the smallest familiarity themselves?

An old Uppingham boy tells me that Mr. Thring "allowed us to have very few novels indeed in the library, and, in my experience, it was a most wholesome regulation. The result in my own case was that by the time I left school I had read hardly any novels, but was always immersed in serious books. and serious subjects."

It was admirable, and we commend the enforcement of the system to the attention of other strong headmasters, who have any time to spare from attending futile conferences, and the other amusements of the educationalist, who does everything

but educate. But it seems almost a counsel of perfection. It would be difficult to enforce, now that the acquisition of magazines and paper editions is so easy; and, with the less serious, might lead to reading nothing at all. And the hard-working boys (and there are still some of them from inclination, and many from necessity) have their time so fully occupied, what with compulsory games, Volunteer corps and prospective scholarships, that it is small blame to them if they cannot get in much serious reading. You may easily read too much. If "reading maketh a full man," excessive reading may produce an undesirable distension; and "an animal overfed for his size" is the best definition of a "prig."

After all, the novels are very harmless and many of them reach a high level. When so many boys and men never think of reading anything, it is something to see boys reading at all. It is something that they should get into the habit — so hard to acquire afterwards. It is something that there should be a few minutes in the day when they allow their minds a little respite from the eternal cricket and football: that they shall not be able to say what an Eton boy once said to me that he could not remember having read a single book during his four years at school, except one yellow back-which he did not finish.

What chiefly strikes a middle-aged librarian, when he remembers the old state of things, when you began with Mayne Reid, Fenimore Cooper and Dickens, and proceeded to Scott and Thackeray, with perhaps George Eliot to follow, is the enormous choice of books offered to the present schoolboy. One was at any rate reading mostly what have become classics: one cannot believe as much of the mass of six shilling novels that replenish our shelves every term. One never used to know or think when a