effeminacy. They return to school with pockets full of money; with gold and bank notes where silver was formerly the custom. Their studies are furnished with an æsthetic and lavish taste, which is entirely out of harmony with a place of study. Boys of this type ought to be educated, not at a manly public school, but at "a seminary for young gentlemen," with their mothers and a nursemaid as attendants. The climax seems to be reached when some of these pampered, superfine beings bring a clinical thermometer, and a medicine chest to school: strong hearty boys who ail nothing, are supplied from home with tonics, which they are directed to take year in and year out; while others are furnished with those concentrated meat foods which are simply injurious -equivalent almost to dram-drinking, so gravely do they damage their digestive organs and the general bodily welfare.

Here is the origin of this softness; fostered, as I stated, by the home of luxury, and not in any degree by the school régime.

Parents must cease these aids to effeminacy; schools must rigorously disallow them, if manliness is to be preserved.

On the responsibility and common sense of parents this reform must primarily and essentially rest, for it is their lack of sense, and of genuine concern for their children's interests, which frustrates the efforts of masters to conserve, in this respect, the manliness of boys.

XXI.

ATHLETICS.

BY THE HON. GEORGE LYTTLETON.

It would be an extremely difficult task to convey to any one who had no knowledge of our public school system, an idea of the enormous part played by athletics in the life of an average schoolboy. In the great majority of cases a boy's chief ambition, on entering a public school, is to distinguish himself at some form of athletics. Latin and Greek are as yet hardly considered to bear any serious relation to everyday life, which, to a boy of thirteen, is strictly and solely divided between school work and school games. There are, of course, exceptions; a boy may have some hobby, such as collecting, or photography, or sketching, to fill his spare hours; but, generally speaking, it speaking, it may be affirmed that time not spent in the prescribed tasks is occupied by the playing, or discussing, or thinking about games. It is quite impossible to give an adequate idea of the veneration with which the most prominent athletes are regarded; experience of it alone can do so. Let it suffice to say that in the eyes of the school at large, the chief performers at the various games can do, or say, no wrong their position is more absolute than the Pope's, and from their decisions there is no appeal. For no one who has been to a public school will need to be told that to the fourth form boy the

captain of the eleven is a far more awe-inspiring figure than the headmaster. The rights and wrongs of this athlete worship will be dealt with later; we will now attempt to give a sketch of the management of games, which is fundamentally the same at all the larger schools.

Cricket, being the national game, is rightly given pride of place, and the care bestowed upon it is enormous. There are always among the masters cricketers of ability, and to one of these, in conjunction with the captain of the eleven, is entrusted the organisation of games throughout the school. The system thus elaborated is—in theory-almost perfect. When a boy starts on his cricket career, unless his proficiency at his private school is such that his fame has preceded him, he will start in a low game in the club, or group of four or five games which is confined to his part of the school. If he is successful in this game, the captain of it will send his name to the captain of the game immediately above. If here also he does well, the process is repeated until he reaches the first game of his club. Here his object is to get into the first eleven, when he will receive the club colours. As yet he will not have had much coaching, but when he reaches the first game he will be given professional coaching, once or twice a week. The weaker members of the club that is from the second game downwards— probably get no professional coaching, but are looked after by the members of their house eleven, who are, of course, in higher clubs. If a boy possesses extraordinary ability, he will be drafted into one of these, where his progress is watched with the greatest care. It is of course very rare for a boy to be good enough for the top game of all in his first year, though such a case is not unknown, but at such schools where the authorities know their business, there are a number of boys of only one year's

standing who are marked down for a prolonged trial in the best company. Complaints have been made that in some of the larger schools the smaller boys are not sufficiently provided for in the matter of games, and that players of promise meet with no encouragement and eventually abandon the game for the river, or other and less arduous pursuits. To this we can only say that we do not believe it is possible at any public school for any really good player to remain long in obscurity. There are so many opportunities for him to prove his worth; if promotion is denied to him in his club, there are always lower boy or junior house matches, in some of which he is certain to receive a trial. It cannot be altogether denied that the lower games are something of a scramble, in which the abiding principle is that of the survival of the fittest, but that the fittest nearly always do survive there can be very little doubt, and those who go to the wall have only their own want of determinaton to blame. The long and short of the matter is that any boy who has any keenness for cricket will never be in want for a game.

When after steady progress from club to club a boy comes in sight of the hallowed sanctuary of the first game no complaint can be made of want of attention to him; if he still shows promise he is. carefully coached, and no good batting or bowling feat can escape the eye of the authorities, who are always on the watch among the first few games for hidden talent. If he is not "trained on," he sinks to his own level among his contemporaries, where the game is played with more light-heartedness, and certainly more real pleasure, than in the grim struggle for fame waged above their heads. there the game has lost its primary object, which is recreation; it has nothing of recreation about it; it is the real business of life, oppressive and almost ludicrous in its seriousness. Instances have been

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known of boys thankful for a rainy day, or even an injury, as bringing some brief respite from their anxieties, and many are the sleepless nights spent by those who aspire to the honour and glory of the eleven. We have not yet reached the pitch of enthusiasm displayed in America, where grave senators burst into tears at the defeat of the institution which they represented forty years before, but perhaps we are not very far from it, In an English public school the chances of those who aspire to representative honours are eagerly discussed, and their performances daily recounted. The body of the school are far more engrossed in the prowess of the school eleven than in playing the game themselves. For days before the principal school match, excitement is at fever heat; during the match itself all other games are left off, the whole school assembles round the protagonists to yell themselves hoarse with delight or dismay, and the excitement takes some time to settle down. The match is fought over again ball by ball, and the heroes of it are exalted to demigods in the eyes of their fellows. It is hardly necessary to say that during this period work is practically at a standstill, and the subsequent return to it is slow and difficult. In fact, in schools where the chief match takes place before the end of the term, masters say no real work can be expected in the dreary fortnight which follows this climax of the term's energies. The practice which obtains at most schools of having the great match in the first few days of the holidays appears the better one, as there the term ends on a high note and anticlimax is avoided.

We have not space enough to give details of the numerous other sports and pastimes; they are managed much in the same way as cricket, except that they are more entirely in the hands of the boys themselves. At Eton, of course, rowing holds an