signification. A boy's wants are relative to those of his fellows, and the habit of spending will very largely depend on the ideas, extravagant or otherwise, which he sees to prevail around him. In this respect a school is comparable to a regiment, where the income required depends far less on the initial cost of uniform or on the mess bills than on the habits and pursuits of brother officers. Similarly, though it is often asserted that these differences have been exaggerated, it is a hardship on a boy with slender pocket-money and still slenderer prospects in the future to find his life cast among the well-provided sons of wealthy men. The parent who is not acquainted with such details will therefore do well to make inquiry.

The headmaster of a public school no doubt exercises a potent influence over it for the time being, and many a father will be induced to send his son to this or that school by the reputation which its headmaster enjoys. Whether the latter has power to affect the larger and best known schools nowadays as he had formerly, is probably open to question, so tightly is he tied in the meshes of tradition; but that the public continue to take the deepest interest in the more important appointments, the recent vacancy at Eton proves conclusively enough.

The days are no doubt over when the great severity of a headmaster may make itself felt throughout a school, or where he will solemnly cane every boy before breakfast for the offences which each is sure to commit during the day and which may otherwise go unpunished. Yet this, I was assured by an old friend, since dead, was the case at Blundell's School, Tiverton, when he was a pupil there in the first half of last century. If the numbers then were as large as now, one person at all events deserved his breakfast. Caning itself has gone much out of fashion in these days. My readers will possibly

recollect the story of the headmaster of a prominent school, whose predilection for the cane was well known. After breakfast, as usual, a batch of ten or a dozen turned up in the headmaster's study and the cane was immediately produced. "But, sir," began the senior boy. "Not a word!" was the reply, as, deaf to all expostulation, the "head" handled the weapon with his customary dexterity, till he had gone through the entire batch. It was not till a quarter of an hour later, when the real delinquents appeared and could ill conceal their smiles even in the face of impending torture, that he realised that he had expended his efforts on his confirmation class! It is most sincerely to be hoped, in the interests of anecdotal literature, that this is a true story.

Minor considerations may also be allowed to weigh in our choice. At first sight it seems a trivial thing to send a boy to school because the Association rules of football prevail there instead of the Rugby code; and yet I not only know of a case where this happened, but where I believe the decision was a wise one. The boy in question was of good average capacity; but he was a brilliant performer at the "foot" game, and his chance of distinction amongst his fellows seemed to lie in this. At all events, where there were so many good schools to choose from, it did no harm, and it gave the lad his chance. Nor have I any doubt that in an athletic age this question of games enters largely into the question of deciding our point.

Yet another and legitimate reason is the geographical position of the schools. If a parent lives near Clifton, why, cæteris paribus, should he send his son to Marlborough ? The argument is still more forcible where considerable provision is made for day boys, as at the two great Bedford schools, and in cases where a father may prefer this system. This is not the place to enter into a comparison of

the advantages which are open respectively to the day boy and the boarder; it is sufficient to emphasise the fact that parents may legitimately be guided by this or any of the foregoing considerations.

What one would wish strongly to urge on them, however, is to refrain from being guided by wholly petty considerations. I can remember many

instances in which men of the world have been set against a public school by the most inadequate of circumstances. A well known public man (a Judge of the High Court), whose son was due to enter one of our best schools, absolutely declined to let him go because a number of boys had recently been expelled from one of the houses. I pointed out to him that his son was not even entered for the particular house to which he took such objection, and that his son's house would be a totally different community (and, as I happened to know an excellent one); yet I failed to move him from his resolve. The truth, of course, is that wherever large numbers of boys are gathered together the element of mischief or of worse must be present; but it may safely be asserted that in every one of our English schools the whole machinery available is at work to counteract it, and that no individual school is to be preferred to another for this

reason.

I am far from saying that the tone of a particular house may not be superior to that of another owing to the activity of a special housemaster or to the examples of the prefects in charge; I would go further and say that knowledge of such particulars may be extremely useful to a parent in determining on the particular house to which he may consign his son, but it cannot be too emphatically stated that the moral development of the boy depends far more in these days on his own inclination and determination than on the choice of any particular school.

So far I have tried to point out the various considerations which arise in this choice; I have endeavoured to state the reasons which weigh with the preparatory schoolmaster when he is confronted with the question, and the circumstances which may regulate his opinion. But there is a conceivable case where none of these may be valid. Let us imagine, for example, a parent from the colonies who is anxious to place his boy at school in the mother country and to whom none of the previously expressed reasons of preference are applicable. It is then that the real difficulty arises and the buzzing of the hornet's nest, alluded to above, seems to be within earshot; it is then that the writer of such an article as this would gladly omit his signature and fall back upon anonymity. And yet to this colonial I should be inclined, at the risk of much unpopularity, to offer definite advice. I should tell him that in the course of many-I may say world-widetravels I had found that Éton stood for the public schools of England; and I could find no other school to emulate it in its far-reaching name.

XXVIII.

ENTRANCE SCHOLARSHIPS AND CRAM.

BY THE REV. C. ECCLES WILLIAMS, D.D.

ONE of the many questions which have of late been agitating the minds of all those who are interested in education as distinguished from mere book learning has been the consideration of those splendid prizes, the entrance scholarships at our great public schools.

The advantages which such scholarships confer on their lucky possessors are at first sight enormous. To many professional men, indeed, they represent the one and only way in which a clever son is enabled to enjoy the benefits of our larger schools. The boy who secures one of these coveted prizes obtains at nominal cost, for five or six years of his life, the very best education England has to offer; with every prospect of gaining later on a scholarship at either Oxford or Cambridge, this probably leading in its turn to other good things. The advantage of the entrance scholarship, then, "jumps to the eyes" at

once.

But the competition for these is naturally very keen. It is no unusual thing for Winchester, Eton, Rugby, or Charterhouse to see from 60 to 100 boys competing for some ten or twelve scholarships; these boys being, of course, the flower of their preparatory schools. The examinations necessarily take place at the period in a boy's life when he is,