whom he had missed, he went over to Clifden the same afternoon to make his apologies. The Prince told him the story, adding that he wished the Doctor had come an hour earlier, to have heard Ayscough taking off his energetic performance in a lesson with his boys. It was not a gracious speech; and Dr George, Nichols adds, "took himself off" very shortly. The period of his mastership was marked by one very horrible event. In March 1730, was buried in the college chapel "Edward Cochran, murdered by his schoolfellow, Thomas Dalton, with a penknife." Such is the entry in the parish register; but the inscription which is or was to be read on his tomb has the words "accidentally stabbed." Probably it was an act of sudden passion.

The increasing numbers of the school must have very early required some additional teaching power besides the two masters provided for by the statutes. Up to the time of Elizabeth, and probably to a much later date, this had been supplied by monitors. The restriction by which the masters were forbidden to take any fees (even from oppidans) was probably evaded, almost from the first, by the system then universal in all transactions of giving presents, under which heading the sons of wealthy parents soon began to pay pretty highly for their education. Traces of this arrangement remain in the custom still prevailing-not at all to the credit of the school-of presenting a sum as "leaving-money" to the headmaster and the private tutor. At what time assistant-masters were first appointed does not appear. But they were no doubt paid, up to a comparatively late date, entirely from such fees as the parents of those under their tuition chose to give them. A curious advertisement (in the 'London Evening Post' of Nov. 9, 1731) by Mr Francis Goode, who had been lower-master for many years under Newborough,

throws some light upon the subject:

"Whereas Mr Franc. Goode, undermaster of Eaton, does hereby signify that there will be at Christmas next, or soon

after, two vacancies in his school-viz.,

as assistants to him and tutors to the young gents.: if any two gentlemen of either University (who have commenced the degree of B. A. at least) shall think themselves duly qualified, and are desirous of such an employment, let them enquire of John Potts, Pickleman in Gracious Street, or at Mr G.'s own

house in Eaton College, where they may purchase the same at a reasonable rate, and on conditions fully to their

own satisfaction.

F. GOODE. "N. B. It was very erroneously reported that the last place was disposed of under 40s."

Certainly the place is worth something more now. There seems to have been no doubt in Goode's mind of the perfect propriety of the arrangement; he was a very respectable man, and was very nearly succeeding Newborough in the headmastership. He was only defeated by Dr Snape after a very warm contest, and was much disappointed at the result.

Dr George was succeeded by one of his assistants, William Cooke. His short administration of two years is thus summed up by Cole in his most spiteful vein :

"William Cooke made master of the

school, for which post not being found equal, he was made fellow of the college to let him down gently; and, to get rid of his impertinence, insolence, and other unamiable qualities, he was strongly recommended to be provost of King's

on Dr Sumner's death. It is not the first time a man's unsocial and bad dis

position has been the occasion of his advancement. I know the college would be delighted to kick him up higher, so that they could get rid of a formal important pedant, who will be a schoolmaster in whatever station of life his fortune may advance him to."

Some personal enmity had evidently a share in this note; but Cooke was certainly not a successful master, and the school under his management fell off in numbers and repute. His successor, Dr Sumner,

though an able and zealous teacher, could only partially restore its good name during nine years of office. Dr Rawlinson, amongst his MSS., quotes from the 'Daily Advertiser' an account of a royal visit at this time. It is not a very complimentary paragraph:

"1747, Aug. 11th.-King George II. visited the College and School of Eton, when on short notice Master Slater * of Bedford, Master Masham of Reading, and Master Williams of London, spoke each a Latin speech (most probably made by their masters), with which his Majesty seemed exceedingly well pleased, and obtained for them a week's holidays. To the young orators five guineas each had been more acceptable."

In 1754, on Sumner's resignation, Dr Edward Barnard, Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, who had been private tutor at Eton to Charles Townshend, was elected to the head-mastership. Under his vigorous rule the school rose again rapidly and steadily. Two assistant-masters were added the year after his appointment to meet the increasing number of oppidans; and two more in 1760. Sumner had gradually raised the total number of the school to 350; when Dr Barnard was promoted to the provostship in 1756, he left 522 boys on the Eton list-a larger number by far than had been known at any previous time, and which the school never reached again for more than fifty years.

For Eton was unfortunate in his successor; doubly unfortunate, because the new master was a man from whom very much was expect ed, whose appointment seemed the best that could have been made, and who did really possess many of the most important qualifications for his office. John Foster, the son of a Windsor tradesman, had entered the school very young, and during his career there was the admiration of his schoolfellows and

He went

the pride of his masters. off early as captain to King's, with the highest reputation as a scholar; and Dr Barnard, immediately upon his own appointment, had recalled him from Cambridge to an assistantmastership. In that position he seems to have fully borne out the expectations which had been formed of him; for, on Barnard's resignation, Foster was at once elected to succeed him. But though his scholarship was unquestionable, and his discharge of his duties most conscientious, there were deficiencies of other qualifications which were not to be got over. He wanted dignity of person and manner, as well as knowledge of the world; and these are very important points in the ruler of five hundred boys, many of them just attaining manhood. The words of an anonymous contemporary biographer probably state the case fairly:

"Learning is not the only requisite qualification for such a school as Eton; other qualities are necessary to constitute the character suited to such an important and difficult charge. He, unfortunately for himself, succeeded a man who pre-eminently possessed all the requisite talents for his situation. The comparison was replete with disadvantage; and, not being able to adopt his predecessor's mode of management and regulation, he rested upon the severunpopular among his scholars. The inity of discipline. He therefore became feriority of his birth, which would never have suggested itself had he made himself beloved, was a circumstance which helped to augment dislike, and to dispose the higher classes of his scholars frequently to display a contempt for his person, and sometimes to resist his authority; he therefore judged it best to resign his situation."

He had the mortification, before he resigned, to see the school fall. away in numbers from the 522 left by Dr Barnard to 230; but his zeal and conscientiousness were deservedly rewarded by such consolation as a canonry of Windsor could give.

VOL. XCVII.-NO. DXCII.

own:

"Qui fuerim, ex hoc marmore cog

nosces;

Qualis vero, cognosces alicubi ; Eo scilicet supremo tempore Quo egomet qualis et tu fueris cognoscam."

Of the many distinguished pupils of Barnard and Foster we must speak hereafter.

LOOKING out at life from the very narrow loophole at which I sit, I scarcely like to affirm anything very positively; but, so far as I am able to see, it seems to me that I never remember a time in which so many men aspired to public life as the present. There were always, and I trust there always will be, a large class to whom Parliament will be a natural and suitable ambition. The House of Commons has the proud prerogative of representing every interest of the kingdom. The landowner, the millowner, the man of ships, the man of mines, the friend of Exeter Hall, the advocate of the Pope. Even crotchets and caprices have their members; and there are men who tinker about street-organs or licences to oystercellars, but who really, as they consume their own smoke, are small nuisances, and may easily be endured. Even bores are represented in Parliament; and if the Brothers Davenport only live long enough amongst us, there is no reason why Mr Howitt, for instance, should not stand up in the House to represent the spiritual interests of the nation. I like all this. I am certain that at the price of listening to an enormous amount of twaddle we purchase safety. One

Idea would be a very troublesome and cantankerous fellow if you would not let him talk, but with his free speech he is happy, and, better still, he is innocuous. However silly his project be, he is so certain to make it sillier by his advocacy of it, that it is right good policy to invite him to explain himself.

It would be hard, too, to deny a man who has contested his borough, borne the fag and the rough usage, the abuse, the insult, and the heavy cost of a contested election, the small privilege of hearing himself say "Sir" to the Speaker, though the shuffling sound of departing feet should make the sentence that followed inaudible. This, however, is a costly privilege; it is essentially the luxury of the rich man; for since we have taken such immense precautions against bribery, a seat in Parliament has become a far more expensive thing than ever it was before. The apparent paradox admits of an easy explanation. Have you not once or twice, if not oftener, in life drunk excellent claret in some remote country-house, where the owner's means were certainly not equal to such a luxury? The reason was, the duties were high, and the smuggler found it worth while to evade them. The

reduced tariff, however, cut off the contraband, and though the legal article was cheaper, it never came so low in price as the "run" one. There is therefore now less smuggling into the House; but even the low duty is too high for the poor

man.

This circumstance it is which makes it the more incomprehensible to me when men, whose fortunes I am well aware are small, and whose positions would seem to call for every exercise of energy and industry, lounge into my room and tell me "they are going into Parliament." If these were all, or if even a fair number of them were, very clever fellows-well read, well grounded, with good memories, fluent of speech, endowed with much tact, and a happy address-I might say, though not exactly born to be statesmen, they might find a career in public life. The discipline of a government requires so many petty officers, that there is nothing unreasonable in such men expecting to be sergeants and corporals. The House, too, is a rare club; its gossip is the best gossip, its interests are the best interests, even its jobs and intrigues are finer, grander, better games of skill than any that ever engaged the wits and tried the temper of gamblers. I cannot imagine a sphere in which ability was so sure to have its legitimate sway and swing.

One cannot conceive a place, except it be the play-ground of a great school, where fair play is so sure to be the rule and practice. It is the one spot on earth where the weak cannot be browbeaten, and the strong cannot be a tyrant. It is the only arena the world has ever witnessed, wherein right-mindedness has obtained the force of talent, and mere honesty can hold its own against any odds in ability. I admit at once how proud a thing it is to belong to such an assemblage, and I only ask that the men who aspire to it should have something in proportion to the preten

sion. I mean that it is not enough that they have failed as barristersbroken down as novelists - been bankrupt as speculators, or unfortunate in any other career in lifethat they should come here. The House of Commons is neither a reformatory nor an asylum. It was never intended to recall the wandering sheep of politics to the pleasant pasturages of office, or prove a refuge for the forlorn castaways-the street-walkers of the learned professions.

Johnson called patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel. What if Parliament were to become the last resource of incapacity! I earnestly hope this may not be so. I ardently desire that other men's experiences may not be as my experiences. I long to think that the dreary creatures who come to show me the "twaddle" they have written to the free and independent electors of Snugborough, are not a widespread pestilence, but a small local disease invented for my especial torment. What mornings have I passed, listening to their opinions on currency, on the colonies, on the Catholics! what they would do about Church rates-how they would deal with the franchise. These are the aspiring creatures who mean to be terrible to Gladstone, and thorns in the side of Disraeli. There are others who vow themselves to committee life-who mean to pass their days in the smaller shrines of politics, and only pray to the saints who preside over railway rogueries and the peculations of public works. Last of all, there are the "Dundrearies" of statecraft, who know nothing themselves, nor ever knew any one who did-who want to be in the House because it is the right thing, and who feel about politics as did the Bourgeois Gentilhomme about prose-it was a fine thing to be talking it even unconsciously. These men, by some strange fatality, always speak of the achievement as an easy one. They know a "fellow" who can get them in for eight

hundred or a thousand; and they tell you little anecdotes of electioneering rogueries you have often read in print, as part of the personal experiences of "the fellow" aforesaid. I own these men try me sorely, and even the bland temper with which nature has endowed me is at moments driven to its last intrenchments. The affected contempt they assume for public life-the tone of rogues all" they put on with respect to men in power, and the levity with which they treat responsibilities that the strongest are seen to stagger under-these are the things that push my patience to its limits.

66

It is all very well to say that if these men entered the House we should never hear of them; that they would be as completely ignored as if they sat in the reporters' gallery. Be it so; but I ask, Why should they be there at all? why

should they aspire to be there? What fatal tendency of our age inclines men to adopt a career in all respects unsuited to them? When Pitt said of our octogenarian generals, "I don't know what effect they produce on the enemy, but I know that they frighten me," he expressed what I very strongly feel about these small boys of politicsthey fill me with fear and misgiving.

The numbers of such men assuming airs of statecraft, talking of great questions, and identifying themselves and their small natures with measures of moment, has the same effect in political life as the great issue of a depreciated paper currency has in finance. These are the greenbacks of public life; and as a general election is approaching, let me caution constituencies against making them a legal tender, or even for a moment supposing they are good as gold.

In common with others of my countrymen who live much abroad, I have often had to deplore the unfair estimate of England that must be made by commenting on the singular specimens of man and woman-hood that fill the railroad trains, crowd the steamboats, and deluge the hotels of the Continent. How often have I had to assure inquiring foreigners that these people were not the élite of our nation! With what pains have I impressed upon them that these men and women represent habits and ways and modes of thought which a stranger might travel England in its length and breadth without once encountering, and that to predicate English life from such examples would be a grievous injustice!

This evil, however, has now developed itself in a form of exaggeration for which I was in no way prepared. It seems that some enterprising and unscrupulous man

has devised the project of conducting some forty or fifty persons, irrespective of age or sex, from London to Naples and back for a fixed sum. He contracts to carry them, feed them, lodge them, and amuse them. They are to be found in diet, theatricals, sculpture, carvedwood, frescoes, washing, and roulette. In a word, they are to be "done for" in the most complete manner, and nothing called for on their part but a payment of so many pounds sterling, and all the details of the road or the inn, the playhouse, the gallery, or the museum, will be carefully attended to by this providential personage, whose name assuredly ought to be Barnum!

When I read the scheme first in a newspaper advertisement I caught at the hope that the speculation would break down. I assured myself that, though two or three unhappy and misguided creatures, destitute of friends and advisers, might be found to embrace such an offer,