highest sense, than the form-master with whom a new boy is placed. Hitherto the boy has had the advantage of more stimulating teaching, and has in consequence shot ahead of his equals in ability elsewhere: deprived of it, he sinks back to their level. Of course the reverse case is not unfrequently to be found: and then the boy mounts rapidly in his new school.

I turn now to training of other kinds. Not long ago I was told of a complaint addressed by the mother of a boy sent much too young to a public school to the matron of the house in which he had passed his first term, to the effect that he had come home not knowing how properly to wash himself or brush his hair. The reply was obvious. But it is just such lessons as these-in the social alphabet-that are taught efficiently and well in preparatory schools. A training in cleanliness, in personal neatness, in carefulness about the elementary laws of health, in orderliness, and resourcefulness in little things, cannot be begun too early. It should be begun in the nursery, but it is often left to the preparatory school to instil its very rudiments. Postponed, at least in some of its details, to the time when the public school is entered, it can only be learnt by imitation of or rough reminders from school-fellows, and a hint now and then from a matron, who cannot from the nature of the case be fully informed about the operations of the dormitory. The age at which a boy should go to a preparatory school is a difficult question. In some homes it is doubtless difficult to arrange for proper teaching to be carried on. But, as a general rule, there should be time allowed for home influences to do their salutary work. It should not be forgotten that the tendency of all schools is to turn out boys of one stamp or mould. Conventions are masters of the situation, for good or evil. The levelling process should not begin too soon or by the time a boy gets to a public school everything may have been levelled down that is most worth having in a boy's character.

More important still is the question of moral training. Very young boys have not unfrequently, as all schoolmasters know, a very imperfect sense of honour, of truthfulness, of honesty and the distinction between meum and tuum. It is far easier to create and to foster such a sense in the simpler atmosphere of a preparatory school than in the more complex surroundings of a public one. Few boys now come to us on whom some impression has not been made in this direction.

The older and higher boys in preparatory schools are often entrusted within obvious limits with power and responsibilities which doubtless have in most instances and in the long run an effect on their character. But this practice has its drawbacks. It may be questioned whether boys at this stage are not too undeveloped to bear the strain of such responsibilities, to understand their nature or importance. There is a There is a danger of a premature appeal to the half formed sense of honour scaring the conscience, and rendering it callous when, later on, the appeal ought to make its impression. A boy may become morally blasé; further it should be remembered a boy so trusted finds himself a nobody

when he joins his greater school; and the revulsion—almost parallel to that which takes place when a sixth form boy goes to the University-is in some cases hurtful. Corruptio optimi

pessima.

On morality in its narrow sense there is much to be said. Given the best tone in the world amongst elder boys, the knowledge of sexual facts cannot be long delayed, and knowledge means discussion of them. I need not point out the danger, arising from this cause, of the learning of bad habits by younger boys in such a community before they are fully conscious of their significance. It was great in the old days of mixed ages: it is very far from absent now. The preparatory school master who can keep his school pure, and who warns his boys when they leave him of the dangers to come, is discharging a duty the value and importance of which cannot be exaggerated. On the other hand, there is no greater peril known to the boarding house master of a big school than the presence in his house of boys who have been corrupted and familiarised with impure ideas before entering it. I have known schools from which housemasters have dreaded to receive boys. Happily they are few; in the majority of cases preparatory masters are fully alive to the risk and the responsibility. Even among quite young boys there is a danger of contamination from the presence of one or two who have somehow or other learnt all too soon what they should not; yet it is, I believe, in the large majority of instances guarded against and minimised. If boys thus protected in the early stages of their education fall later on, it is the fault either of special proclivities to vice or of untoward surroundings in their later school.

A few words may be added about the preparatory departments of great schools. There is often an objection raised and felt to them to the effect that the boys cannot but mix, and that not to their advantage, with their older neighbours. I do not think that this is the case in any well managed school: the two departments are habitually kept distinct, and little is known by the one of the other. On the other hand, something is gained by the fact that the system of the one is identical with, or leads naturally up to that of the other. For such special purposes as a Navy class, where boys are prepared for an examination to be taken at an early age, such an educational ladder is most valuable: and if we take a broader outlook, it is not easy to see that there is any serious flaw in the system.

I have said, I hope, enough to show what to my mind are the advantages of the preparatory school system as well as its drawbacks. There are few housemasters of public schools who will not agree with me that the gain is far greater than the loss, and that in the system we have much that tells for manliness and much that helps us to combat evil and to foster good.

H. A. JAMES.

THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL PRODUCT

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A PUBLIC SCHOOLMASTER.

Any attempt adequately to discuss this subject is beset by one serious and almost insurmountable difficulty. Though the term "product" is often used with regard to the results of a system of education, it is obviously liable to mislead unless care is taken to make it clear that the term cannot be employed with any very distinct connotation. In horticulture and mathematics there is no doubt as to the exact meaning of the word; but in all educational observations it is excessively difficult to separate the effects of nature from those of nurture; and this remark is true if the area under observation is no wider than the home. If in the case of an individual boy there is a reason for wishing to diagnose the results of his school life as well as of his home training, the difficulty of attaining accuracy is enormously enhanced. It is well known that if anything goes wrong the school is generally blamed by the parents, and the home is blamed by the schoolmaster; and this kind of recrimination could not exist unless there were considerable difficulty in adjusting the responsibility for the ultimate result. But if anything could increase this difficulty to an almost indefinite extent it would be if the term product were used to cover not one boy and one school, but a multitude of boys from a multitude of schools, and the question were asked as to what estimate could be formed of the effect of the school training on the whole number. It will be at once seen that the question assumes that there is an effect on young boys distinct enough to be observable in a large number, in spite of the fact that the schools through which they have passed are very various in tone, equipment, and aim; only less various than the homes from which they have originally come.

There are, however, two considerations which somewhat mitigate the difficulty mentioned, though they do not by any means wholly remove it. The first is as follows:-If the question is put quite simply, what is the difference between young boys who enter the public schools now, and what they would be if they had never been to any preparatory school at all, any schoolmaster would feel that in spite of the theoretical impossibility of gauging results, yet he is pretty certain that there is a difference, and also that he is prepared to say, approximately, in what features of the schoolboy's character it manifests itself. That is to say, there are some broad general characteristics of English schoolboys of 13 and 14 years of age which a tolerable consensus of opinion attributes to the school training which they have undergone. And thus it becomes possible to indicate what those

characteristics are, and to suggest, however tentatively, some points in which improvement seems desirable. The second is even more practical in character. Instead of hesitating, owing to the difficulty of separating the three different elements of heritage, home training and school life, which combine to make up the boy of 13, it would be advisable to abandon the attempt and indicate broadly what the English boy of that age generally is: how far equipped for what lies before him; how far orderly in his development and capable of progressing satisfactorily through the time of youth. Doubtless any criticism may be met by the objection that the blame lies with the home, and the school is powerless to undo the effects. Still, it may be not unprofitable to approach the subject from this side. Though other husbandmen have had a large share in the product, the preparatory schoolmaster may be interested to learn what others think of his pupils as they leave his hands.

Probably the symptoms which do not require any special insight will provoke least disagreement, and the one we will first select is very easy to verify and highly important. It is that, as compared with those of 30 years ago, the modern boy comes to the public schools prepared to deal with the masters as with human beings and friends. Formerly they were to him neither the one nor the other. High-spirited little boys, accustomed to geniality and kindness at home, were flung into the clutches of a strange assortment of middle-aged men, mostly without any boyish instincts left in them. In the large public schools they were simply scholars in the humbler order of Secondary Schools they must have been in many cases men who had drifted from one obscure means of livelihood to another till they took refuge in the ample harbour of school-teaching, tolerably secure that, whatever their want of fitness for the work may have been, immunity from disturbance was provided for them by the dense lethargy of public opinion which reigned throughout the country. And in those days no widely prevalent system of Preparatory Schools existed at all for the formidable task of getting little boys ready to meet this repellent order of pastors; and the boys were not got ready in any way. Hence, as soon as they found themselves in these strange surroundings they adopted an antagonistic and suspicious attitude towards their teachers. The astonishing change which has taken place is more visible in the modern Preparatory than in the Public Boarding School; but it is very marked in both. The result is an immense increase of confidence between boy and man; in other words, the growth of a true pastoral relation between them. At a large Public School, 35 years ago, a youth looked round on one occasion at the whole staff of masters gathered in chapel and settled in his mind that there was not one to whom he would go in any difficulty. Nowadays this could not happen in any Public School, though it may be admitted that there is room for a vast amount more of wise and sympathetic handling of boys by masters. But the change is a momentous one, and it has been largely assisted by the remarkable care taken of small boys in their first schools,

It is obvious that this important service rendered by the smaller schools to the larger ones is capable of much extension. As the spirit of co-operation between the different orders of schools gains in power, we may expect to hear of the frank communication from one master to another of all that is necessary for him to know about the pupils which are being transferred between them. A great deal more might be done in this way than is done, and for the deficiencies, both sorts of masters are in different ways responsible. Those in the more secure position, free, to a large extent, from the manifold vexations of competition-namely, the public schoolmastershave not always been quick to understand the difficulties and embarrassments which their preparatory school brethren have had to meet. It has not been easy in the past for the latter to speak quite freely about the boys who were leaving their schools. Frankness has seemed not unlikely to involve risk of loss of good name to the preparatory school, which, of course, spells ruin to its owner. And if such letters as have been written have frequently betrayed signs of this misgiving, and have erred on the side of a cautious optimism in the estimate of character transmitted to the public school, there was no need for the latter to conclude that all letters of the kind would be useless, and to throw cold water on the friendly assistance which had been rendered.

A question of much interest and importance presents itself at this point. Granted that the care and supervision nowadays given to the younger boys are still capable of improvement and extension, yet they have been in operation long enough to show in what respects we may look for evidences of their influence. If little boys are now looked after with close and unwearied vigilance as is certainly the case in many Preparatory Schools -what are the results so far?

The intellectual results have already been to some extent considered, but it would not be amiss to point to the greatest defect in the ordinary public school boy's mind, and to inquire whether anything in the preliminary teaching is likely to favour it or to counteract it. It is the same to-day as it has ever been. The enormous majority of boys detest the effort of thought which belongs to the surmounting of a real difficulty. It matters little what the stimulus may be in the shape of prizes for success, or what the threats which await failure. The fact is patent to every schoolmaster that sooner than think consecutively or patiently elaborate and thoroughly subdue a difficult sentence or a mathematical problem, nearly all boys of all ages of boyhood will go through hours of barren, soulless drudgery so long as they can convince themselves that they are covering the ground somehow and doing something praiseworthy. A prominent characteristic of adults in England is to shirk details, to jump to conclusions with as little of laborious effort as possible. It is curious that while we succeed in many parts of the globe by showing intelligence and zeal, but little method, the little boys of the country in their school work show method and