much time in what is to them the only purpose of school hours, viz., getting marks, places, and removes, with an ultimate view to outside examinations.

If the information subjects could be ruthlessly expelled from outside examinations, except so far as they would come in in essays, and in general papers set more to test intelligence than information, a remedy would have been found. Let the mental gymnastics occupy the morning hours. Let there be real hard work, with its necessary accompaniments of rewards and punishments. Don't expect any enthusiasm for Cæsar or for narratio obliqua. Let the master's attitude be: "This is training. It is, I know and feel, irksome, but it is teaching you to think and remember." Let all marks, places, and removes be given for these subjects alone. Indeed, I may say in passing, what is the use of promoting a boy for knowledge of facts to a remove which is beyond him in knowledge of principles, and in power in applying them? A boy who has not mastered the difference between purpose and consequence, and cannot unravel a sentence in Virgil, is hopelessly at sea in the higher remove; and it will not help him if he knows all the chief battles in modern history, or all the seaports of Europe.

So far, I have said nothing about the "preparatory school product's" knowledge of modern languages. It is a subject on which it is necessary to have clear ideas. A language may be learned for three purposes, as a mental gymnastic, for its literature, or for practical utility. Latin is learned chiefly for the first purpose, Greek for the second, and French for the third. Let us confine ourselves at present to Latin and French, as it is with these that the preparatory school product has, or ought to have, most to do, and let us eliminate the literature as a subordinate purpose in each case.

A language also may be learned in two ways; by rational processes and by imitation. These two may, of course, be more or less combined. But, generally, it is true that a language learned as a mental gymnastic ought chiefly to be learned by rational processes, and a language learned for practical utility, by imitation. It is also true that an inflected language is far the most suitable as a mental gymnastic. As no one has more conclusively pointed out than Mr. Goschen (Essays and Addresses), about five times as many mental processes have to be gone through in translating Latin as in translating French. Again, we do not want to be able to talk Latin fluently, but it is a main object of learning French to be able to use it readily in conversation. Therefore, French ought to be learned chiefly by imitation. The difficulty about this is that the natural way of learning a language requires natural conditions, viz., that it should be the only language used for several hours per diem. But again, as learning by imitation is in no sense education, the time cannot be spared for this, if we are to teach our boys what Mr. Goschen so aptly calls "the art of interpretation."

Here is where the average parent puts down his heavy foot. Latin is no use to my boy; French is." He might as well say:

"Gymnastics are no use to my boy; shooting is." He doesn't understand and he doesn't try. For he has this reason on his side. The "preparatory school product" will afterwards (probably) require to be able to speak and write French on the level of ordinary life, and he ought to learn it early and well.

My own solution of the difficulty is a compromise.

Let French be taught before Latin up to the age of, say, 12 or 13, mainly by imitation, but partly also by grammar and exercise. But let it always be borne in mind that imitation is not only not an educative process, but that it promotes the very tendency, which, as I showed at the outset, is already too predominant, and which is most antagonistic to habits of rational thought and independent judgment.

The young boy, however, will have some interest in this work, and he will not be damped by hearing at home that "Latin is no use to you." He will also by the far easier grammar and exercises, and by the general absence of inflections, and of the inverted order which they occasion, be trained and prepared for the greater difficulties of his Latin. Afterwards, I believe, when he begins Latin he should drop the grammar and exercise part of his French, at least for a time. And here I may say that abstract reasoning, like that of Euclid, is still less fit than Latin for a young boy's mind. I believe, as a rule, that it is a sheer waste of time to begin Euclid till a boy can unravel Virgil.

I would like then to receive the "preparatory school product" at 14, able to talk a little French fluently, to write easy French exercises correctly, and to be able to apply the ordinary rules of syntax, and unravel fairly easy sentences in Latin. He should also be a fairly good arithmetician up to a certain point, and have become acquainted with a number of elementary geometrical facts, not by abstract reasoning, but by actual mensuration verified by himself. He should also write a large, bold hand, and spell fairly well. He ought also to have a large stock of general information, not acquired as a hateful task, but in such a way as to interest him, and to make him eager to acquire more, in directions suitable to his individual character and opportunities.

But in the war which he has to wage against the Philistines, this is the position which a schoolmaster must hold to the death. He has a hard battle to fight. Quick writes very truly (Life and Remains, p. 257), "We are haunted by an incessant clamour for positive knowledge. The parents, when they suddenly wake up to an interest in their children's progress at school, try to test it by such questions as What is the capital of Brazil ? or What was the name of Henry the VIII.'s last wife?'" And his conclusion is indisputable. "Such things as history, geography, English literature, should be taken in school and elsewhere as unprepared subjects, the teacher seeking to interest the pupils, and not troubling himself about any test of result."

We shall be on the high-road to have the "preparatory school product" more as he ought to be, when parents as well as public school authorities come to care more for what he is than for what he knows; for his powers of intelligence and reasoning,

rather than for a packed portmanteau of information; for health, activity and high spirits, rather than for the strokes he has learned at cricket. Let them estimate the influence of his school life by the openness of the boy's countenance, the frankness of his manner, the courtesy, kindliness and honesty of his conduct, by the clearness of his complexion and the good development of his chest and arms; by his fertility in resource; by the books and parts of a newspaper which he reads; and by the subjects on which he cares to talk. Let games by all means be prominent among such subjects. Talk about games is a great safeguard to English boys. "What do French boys talk about?" said Dr. Wilson of Clifton. But I am convinced that for most of what is overdone and unwholesome in the "athletic mania," the schools and the examination systems which hamper them are to blame. History, literature (with notes), natural history, earth knowledge, have all been associated with dull text books, preparation, impositions, detentions, and, as if to make the contrast between "work" and "athletics" more complete, schools now let their boys live through the play hours in the glorious liberty of flannels, while the "preparatory school product " has usually, for the immediately succeeding school hours, to induct himself into starch and coats, and even waistcoats, at a temperature perhaps of 80 degrees. Let us put all these things together, and cease to wonder that he has not usually fallen in love with matters intellectual.

But I do not despair of much more satisfactory results in the near future, as there are signs, here and there, of reason getting the better of prejudice and custom in the concerns of our daily life. This I am convinced is the next stage in the progress of civilisation.

HELY HUTCHINSON ALMOND.

THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL PRODUCT.

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL MASTER.

It is an unquestionable fact that in the last twenty-five years a most extraordinary change has passed over the face of education; some fifty years ago schools were treated as a necessary part of life, but like other homely and useful institutions, such as housemaids' cupboards or kitchen middens, were as far as possible banished both from sight and mind. Now the tendency is rather the other way, and boys at school may be held, not unreasonably, to suffer from the obvious and excessive attention. devoted to the development of their aims and ambitions; there is a danger of our educators, in aiming at sympathy, condescending too much, and looking at things too much from the boys' standard. However that may be, the change is undeniable, and it is equally incontestable that the preparatory schools have had much to do with effecting the change.

This short paper will be an attempt to criticise, from the point of view of a public school master, the results achieved, and to estimate the benefits that have accrued; but it would be ungenerous indeed, from the scientific point of view it would be inaccurate-not to begin by fully recognising the enormous debt which education generally, and the public schools in particular, owe to the improvement in the preparatory school system. Whether or no this progress is to a certain extent superficial, whether the development on certain lines is not possibly excessive, whether the methods employed are not, in the mechanical uniformity to which they tend, prejudicial to the characteristics of originality and force, has been doubted, and these suggestions will be briefly examined; but, on the broadest grounds, there is no sort of doubt that the public school master's path is smoothed for him to an extent which the present generation of masters hardly recognises, and mainly by the action of the preparatory schools. In the first place, the disciplinary difficulties which used to be held to be an inseparable part of public school life have been enormously diminished, and, in the second place, the whole relation of boys and masters has been put on a different footing; indeed, it may shortly be said that the old tendency among boys to regard the schoolmaster as a natural enemy has disappeared; possibly the public school master has got to exert himself before he is considered the guide, philosopher, and friend of the budding youth; but boys

now come to a public school with an instinctive feeling of friendliness to a master, which is the outcome of the patience, indulgente, and sympathy with which they have been treated at preparatory schools; and the same thing has eradicated from the minds of most boys to a considerable extent, though not beyond the possibility of recall, the former feeling that a master was fair game, and that any small humiliation or annoyance which could be inflicted upon him was of the nature of a priceless and rewarding jest, and amply worth the risk of penal

consequences.

The question is, how have these improvements been effected? First of all, we venture to believe, by the decrease in the size of preparatory schools. There were, of course, in former days, a certain number of schools where only a few boys were prepared, and where parents paid at an advanced rate for comforts which would be considered inadequate now in all the better class of preparatory schools; but the majority of the schools that prepared for public schools were big places and rough in proportion: possibly it was as well that they were so, for the small domestic sheltered school was but an inadequate preface for the rough and tumble that was to ensue. At many of these schools there were over a hundred boys. The food was rough and not particularly plentiful; corporal punishment was liberally distributed; boys were crowded together, for meals, work, and sleeping, into spaces that would not be tolerated now-the smaller boys often slept two in a bed; the sanitary arrangements and the arrangements for illness were of the most elementary kind; there was a good deal of fighting and bullying; but the life was probably a fairly healthy one on the whole, and tended to produce a cheerful and manly type. It was the sensitive, the undeveloped, the fragile who went to the wall. It is at the same time only fair to add that the above statement needs some qualification, and that there still exist certain notable preparatory schools, where a large number of boys are received, which are well to the front in all modern improvements; but in these cases success is invariably due to the conspicuous personality and statesmanlike qualities of the headmasters of the particular schools in question. It may be assumed as a general axiom that the numbers of a preparatory school should not be too large for every boy to come under the personal observation and influence of the headmaster of the school.

The next point to be considered is the extraordinary improvement in the status, social position, and refinement of the assistant masters in preparatory schools. There was, fifty years ago, a distinct brand of social inferiority upon the schoolmaster, which has by no means entirely left him. The title of "usher" would even now never be used, except with an intention to annoy. The assistant masters of preparatory schools fifty years ago were too often underpaid, unrefined, unimaginative men, the kind of gentlemen whom their headmasters would be careful to describe as "perfect," with no particular interest in their work-goodnatured, perhaps, by instinct, but with no motive for curbing irritability, and if not deliberately cruel, yet affected in some