THE Preparatory Schools of England, if we understand by that term schools which prepare only for the Public Schools and the Royal Navy, and do not keep boys beyond the age of fourteen, are of quite recent origin. I have been able to trace the existence of such a school back to the year in which her present Gracious Majesty ascended the throne, but to no earlier date, though I have made a careful search. In the year 1837 there was started in the Isle of Wight a Preparatory School of this strict type Further investigation may possibly point to a somewhat earlier date for the genesis of the Preparatory School, and to some other school than this as the first example. But it can, I think, only be a question of a few years, and for all practical purposes we shall be safe in taking this particular school as the first of its type. It happens that the circumstances connected with its foundation are of special interest, both educational and national. They are eminently typical of the characteristics of our race, and deserve to be recorded.

He

The founder of Preparatory Schools, Lieutenant C. R. Malden, R.N., passed his youth and early manhood under very different conditions from those usually antecedent to the profession of a schoolmaster. He was an officer in His Majesty's Navy, and the life which he led right up to the time when he became a schoolmaster might have seemed a very inadequate, as it doubtless was a very unusual, preparation for such a profession. He was not only a sailor, but was almost uninterruptedly at sea. was an accomplished mathematician, and, owing to this and to his skill as a draughtsman, he was for several years hydrographer to His Majesty. He was also devoted to the study of Latin and Greek, and even Hebrew. He had all the instincts of a scholar. I have been so fortunate as to see the evidences of his specially professional work while at sea, and also of the way in which he managed, in his hours of leisure, to follow a pursuit only second to him in interest to his own profession. I do not know whether most to admire the elaborate composition of his logbooks, and the exquisite art of the water-colour illustrations of the places described in his various voyages, or the pertinacity with which he set himself, unaided, to become a classical scholar. In regard to this last, it is certain that no simple sense of duty, no mere ambition would have sufficed to carry a particularly busy sailor through what would have been to most men the drudgery necessary for the acquisition of the niceties of scholarship-such niceties for example as are evidenced by the ability to compose a copy of Latin verses of a more strictly correct type than was usual in, the scholars of the early portion of the century. Such persistence belongs only to the devotee, and Lieutenant Malden may certainly be fairly described as a devotee to the

classics.

In regard, therefore, to his specially scholastic attainments this accomplished sailor was curiously fitted for undertaking the

4333.

A

work of a schoolmaster. But he possessed other attainments of infinitely greater value than these intellectual ones for the equipment of a remarkable schoolmaster. He appears to have been a man of gentle nature, ahead of his time and calling at that period in his abhorrence of the harshness of discipline which frequently marred the splendid nobility and chivalry of nature characteristic of the British sailor in those and all other days. It was, I am told, largely owing to his sensitiveness on this subject, that Lieutenant Malden determined to give up a profession at which he had laboured so devotedly, and to adopt another which, though this was little recognised in those days, requires for its right performance the highest and most chivalrous qualities that human nature can command. Lieutenant Malden began his new work as a schoolmaster by taking pupils for the Royal Navy in the Isle of Wight. After a few years he purchased in 1837 the goodwill of a small private school of the type common in those days, and from that time to this steadily becoming rarer--a school which took boys of all ages. This he immediately converted into a Preparatory School proper, and in the course of the next year he transferred it to Brighton. Within a few years he purchased a piece of land, and put up buildings specially adapted for a school. Of this school he continued to be Head Master until his death in 1855. I may be permitted to add that the school still flourishes in the charge of a member of the third generation of the family.

I have dwelt at some length upon the circumstances attending the genesis of the Preparatory School, partly because the history of the first beginning of any movement that is destined to become an important factor in national life must always have an interest of its own, partly because, as has already been stated, the circumstances attending this particular case seem to possess for Englishmen a unique interest, as being specially characteristic of the habits and qualities of our country.

A few words for the further elucidation of this may perhaps be allowed to me.

The first Preparatory School was started by a sailor-the member of a profession to which England owes, and by which she maintains, her position among the nations of the world--a profession the members of which have been endeared to Englishmen over a long roll of many illustrious centuries in the past, and were never more dear to them than at the present moment. But the qualities that endear the sailor to us are not usually supposed to be such as would be looked for in a man destined to be a schoolmaster, particularly, perhaps, a Preparatory Schoolmaster. Be this as it may, it is an event of particular interest to an Englishman and one specially typical of our race that it was not an expert, not a trained educationist, but a sailor, with almost no previous educational experience, not even possessed of a University degree, who started what if not the first, was certainly among the first, of those schools which, during the space of a single reign in the history of Fngland, have spread themselves

over the country, and are established as an integral portion of Secondary Education, without, I believe, anything corresponding to them in any other nation.

There is one other feature in the circumstances of this particular school of great interest to the student of Education, which I shall now simply bring to the notice of the reader, returning to it again in another connection. Lieutenant Malden numbered among his early supporters a friend of Dr. Arnold's, at that time Headmaster of Rugby. Through the kindness of Lieutenant Malden's son and successor I have seen and examined a complete list of the boys who passed through the school from its foundation in 1837 to the year of its jubilee in 1887. In the early years of the school the majority of the boys went straight from it to Rugby.

Such is the history of what appears to be the first Preparatory School, using that term in the strict sense in which it is understood nowadays. It remains to account for the demand for such schools and the consequent supply, the result being the birth of the modern Preparatory School.

The rise and subsequent rapid development of Preparatory Schools can be explained only by a reference to the condition of Public Schools which prevailed during the period of that rise and development. For it cannot be too carefully borne in mind that the connection between Preparatory and Public Schools has been, is, and always must be of the very closest description. The former are, in fact, the junior departments of the Public School.

When Dr. Arnold was appointed to the headmastership of Rugby School, in the year 1828, and for some time previous to that date, there is no doubt that dissatisfaction with the condition, and especially the moral condition, of the Public Schools in England was widespread and profound. The literature of the period abounds in such references. It was the supreme merit of Dr. Arnold, one of the many evidences of the reality and sagacious optimism of his character, that he recognised the truth that lay at the bottom of these damaging external criticisms, and yet entirely refused to acquiesce in the hopelessness of the situation. In a notable utterance, which should be carefully studied by everyone desirous of comprehending the condition of things prevalent among Public Schools before Arnold's time and Arnold's method of dealing with it, he lays the whole subject before the masters and boys assembled in Rugby Chapel, very shortly after his appointment to the headmastership. He quotes the words of Mr. John Bowdler (whom he terms a "sensible and excellent man") when commenting upon the condition of Public Schools, and says that he cannot find words that express better the sense of serious men :"Public Schools are the very seats and nurseries of vice. It may be unavoidable, or it may not, but the fact is indisputable.". Among Arnold's comments upon this indictment is the following:-"I am afraid the fact is, indeed, indisputable, "Public Schools are the very seats and nurseries of vice. But

4333.

A 2

"he goes on to say, 'It may be unavoidable, or it may not; and "these words seem to me as though they ought to fill us with the "deepest shame of all. For what a notion does it give, that we "should have been so long and so constantly bad, that it may be "doubted whether our badness be not unavoidable, whether we "are not evil hopelessly, incurably. But the doubt "whether our viciousness be or be not unavoidable is something "too horrible to be listened to."

The main cause of this state of things lies, according to Arnold, in the barrier existing between masters and boys, and in the distrust felt by the latter towards the former. And the main remedy lay in altering this evil condition. If, then, there was a general feeling among the homes of England that such a description as this of the moral state of Public Schools was even approximately accurate, and if anything approaching to hopeless acquiescence in the incurability of the disease was also generally prevalent-and there seems little doubt that both these suppositions are matters of fact-then it will be readily understood that the supply of boys for the Public Schools of England was at that time a very meagre one. The immediate cause of the restored and increased confidence of the parents of England in the Public Schools, and of the consequent large and suddenly increasing flow of their sons to these schools, and of the demand for more Public Schools, is not far to seek. The immediate cause was Arnold. Following naturally upon this, and together with other circumstances to be alluded to later on-which were closely bound up with Arnold's treatment of the problem presented to him in the then condition of Public Schools, came the demand for Preparatory Schools-Preparatory Schools of the stricter modern type.

The frank recognition of the existing evil; the refusal to acquiesce in its hopelessness; the clear-sighted perception of the main cause of the evil; the bold triumphant genius displayed in the application of the remedy-here lies in a nutshell the explanation of the rise of the Preparatory Schools of England. It was Arnold-Arnold almost alone-that brought them to birth.

We are all aware of the orthodox and common-place view that a genius is but the creature of his age, and can do little, if anything, more than interpret and express it; and in a limited sense this is, of course, true. But I profoundly disbelieve in the almost limitless control over events that it is fashionable to ascribe to the spirit of the age, and the quite unimportant and almost mechanical part that is assigned to the efforts of the farseeing, resolute, immovable genius that is the inspiration of the movement. In the case under consideration other agencies, more or less occult, were at work, directed towards the same ends as those pursued by Arnold, facilitating and furthering his designs. But I have a deep conviction that Public Schools might have remained for many years for a period of quite indefinite duration in the bad condition that they were in during the early part of the

*

Sermons, New Edition, 1878. Vol. II. Public Schools,” pp. 80, 81.

century, had not Arnold appeared, seen what he saw, and done. what he did.

For, again, what did he see? He saw a condition of things the most hopeless while it lasts, of all conditions that can exist, or be imagined to exist, among the members of any such society. He saw mutual distrust prevailing between the masters and boys of a Public School-a distrust different, of course, as applied to each, and arising from different causes, but yet distrust. He saw, with the eye of genius, that so long as this prevailed, and precisely in proportion to its prevalence, so long would there prevail an utterly unsound condition at that school. And what did he do? That which only a great man could have done, but which he was sure to do. He completely, avowedly, privately, publicly, trusted the boys himself, and thus, human nature (let us be thankful) being what it is, he rendered it certain that all but the poorest, shallowest, meanest natures-and few indeed are such would answer to that trust. And in this conviction he was right-he was proved right by the result.

It would indeed be an assertion of mere ignorance to say that Arnold was the first schoolmaster to repose complete confidence in his boys. I have often thought that, if the materials were at hand and the right man for dealing with them, no more winning book could be written than that which contained a faithful record of the lives of many a schoolmaster in the past centuries who loved and trusted his boys with the love and trust of a father. For lack whether of material or of biographer, many a devoted, sweet, lovable personality is lost to the future, except in so far as it lives again, its sole ambition for fame, in the lives of its scholars and friends. The instance of Goddard, Arnold's own headmaster at Winchester, is especially appropriate here.

Without doubt the example of Goddard, as a man who loved and trusted his boys, had sunk into Arnold's mind, and was fruitful. The special point here is not so much what many of Arnold's predecessors were, as what they did. It was the combination of qualities in Arnold that made him able to effect what he effected that made him one of the greatest educational reformers, in so far as direct influence upon character goes, that has ever lived. He was not only a great schoolmaster, devoting himself with truly professional zeal to all the details of his profession, as then practised, but he was a great man, and he moved naturally and by choice among great thoughts and ideas of the most varied and diverse descriptions. But amid all these interests he never lost sight of the school. "The more active my own mind is," he says, "the more it works upon great moral and political points the better for the school," and these words show us wherein he differs from his predecessors. Many of them had loved and trusted their boys equally with himself, but to none of them was there present the same wide outlook upon the whole situation, and the same passionate desire to reform the whole.

Many headmasters before Arnold had, like Arnold, revolutionised the lives and characters of their own pupils It was