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, indulgence, 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

measure by the fatal tendency of that instinct to grow upon anyone who carelessly indulges it, and at least believing that severity was the only form of dealing effectively with the tiresome human animal in its earlier stages. Probably the commonroom life of such masters was of the most unedifying kind, the life was the frankest drudgery, and there was little inducement to mental refinement or pedagogic interest.

This state of things is almost entirely swept away. There is now a much more general instinct among members of the educated classes for employment of some kind. The young University man who hangs about at home is less common than he was; there is infinitely more competition for positions of even inferior emolument. The number of men who would in old days have inevitably taken Orders tends to decrease; men who are not rich enough to go into the Army or to the Bar, who have no professional or commercial interest, inevitably gravitate to the profession of teaching. The profession produces an adequate if not large subsistence; it has a human interest; it prolongs the tastes and thoughts of boyhood. The result of this is that the assistants at preparatory schools-and, indeed, increasingly at public schools are now men of a healthy type, with no particular intellectual interests, not as a rule characterised by any particular ambition, but kindly, sensible men, conscientious in their professional work, of decorous if not religious thought, and without extravagance or sentimentality. The only problem. connected with the profession is: What is the future of so many of these preparatory schoolmasters to be? While they are young, good-humoured, hopeful, they are probably well adapted to their work; but when nerves and muscles begin to fail, there is nothing but devotion to carry a man on. And their lives are lonely, except for the man who is by instinct a "nursing father," for their emoluments forbid matrimony, and the only chance of promotion is to start a school of their own; and for this a certain amount either of capital or of conspicuous social tact is necessary.

We pass to another point-the question of teaching. Here we find, in the majority of instances, that the work of preparatory schools is well done; there are well-known exceptions, familiar to every public school master, but as a rule boys are admirably grounded, write neatly, and are not afraid of work. These results seem to be achieved in various ways. A good deal of severity, even of incidental corporal punishment, seems still to be the rule at some preparatory schools; but the fact that boys come equally well grounded and equally content to work from schools where corporal punishment is practically non-existent should prove, if proof were needed, that such a system is out of date, and that boys can be trained without such punishment, though there may be some few cases where it is advisable, and the possibility of it is a useful force in the background.

It is not my impression that the teaching of preparatory schools is usually of a stimulating order; it is quite certain that younger boys, up to the age of fifteen or thereabouts, take an

interest in the conscientious performance of work which the growing years gradually subtract; but I do not find that there is much attempt made to excite the intellectual interest in preparatory schools, though, again, there are certain exceptions; and the introduction of a general paper in the entrance examinations of public schools has led to some improvement in this respect. I do not believe it to be an exaggeration to say that the majority of preparatory schoolmasters, if they frankly uttered their mind, would probably say that they did not consider the training of the reasoning faculties was any part of their business; that their duty was to turn out a boy capable, at a certain age, of reaching a certain standard in prescribed subjects. If that view is accepted, it must be confessed that they do their work extremely well.

As to our next point, which shall be health, there can be no sort of question that it is very carefully considered at preparatory schools, and with satisfactory results; the improvement in this respect has, within the last thirty years, brought school life, with all its healthy incidents, within the reach of delicate boys who would, in earlier and rougher days, have been condemned to private tutors and home education. Health seems to be considered, at the preparatory school, from an eminently commonsense point of view. The boys are sensibly clothed, the rooms are well warmed, food is liberally administered, attention is paid to changing and bathing; there can be few of the ill-fed, dirty, neglected-looking boys that existed in most of the large preparatory schools of fifty years ago. There seems, too, to be little of the faddist abroad, though in the competition for pupils in the presence of maternal over-anxiety, rumours of extravagant hygiene reach the ear from time to time; quite recently a colleague of my own was told by a mother, with serious approval, of a visit that she had made to a preparatory school, where the head-master had taken her into a hot room and showed her a number of pigeon-holes where the boys' clothes for out-of-door purposes were kept, so that they might always be slightly higher in temperature than the average temperature of the body. This is indeed tempering the winds of heaven. But as a rule a more moderate standard prevails.

We must pass on to the consideration of an important subject -the question of games. No one can be more keenly alive than the present writer to the possibilities of healthy enjoyment and the beneficial results both to health and morals to be derived from regular and organised games; and nothing is further from his wish than to pose as an anti-athletic prophet. But anyone who considers the present education of the youth of this country in a serious spirit, or who has at all a high ideal in the matter of intellectual progress, cannot fail to be alarmed at the part which athletics play in the life of schools. To say that success in athletics is the thing which the majority of boys and parents desire above all others is incontestably true. The candid statement of a parent of a public schoolboy of the sufferings he undergoes when his boy is a possible candidate for the school eleven,