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ing that you have done your best to secure this happy result.

If Boy is on good authority pronounced to be a scholar sans peur et sans reproche, or even the more ordinary type of scholar for whom the word superannuation has no terrors, your field is comparatively open: I use the word comparatively with design, as the Winchester authorities, having won the right to pick and choose, are rather jealous of reserving vacancies for any stray applicant.

"You are not of us and you must not be with us," said Mary Cave to George Effingham.

Having made this reservation, I may fairly say that in making your choice of a Public School you have a perfect embarras de richesse. According to the Public Schools' Year Book, rather more than a hundred establishments claim the title. So far as I know to the contrary, each one of these may be doing good work, and there is no ground for supposing that such a place as Abingdon-I quote it as coming first in alphabetical order-is infringing a patent by calling itself a Public School. But you will have to subdivide the total number by at least four, and perhaps by five, before you get the number of those which are commonly accepted as Public Schools, and even then old-fashioned people will say that you have been over and above liberal. I have no intention whatever of committing myself so far as to give a "correct card" of Public Schools. A few that I may happen to mention particularly I may in my own mind account as Public Schools. But neither am I prepared to give reasons for my classification, nor am I likely to mention the names of quite twice as many more which I should without hesitation place in the same category.

Now, what do you and his father wish Boy to be trained for, Cornelia? What profession is he intended to follow? The future calling must always

be an important consideration when the time comes for the choice of a Public School. True, indeed, all Public Schools are by way of preparing for all professions; but some will be better nurseries than others for one particular profession. It is an early day, you may say, to think of Boy's profession, when he is little more than a child, only thirteen or thereabouts. But surely, if he is inclined to work at all, it is better that he should have something more definite and more substantial to work for than school prizes,-those smartly bound books which he proudly puts up in a shelf at home, and never thinks of reading.

"I allers like pickles, they looks comfortable," quoth a farmer's wife. But she never ate them, though she played a remarkably good knife and fork on the more solid viands. School prizes are also very comfortable; but Boy ought-at any rate by the time that he has struck fifteen-to have a more solid ambition. He has long since discarded the early aspirations to become huntsman, postilion, footman in skyblue livery, or anything else that wears bright colors and suggests a free-andeasy existence. Has nothing taken the place of childhood's fancies in his mind, or have you yourself never troubled your head to think of his future?

Sea-going, in the Royal Navy at least, the Admiralty has already tabooed for him. That one year, that one very useless year, in the lower forms of a Public School, is no longer either recommended or enjoined by the Navy Regulations. But there is always an off-chance that the idea may crop up again. "Vestigia nulla retrorsum" has not hitherto been found to apply to the Board that rules the destiny of our first line of defence.

Apart from the Navy, at the time when Boy enters the Public School any profession is just a few years in front of him, and the sooner he makes up

his mind to work for some definite end in view, the more likely he is to succeed in after-life.

"My Boy won't want any profession," now and again asserts the country squire; "he'll have a biggish place of his own to look after some day, and he'll find plenty to do there."

Plenty to do indeed if you are contemplating suicide, you dear, silly old man. Yet even then he will do well to master the first principles of natural history, agriculture, horticulture, forestry, and a few other things besides. Apart from some technical knowledge of this kind, in the non-sporting months of the year, the life of the country squire must be a very tame and lacklustre form of existence; and the spectacle of an eldest son kicking his heels about at home while he is waiting to step into his father's shoes is something too melancholy to contemplate.

For Boy, who has to make his own way in the world, to be contented either to drift into a profession or to go on waiting and hoping that something will turn up, is a delusion and a snare. One perhaps in twenty of this expectant brotherhood will fall upon his legs, nine at least of the remainder will end by becoming assistant masters in private schools, not, indeed, because they have any vocation for teaching, much less a desire to teach, but really and truly faute de mieux. For a few years to come this form of life ensures tolerable comfort, a sufficiency of pocket-money, and a certain amount of leisure to play games. Hence its fascination for the careless-minded.

A drifter, my dear Cornelia, is apt to degenerate into a "waster," and the "waster" is the most contemptible of all men. Look ahead, then, my dear lady, and see that Boy shall never have cause to turn round upon his parents and say that it was their want of foresight which, in the first instance, allowed or encouraged him to drift.

A few tentative remarks about points of difference between various schools may or may not be of interest to you, Cornelia, and in either case must only be regarded as so many scraps of second-hand evidence.

Eton shall come first, as being at once the nursing-home of the Landed Gentry of England and the trainingground of the majority of our hereditary legislators, and of no small proportion of the people's representatives. If Boy is likely to be sufficiently endowed with the goods of this world, and either has political aspirations or an inclination to become a useful member of the Squirearchy, send him to Eton by all means. There he will interchange ideas with boys of similar prospects and aspirations to his own, nor will it be to his disadvantage to find himself rubbing shoulders with a good many members of the class whom Coningsby in the days of his innocence designated "infernal manufacturers." In these modern days, partly perhaps with an eye to business in the future, and partly in the hope that Boy may start life on a higher social level than his father did before him, the wealthy tradesman and the successful speculator sends his son to Eton as a matter of course. These fathers are probably wise in their generation. It may be possible on the one hand that Mr. Kipling's "cook's son" can borrow some "color of the mind" from "the son of a belted earl"; on the other hand it is well that the "infernal manufacturer" should at an early age obtain some insight into the foibles and prejudices of a class whom he may some time be called upon either to govern or to assist in governing others. It is equally impertinent, I am told, Cornelia, to enquire either a lady's age or the length of her husband's purse. But if the cost of Boy's education be a really serious consideration, set not your heart upon sending him to Eton.

It may not be necessary for him there either to offer Mr. Ormsby "such a bottle of champagne as you have never tasted," or to have "venison for dinner every day" of one term, or even a "roast goose" for breakfast, but he will be in a false position if an overrigid and too conspicuous form of economy is to be the order of the day. That very poor if very perfect Gentleman of France, M. de Marsac, with his "doublet awry" and his cloak "worse seen from the side than the front," and with that jargon of white lies that his fine feelings forced him to inflict upon his dying mother's ears, must over and over again have had "a heart full of bursting," as he moved about kings' palaces.

That the teaching of Eton is excellent for him who cares to learn, Balliol and New College at Oxford, King's and Trinity at Cambridge, are able to testify. But one at least out of every five men who send their sons to Eton will tell you frankly that from his point of view the learning of dead languages is of very secondary importance as compared with other advantages offered by an Eton education.

Let me warn you, Cornelia, that if Boy be one of those unfortunates who get a chill or catch a cold on every possible occasion, you will be well advised in sending him to a Tutor's House rather than a Dame's. The Eton Dame of to-day commonly wears trousers when he walks abroad, and is doubtless a highly cultured individual. But Eton is very conservative in its ideas, and the tradition of the elders does not allow the Dame to act as Tutor to the boys in his house. Going out to "my Tutor's" on a damp night in Eton is a distinctly catch-cold occupation.

If the thirty or forty pounds which I will make all the difference between Boy's comfort and discomfort in his Eton life is really a serious drain upon

the family purse, substitute Dark Blue for Light Blue, and send him to Harrow. "Not quite the same class of boys there," you may say. Well, perhaps not quite the same, but something very like it. If from Eton a longer roll of Premiers and Viceroys, from Harrow too a goodly list of Great Men of Action.

It is not many years since these lines were written,-written, alas! I fancy, by one of whom the School on the Hill can only cherish a loving mem

ory:

Who recks to-night of party spite
Or Irish agitation,

Of dull debates or Estimates
For freeing Education?
Enough to ken that Englishmen.
To-night in peace are sleeping,
While Schools and Farms and Fleet
and Arms

Are safe in Harrow's keeping.

There will certainly be nothing lost in the way of good education, and another drop of we will say thirty pounds in the School bill if Boy goes either to Winchester or to Rugby. If at either of these schools he chances to be less well fed than the Etonian is reputed to be, it will be rather because the latter, drawn from a wealthier class, may happen to be more liberally supplied with pocket-money and eatables from home than because the ordinary school-dietary of one school differs materially either in quality or quantity from that of another. In contrasting Winchester and Eton, while it may be claimed that the successes of the Etonian King's Scholars at Cambridge are about on a par with those of the New College Winchester Scholars at Oxford, it is probable that the Winchester system of education gets more good work out of the Commoner than does the Eton system out of the Oppidan. And I think it will be found that the ranks of what are commonly called the "Learned Professions" are

more largely recruited from Winchester than from any other Public School. Possibly on the principle άyálov ǎyao, the exclusiveness of Winchester tends to this result. It is not easy, as has already been pointed out, for any boy to become a Wykehamist except by open competition unless he is duly qualified by right of heredity. Now and again I have heard the statement made that at least every other boy at Winchester is a Radical. I do not in any way vouch for the truth of the statement; but if it be even partially true, it would seem to point to the conclusion that the Radical is at least as jealous of conserving what he deems to be his own as the so-called Conservative. The Rugby of Arnold's time, when the mail-coach was the order of the day, was pretty well the one and only school for the Midland squire's and parson's sons who-to parody Mr. Trevelyan-may be said to "have made the name of Rugby great," without, however, running her "deep in debt." If, since the railway has supplanted the mail-coach and the postchaise, Laurence Sheriffe's Foundation has rather lost its original character, time has in no degree impaired its efficiency as an educational centre. The vitality of the oldest of our Midland schools may be gauged by the facts that after a period of temporary depression it has for some years past been full to overflowing, and that its list of University distinctions willWinchester only excepted-bear comparison with that of any other school of the size. "Rough and ready" is the double-barrelled epithet-or may I call it compliment?—that I have sometimes heard applied to the school-life at Rugby. It is probably less rough and ready than it was in Tom Brown's time, and after all, Cornelia, Boy is not made of gingerbread.

If you wish to secure for Boy a good education at a still smaller cost,

you can have the pick of quite a dozen excellent schools, where the total ex

penditure on his behalf may be roughly put down at from £120 to £130. He who is counting the cost of taking a house will add to the rent at least another quarter-at the present rate of progression this promises fair to become a half-for rates and taxes. A similar addition must be made to the figures given by the "Public Schools' Year Book" as "necessary annual expenses," by way of covering such items as pocket-money, journeymoney, books, and so forth. At each and every one of this last-mentioned group you may take it for granted that Boy will be sufficiently well-prepared for the Honor Schools at either Oxford or Cambridge. Shrewsbury still turns out its yearly tale of great Greek scholars; Cheltenham and Wellington make a specialty of preparing for the Woolwich and Sandhurst examinations; Tonbridge, and perhaps, next to Tonbridge, Clifton, seems to offer most advantages to the boy whose heart is set on engineering; Marlborough, especially liberal in the way of cheapening education to the parson's son, wins honors galore in nearly every direction; and it is only fair to add that Oundle, a very modest and economical establishment, gains many distinctions in mechanical and physical science.

Day boys, or home boarders, are countenanced rather than encouraged at several of even the highest grade Public Schools. But in the matter of sending Boy as a day boarder, my advice to you, Cornelia, except under stress of dire necessity, is briefly "Don't!" In theory it may sound an enchanting thing to keep Boy under your own eye and at the same time give him the benefit of a Public School education; but in practice he will commonly be found to rank as "neither flesh nor fowl nor good red herring."

Still, if the purse be very limited, let me recommend you to move your goods and chattels, Boy included, either to Bedford or to Manchester. If, as in Dr. Birch's establishment, it is possiBlackwood's Magazine.

ble that "noblemen have been rather scarce" at both these training-grounds, the quality of the education is undeniable.

THE HEART OF OLD JAPAN.

Kyoto, the ancient capital of the Mikados, unspoiled by Western influences, as though separated from the external world by her purple chain of guardian hills, remains the heart and centre of Old Japan. The province of Yamato was the earliest seat of government, but the actual site of the royal palace was changed under every reign, owing to the prevailing custom of discarding the dwelling of a deceased father. In consequence of this fashion a new capital, created by the needs of the court, sprang up round the imperial residence, until the eighth century modified the inconvenient practice. At this epoch the change of locality practically ceased, although the palace was occasionally rebuilt, for the dilated area of habitation and the consolidation of trade forbade the desertion of the populous city, and the Mikado's court, save for a few brief absences, remained there until his restoration to power on the fall of the Shogunate in 1868. Streets and palaces, composed entirely of wood, were frequently burnt down, but invariably rebuilt in the same style. Hierango (the City of Peace) became Miyako, or Kyoto, the former being the Japanese, the latter the Chinese term for a metropolis.

The enforced seclusion of the Mikado, worshipped as a god but retaining a mere shadow of authority, probably helped to consolidate the sacred capital, enclosed by a ring of noble temples under the shadow of those

solemn groves which individualize the ancient sanctuaries of Japan. The modern city has shrunk to half the original size, and from the lofty terraces of Maruyama, consecrated by a thousand deathless memories, a golden sea of ripening rice now sweeps from the foot of the mountains to the gray mass of broad-eaved houses. A shrunken river flows through an expanse of gravel, crossed by numerous bridges; the black gables and white walls of the Shogun's castle break the level outlines, and in the steep roofs of the ancient palace we trace that contour of a Shinto temple which associated the deified monarch with the myriad divinities of his ancestral creed. Here and there a scarlet gateway stands out against the blackness of cedar and pine, a gleam of gold or lacquer on architrave and cornice indicating some temple hidden in the deep shade of luxuriant foliage. Kyoto remains the priceless reliquary of Japan's golden age, when art and chivalry vied with war and conquest in moulding the fortunes of the nation. The annals of the past were often written in blood, but the cruelties blotting many a stirring record frequently resulted from that exaggeration of sentiment which turns a virtue into the correlative vice.

A shady walk extends for several miles under the pines and cryptomerias of temple grounds on the green hillside, surely an ideal haunt of forest-gods! Only a vague murmur

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