merits of the large private school, conducted on the public school system, and the public school itself; and the purse may settle the question. But supposing that it raises no protest, the parent may incline at once to extend his thoughts to that little world which is to be found in a great public school. It presents many points of view to his consideration. There is the strong recommendation of the first-rate character of its scholarship and instruction. There are to be weighed, in comparing one such school with another, the principles and mind of the head-master and his assistants, and likewise the tone which pervades the school, and which is cherished by its rulers. There is, in all cases, the monitorial system of police, with all its responsibility; a regulated and moderated fagging taking place of the law of mere brute force. There is the liberty, often abused; and the working too often of an evil leaven, suspected by the masters, or even known by them to exist, and yet long escaping detection, the diffusers of it marked by their general character, yet evading all attempts made for their conviction. But withal, the parent whom we are supposing may know many fine characters which owe much of what he admires in them to a public school. There the roots of their religion were strengthened, through God's grace, by means of the very pressure that was brought to try them; and he cannot disregard that sense of honour (imperfect though it be), that manliness of mind, that vigour, diligence, perseverance, firmness, independence, boldness, which he may have witnessed as characteristic features of many who have passed through one of our public schools.

And yet it is not to be wondered at if our parent, having spent long months in inquiry and reflection, reaches at length a state of uneasiness and doubtfulness of mind. Hazard, perhaps danger, appears to be written up everywhere; and he can neither feel at ease in the thought of keeping the boy at home, nor of sending him away to school. He at length concludes that in this, as in everything, some risk must be run.

In his perplexity he may think of consulting an experienced and judicious friend; and that friend, while perhaps fully recognising even more than all the perils and risks which he has seen to be attendant upon a boy's education, may counsel him to select, in the first instance, some prudent and scholarly tutor, who takes a limited number of boys, not exceeding thirteen or fourteen years of age; and when the child's character appears to be settled, and such as may bear some stress of persuasion, without turning aside from the right path, then to send him to a public school, only having previously satisfied himself of its tone, and of the moral and religious qualifications of the masters, as not less important than cleverness and scholarship. If, after some fair

probation, the boy breaks down in the public school, or shows that he has not strength to stand its trials, he may be advised to take him away; but if he walks firmly in the path which he knows to be right, the parents' anxiety will give way to rejoicing and thankfulness, and they will have reason to acknowledge that a public school has its own special benefits to confer on those who will use it righty, and that the evils which unhappily overtake many of the boys, are not inseparably connected with it.

The tale whose title is prefixed to the present article will be serviceable to inquiring parents, rather as giving them an idea of the society into which their sons will be introduced at school, than as exhibiting to them a special view of public school character and life. That dreadful misuse of the English language, school slang, which runs through all its pages, belongs rather to schoolboy life in general, than to any particular phase of it. The incidents, such as stealing off to ride in a race-finding a dying robber in a solitary cave-hiding the papers of a master in another boy's pocket, and leaving that boy to be flogged for it when detected-shooting a school-fellow and wounding him, to the extreme peril of his life-the remorse, repentance, and conversion of two irreligious boys, and the eventual marriage of one of the boys to the sister of anothermight have happened in connexion with some private schools as easily as with Eton or Harrow. But there is much of boycharacter for a parent to study; much to indicate to him in what direction danger may be feared for his son, suggesting that it arises out of the influence which boys gain over each other, and that it may develop itself fully in a little company of four, alike in a public school, or beneath the roof of a private tutor.

The author evidently wishes to place the public school system in a favourable point of view, when it may be combined with the influences of home by the parents residing in the place. The head-master is represented as feeling much distaste for such adjuncts; but he learns, as the tale proceeds, to moderate what we are given to understand are but prejudices; and there is an illustration of the various ways in which parents, in such cases, may not only render essential service to their own children by daily intercourse with them, but also benefit some of their companions and friends.

To schoolboys we are much mistaken if this tale do not prove to be interesting and instructive. It is presented to the reader in the form of a family journal, written partly by one of the boys, and partly by his mother, in successive chapters. The time taken by the story is no longer than one school-year, from ten to eleven months, including the midsummer holidays. When you close the volume, you are disposed to ask whether

in schoolboy experience, such thrilling incidents were ever crowded into so short a space of time. But it is an impertinent question; and if you asked it, you would probably be silenced by being told that you are grey-headed, and that your memory is failing; or, possibly, that boys are not now so slow as they were when you were young. Or it might be whispered to you by the gentle writer, that if the story was to be read with pleasure, it was necessary in some degree to overcharge it with incident, and that there really was time, in the ten months, for the races and all the tricks that preceded them, and the remorse, and the robber, and the restoration of the robber's boy to an honest way of living, and the unjust flogging, with its preceding and ensuing circumstances, and the boy-shooting, the fever, and the reformations; and that the marriage did not happen till years after. Be it so. We repeat that it is a pleasant and useful story. The characters appear to be well conceived; they are fully sustained to the end; the interest of the reader is soon awakened, and is not for a moment allowed to flag; there are stages of the story in which his feelings are stirred to their depths, and to which some reviewers might be tempted to apply the cant word of the day, by calling them "sensational." We see a little of the head-master, and of some of his assistant-masters; a glimpse or two is opened into the school in general; the captain, and others, are not wholly put out of sight; but the chief figures are four boys, and the mother of two of them (who writes much of the journal), and, in some fainter measure, their

father.

The four boys are Herbert and Alfred Oliver, known only as Herb and Alf, living with their parents at the manorhouse; Richard Norris, called Dick, who is the son of a friend, who also lives with Mr. Oliver; and the fourth, Malcolm Douglas, a boarder in the school, the owner of a great dog, from whom he derives the nickname of Wolf, partly because of the unamiable peculiarities of his temperament. Herb, the elder of the brothers, is a boy of settled religious principles. The captain of the school once described him, with apparent discernment, as "a fellow of sterling stuff, stuff that would wear.' He said that he had never met with one whose high-toned christian principle more thoroughly pervaded and moulded his character; that his abilities too were of no mean order, and that, if he kept on working perseveringly, as he did now, he might come out as a "double-first" some day. His fault was a want of business-like habits. 66 The most luckless fellow he is, almost, that I ever set eyes on, as regards a capacity for making a mull of things. He is for ever minus something in class, some essential lesson-book, or a pen, or a pencil, without which he cannot possibly get on, and always for some

provoking trivial reason." (pp. 141, 142.) This robbed Herb. of the Doctor's favour, who was practical and methodical, and not predisposed to make allowances for a "homebred" boy.

Alf was a lively thoughtless fellow, easily led into scrapes, and little inclined to reflect on all the bearings and consequences of the things on which he had set his heart. He was about eleven years of age. He soon fell under the influence of Dick, who was a boy of little heart and of no fixed principle, a small man of the world; ingenious in contriving methods of breaking the laws of the school without being detected, and reckless as to the manner of getting out of the difficulties by which he was overtaken. He belonged to the class which may be denominated "dangerous" in any school.

The Wolf was reserved, cynical, unpopular, but for the most part manly and independent. He cared nothing about religion, and stood contemptuously aloof from religious people, young or old. He was proud and self-satisfied, and yet, when he had a design to accomplish, for the gratification of selfishness and spite, he could condescend, in one instance at least, to the basest meanness.

Such are the principal characters exhibited in "School and Home." We will not wrong our readers by giving them an outline of the story. It must be learned from the book itself. But there are a few points which we may notice without fear of forestalling their pleasure or pain, as the case may be.

On a certain occasion (p. 31), the three higher forms in the school were to be put upon their word of honour not to go near a horse-race on the common. Herb, in his journal, makes this just remark,-"I can't make out myself why your word of honour should be thought to bind you more than a promise. If you are an honest fellow, why, you would'nt break your word to save your life; and if you are a liar, what is the use of talking about honour? It's all fudge."

The opinions of Dr. Lander, the head-master, on various methods of education, come before us by means of a reported conversation between Arthur Ellison, the head-boy, a fine matured character, and Mrs. Oliver, pp. 142, 143 :

"You ought to know,' said he, on the day when he was talking with her about the fault in Herb which disturbed the master's equanimity, that the Doctor has a very poor opinion of home-bred boys in general. Reasonable or unreasonable, I don't take upon myself to say; but certainly I know that he happens to have had some dreadful specimens in the school. Just the most sneaking liars and cowards, boys full of evil, and with a wretched talent for propagating it, have been those brought up under a private tutor at home, or coming from private tutors who took in a small number of pupils. I don't mean the least to say that it is so elsewhere, but it happens to have been the case at Chadminster; and it would be strange if

he was not more or less prejudiced by it in consequence.' I (Mrs. Oliver) admitted that the fact had come also under our observation, and said that, of course, when a home-bred boy was right principled, the only thing for him was to live it down.

"Oh, of course,' answered Ellison, and that Herbert will live it down, I have not the shadow of a doubt. I believe that, by this time next year, Dr. Lander will know and appreciate your son as much as you could desire, but that till time has given him an opportunity to prove himself what he really is, it goes against him.' Then he said there was another point which it hardly seemed delicate on his part to mention, and yet, he had no doubt, was a slight drawback for our boys with Dr. Lander. That it really was not in the nature of a schoolmaster, to like to have parents, as it were, within earshot of all that passed; that it lessened the interest a master felt in the boys, because it lessened his responsibility, and might give him a sort of sense of restraint, as if he had not exactly his independence of action, as regarded such pupils, which he enjoyed with others.""

At another time we meet with other views of the Doctor, which, though partly grounded on prejudice, may also point out to religious parents the need of great prudence and caution in the training up of their children. Herb is in disgrace, charged with an offence which he had not committed, for which he has been flogged by the head-master. He is relating what had passed :

"I could have welcomed the pain, for the old kind fatherly way that seemed to come back to him again when it was over. He laid his hand on my shoulder, and said, that in my case he was particularly anxious to nip anything like double-dealing in the bud. He thought it was a great temptation to those who had been brought up very religiously, by kind and indulgent parents, to have their theory much higher than their practice, than which nothing was more destructive to genuine, faithful, consistent, manly piety. There was a hollowheartedness about it which ruined all personal peace and gladness, and an unreality which destroyed all hope of our effectually influencing others for their good. He would have me remember the text, Take the beam out of your own eye, that you may see clearly to take the mote out of your brother's eye.""

·

Herb had been maligned. The false friend, who had played upon him the trick which made him appear in the light of a culprit, had insinuated to the master that he was a hypocrite. It is a common device of the enemy to snatch away the influence of that which is good, by charging it with being unreal. Nevertheless, there is such a danger as that which the Doctor evidently suspected in this boy; and many parents may be found failing in that caution which would studiously avoid tempting their children to profess more than they feel, or to seem to be better than they really are.

While referring to the opinions attributed by this tale to Dr. Lander, the head-master, we must remark, that he fails to gain our confidence. Whether this be the result of some defect