[TYPICAL ENGLISH SCHOOLS.]
BY JOHN CORBIN.
ETON.
Fifty years after William of Wykeham founded Winchester, King Henry the Sixth founded a school at Eton, a little town across the Thames from his great palace at Windsor. The rules he drew up for governing his "college" he copied from Wykeham; and in order to give it the best possible start, he took one-half the college at Winchester—the head master, five fellows, and thirty-five scholars—and settled them at Eton. For a hundred years or so Eton was a mere daughter of Winchester; but as centuries passed it took a different character. Its site, in the very shadow of Windsor Castle, naturally secured for it royal favor. George the Third and William the Fourth took a lively personal interest in its welfare; and in late years members of the royal family, the sons of the Duke of Connaught and the little Duke of Albany, grandchildren of Queen Victoria, have come to Eton to prepare for the university. To-day the school numbers over a thousand—twice as many as Winchester—and its graduates include far more men of birth or genius than those of any other public school. Just as Winchester raised the standard of scholarship at Oxford, so Eton has made Oxford the university of the English aristocracy.
A GROUP OF "HOUSES," THE CHAPEL IN THE DISTANCE.
The most interesting part of the buildings are the school-rooms, which stand to-day almost precisely as they were built. It gives you a queer feeling to think how many boys and how many generations of boys have sat on those benches at Arma virumque cano, or trying to drum the hὁ, hἡ, τó into heads that are already overflowing with dreams of fresh breezes on the river, and of the sound of the cricket-ball on the playing-fields.
On the wood-work of the rooms you will find the names of the boys who have studied here. On this post you can read H. Wesley, which, Etonians will tell you, is the way Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, used to write his name. Pitt carved his name twice, in modest little italics. Charles James Fox sprawled his in bold capitals across a high rail of the panelled wainscot. And here is Shelley. Each letter is quite plainly, even boldly formed; and yet they all huddle together so nervously that they seem to shrink from being seen. As you look at them, you call to mind the courage and independence that made Shelley refuse to be fagged, and then his pitiful plight when the fag-masters got up "Shelley baits," and hunted him through the town;—you can almost see his pale cheeks and his lustrous eyes. Many of these famous names stand in a group of their school friends—a poet between a banker and a soldier, all boys together—and among these many another, perhaps the most popular of all the boys at school, of whom the world has never heard. Gladstone's name is as correct as an epitaph. And so it is an epitaph of the ancient custom of carving your own name, for since his time you have to pay ten shillings when you leave school, and have a carver do it for you. These carved names are still arranged in groups of friends; and sometimes you will find a boy's name where his father and grandfather placed theirs; but they are all as like as so many types in a font; not one of them tells you a syllable about what kind of a boy the owner was. It would be so much better to allow each boy a certain space, and let him carve his own name the day he leaves.
THE LOWER SCHOOL, WITH CARVINGS ON SHUTTERS AND POSTS.