INTEMPERANCE IN STUDY. 647 



and supper there are about two hours allowed for recreation. While 

 it must be remembered that, when we speak of boys being engaged in 

 study for ten hours, those who are lazy are not closely and continuously 

 engaged in their work, and that if the master is not strict the strain is 

 not necessarily severe, I can not but think that it would be better for 

 the health of the scholars in this school if the total amount of time 

 engaged in school or study did not exceed eight or at most nine hours. 

 I am quite alive to the danger attending too liberal an amount of time 

 being left at the disposal of schoolboys ; they do not find it difficult 

 to get into mischief. Still, under proper supervision, three hours' 

 relaxation between ,9 a. m. and 9 p. m, does not seem to me an extrava- 

 gant allowance for growing lads. 



I have referred to the encroachment of book-work on play-hours. 

 Having taken great pains to get at this point in various schools, my 

 conclusion is that, what with back lessons, impositions, and extra sub- 

 jects, this encroachment becomes in many instances a serious burden. 

 I have been puzzled at first to explain the ill health of some boys when 

 I examined the time-table, and did not succeed in explaining the mys- 

 tery till I discovered how much of the play-time was really spent by 

 them in work. This is, no doubt, often the fault of the boy, who has 

 not properly i learned his lessons, and has to relearn them when he 

 might have been at play. It would be well, however, if the masters 

 would consider whether they do not sometimes, by the amount of work 

 set the boys, render it difficult to those who have only average ability 

 to do all that is expected of them without encroaching on the time of 

 recreation. 



In one school I find, as might be expected, that some boys do and 

 some do not complain of the pressure put upon them out of school. 

 I believe this arises in these instances from a difference in facility 

 of learning and not indisposition to work. One pupil, who has left 

 school, and loyally observes, in writing to me, " I feel bound to stand 

 up for a system to which I owe so much," reluctantly admits that the 

 number of lines of poetry and prose which have to be committed to 

 memory is quite unreasonable. The danger of overtasking the brain 

 is here, I believe, by no means an imaginary one. The repetition, 

 which goes on gradually accumulating during the term, of some six- 

 teen or eighteen lines of Greek or Latin verse at each lesson, becomes 

 at last a heavy load for the memory ; and my informant adds, " At 

 the end of term I have known over one thousand lines demanded, with 

 only a day's time to look them over in, the usual amount being four 

 hundred to seven hundred lines in the upper forms on the classical 

 side." Another scholar, in a different school, writes : " I have never 

 known more than thirty new lines of Greek or Latin set for one lesson. 

 No time is specified for learning the lines, but they have always to be 

 done between evening school one day and morning school the next, 

 unless the master chooses to set the lesson before." Here we see how 



