16 Fagging, and the Great Schools. [JAn. 
Why should fagging be suffered in any school? Subordination, in all 
instances, is essential ; and a degree of superintendance, to be exercised 
by monitors, chosen among the better conducted, well-tempered, and in- 
telligent elder boys, may be established with obvious advantage. But 
what has this to do with fagging? The fag is a junior boy, given into 
the absolute power of a senior boy, for every purpose that boyish 
tyranny can require. The fag is actually a menial of the lowest descrip- 
tion. He is ordered to clean his senior’s shoes, brush his clothes, run 
into the street on his errands, and do every work, clean or dirty, honest 
or dishonest, that his senior may command. He must surrender his 
money, give up his bed, his clothes, his books, every thing to the 
caprice of his young tyrant; and we all know that boys can be as full of 
insolence and cruelty as men. Ifthe senior happen to feel himself cold 
at night, he takes the blanket off the fag’s bed, and leaves him to freeze 
as he may. Those, with a hundred other kinds of ill treatment, under 
which many a boy has died, and many a one lost his health for life, or 
turned idiot or madman, are the privileges of fagging ; and are alike scan- 
dalous to common humanity, and injurious to every purpose for which 
parents send their children to school. We know instances in which 
gentlemen, who had straitened their incomes, to afford the heavy ex- 
pense of educating a child at one of these schools, have, on coming to 
town to inquire into their progress, been presented with a squalid and 
spirit-broken wretch, employing his day in scrubbing boots by the 
dozen, cooking and carrying up dinners, and even stealing for his senior’s 
accommodation ; or with a hardened blackguard, ignorant of every thing 
but the slang, the filth, and the grossest vices, in the grossest shape of 
the profligate corner in which this temple of the rising generation lay ; 
a proficient in lying, thieving, drinking, and the most undisguised licen- 
tiousness. And the whole of this corruption is encouraged in the base, 
and forced upon the decent by the honoured practice of fagging. : 
Every man who has been at a public school where this system is suf- 
fered, shrinks from the recollection. Nor would a single boy be ever 
sent to those seminaries, but that there has been hitherto no alternative, 
and the exhibitions and college opportunities act as a bribe. But how is 
it possible to conceive that this “discipline” is compatible with literary 
acquirement. Let the answer be given in the contrast of the multitude 
who pass yearly through our public schools, at an inordinate expendi- 
ture, with the narrow and utterly inefficient scholarship existing at this 
hour in England. Have we one eminent classical scholar in the whole 
range of our schools, colleges, and professions? Not one! We have 
a few men who can compile a crowd of notes from a crowd of commen- 
tators on a Greek tragedy, or a Latin historian We have scribblers of 
a few verses, never heard of beyond the dreary pages of a Muse Etonen- 
ses, the greatest insult ever offered to the name of Muse. We have a 
few compilers of exercises, and six-penny tracts on prosody. “ Non- 
sense-steps-to Sense-verses’-men,” and scribblers of “ Tentamina,” that 
prove nothing but the absence of all poetic skill, feeling, and tact, be- 
yond that of the fingers. But to what comes all our pretence and osten- 
tation of classical toil, or triumph? Where are our Heynes or Hermans? 
the Scaligers are out of the question; they are of a race that we can 
never dream of equalling, until we shall unite the accuracy of the 
scholar with the lofty vigour and large knowledge of the philosopher. 
The fact is, we have not at this hour a single individual to show to Eu- 
rope, of a rank beyond a copyist and a compiler. 
We shall return to the subject. — 
i 
