PREFACE. ix. 



moralist, " has maimed none of his boys ; they are all left with the 

 exercise of their corporeal faculties. In our schools in England 

 many boys have been maimed ; yet I never heard of an action 

 against a schoolmaster on that account." But the subject is too 

 horrible to continue, and it may be considered very presumptuous 

 on my part in venturing to imply, " Maxime ! si hi vis, cupio 

 contendere tecum." 



The great classical scholar and writer of the next century also, 

 so far as I can make out, ranges himself on the side of the rod. I 

 don't remember that Macaulay's biographers mention that he was 

 ever beaten at school ; if he was, it must have been for turning 

 the tables on his teachers, and exasperating them by knowing 

 too much. He seems to think that a boy even deserves a flogging 

 for using the word Ovt^tol in the same sense to which the Right 

 Honourable John Wilson Croker, (no mean Greek scholar) 

 ascribed to it. 



But when such authorities as these are for hammering boys, no 

 wonder that dull children, on leaving home for school, incline to 

 exclaim with me, 



" And turning from my nursery window, drew 

 A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu." 



I have always felt sore when recalling my school-days, but now 

 I have had my say in the following pages, I feel like Mr. Pickwick, 

 after he had pitched into Dodson and Fogg in his lawyer's office ; 

 and I am happy in raising my voice against the rascally trick some 

 masters have, or at least had in my time, of scamping their work, 

 and making their wretched pupils suffer in consequence, 



