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[Vol. X. No. 251' 



than four thousand boys ; and yet they are so typical of all schools 

 which may have a claim to the title of public, that we may conven- 

 iently confine our consideration to them. Of these, Winchester dates 

 from the fourteenth century ; Eton from the fifteenth ; Westmin- 

 ster, Harrow, and Rugby from the sixteenth, these three having all 

 been founded within eleven years of each other ; and Charter 

 House from the seventeenth. Westminster, the oldest of the 

 schools, has probably kept its character most unchanged. It has 

 never been a fashionable or a court school. It has maintained un- 

 impaired its close connection with New College at Oxford. Noth- 

 ing can show more clearly the strength and unity of English tradi- 

 tions than the fact, that, five hundred years after the establishment 

 of the two foundations of William of Wykeham, they should stand 

 in the face of England, holding the highest place, one as a college, 

 and the other as a school. Eton, the next on our list, is confessedly 

 the first of public schools, but it was not always so. During the 

 first eighty years of the seventeenth century, Westminster undoubt- 

 edly held the position of pre-eminence. Dr. Busby, who read the 

 prayer for the King on the morning of Charles I.'s execution, and 

 who refused to take off his cap in the presence of Charles II., was 

 the first schoolmaster of his time in England. But Westminster 

 was faithful to the Stuarts : Eton supported the cause of the Whigs. 

 Its supremacy, beginning in the reign of William III., continued in 

 that of Anne, reached its height under the Hanoverian kings. 

 George III. took a strong personal interest in the school. Eton 

 boys walked on the terrace of Windsor Castle in court dress, and 

 the King often stopped to ask their names and to speak to them. 

 William IV., with boisterous good humor, continued the favor of 

 his dynasty. He took the part of the boys in their rebellion against 

 the masters, and he used to invite the boys to entertainments, at 

 which the masters stood by and got nothing. During this period 

 Eton became a political power in England. The upper school at 

 Eton is decorated with the busts of statesmen who swayed the 

 destinies of England, and who were the more closely connected to- 

 gether from having been educated at the same school. Chatham, 

 North, Fox, Grenville, and Gray are among the ornaments of that 

 historical room. Eton and Christ Church had the monopoly of 

 education for public life, and the claim of the school to this dis- 

 tinction received its fullest recognition when Lord Wellesley, after 

 a career spent in the most important offices of the state, desired 

 that he might be laid to his last rest in the bosom of that mother 

 from whom he had learned every thing which had made him fa- 

 mous, successful, and a patriot. Better known, perhaps, is the 

 boast of his brother, the Duke of Wellington, that the battle of 

 Waterloo was won in the playing-fields of Eton. 



Charter House, established in London, has held since its founda- 

 tion a position very similar to that of Winchester, not of great impor- 

 tance in politics or fashion, but highly influential and respected. 

 These four schools were probably founded for the purposes which 

 they have since succeeded in carrying out. Eton was always a 

 school for the governing classes. Winchester and Charter House 

 have received the uninterrupted support of the gentry and clergy 

 of England. The history of Harrow and Rugby has been different. 

 They have been lifted by circumstances into a position for which they 

 were not originally intended. They were founded as local schools, 

 — one in the neighborhood of London, the other in the heart of 

 the midlands, — for the instruction, first of the village lads, and then 

 of such strangers as came to be taught. But they have reached, 

 owing to special circumstances, a position equal to that of any of 

 their rivals. Harrow emerged from obscurity in the middle of thg 

 eighteenth century, owing, as it is said, her success to head masters 

 who were sent to her from Eton. Rugby is known throughout the 

 world as the school of Arnold, who was head master from 1827 to 

 1841. Even before his time it had attained a high rank among 

 English schools ; but he, followed by a line of distinguished suc- 

 cessors, left it in scholarship and energy of thought at their head. 

 Rugby and Baliol are to English education after the reform bill, 

 what Eton and Christ Church were before it. This sketch will 

 show how different the genesis of our public schools has been, and 

 what various courses they have pursued to arrive at the same con- 

 clusion. 



We will now briefly trace the history of the education they aim 

 at. Their curriculum is essentially classical : indeed, a public- 



school man means, in common parlance, one who has been edu- 

 cated mainly in Greek and Latin. The two oldest schools, Win- 

 chester and Eton, founded before the Reformation, naturally begark 

 with monkish learning. There was a great deal of grammar and 

 a great deal of church-going. The pupils were children, and were 

 treated as such. Westminster was founded after, and in conse- 

 quence of, the Reformation, and the breach with the old learning 

 necessitated new arrangements. 



The author of the Protestant curriculum of public education was 

 John Sturm, the friend of Roger Ascham, the head master of the 

 great school of Strasburg during a large portion of the sixteenth 

 century. A complete account of Sturm's methods and organization 

 is preserved, and we may be sure that its main outlines were adopted 

 at Westminster and at Eton. Latin grammar and Latin style were 

 made the principal subjects of education. The school was launched 

 upon the full flood of humanism. The connection between a scholar 

 in the narrow sense, that is, a man not of erudition but of finished 

 taste and polished style, and the gentleman, was now fully estab- 

 lished. Sturm was so despotic in the arrangements of his school,, 

 that he not only laid down what boys were to learn at each epoch 

 of their career, but he forbade them to learn any thing else. It 

 was as great a fault to begin a subject prematurely as to neglect it 

 in its due time. 



Many of Sturm's arrangements are familiar to public-school men 

 who are now living, but in the following century they underwent a 

 further change. This was due to the Jesuits, who obtained their 

 reputation partly by their devotion to the study of Greek, and partly 

 by the pains they took to understand the individual character of 

 their pupils. The Jesuits have probably done more harm to sound 

 education than any prominent body of men who ever undertook the 

 task. They had two objects in view, — to gain the favor of the rich 

 and powerful, and to prevent the human mind from thinking. 

 Humanistic education skilfully employed was an admirable in- 

 strument to this end. It flattered the pride of parents, while it 

 cheated the ambition of scholars. The pre-eminence given in 

 education to original Latin verses is typical of the whole system 

 of the Jesuits. No exercise could be more pretty and attractive,, 

 or bear more clearly the outward semblance of culture and learning,, 

 yet no employment could more effectually delude the mind by an 

 unsubstantial phantoin of serious thought. The sturdy humanism 

 of Sturm became corrupted by the graceful frivolity of the Jesuits, 

 and in this condition public-school education remained until the- 

 efforts of a few obscure reformers, the genius and energy of Arnold 

 and the growth of the new spirit in England, forced it into other 

 channels. 



Arnold is typical of the new public school, but we must distin- 

 guish between Arnold and the Arnoldian legend. Like other great 

 reformers, his name has become a nucleus round which the reputa- 

 tions of all other reformers, good as well as bad, have coalesced.. 

 The most prominent fact about Arnold is, that he was the first 

 Englishman of quite first-rate ability who devoted himself to school- 

 education. The traditions of Sturm and the Jesuits shrivelled up- 

 before the manly touch of a teacher who was fit to be prime min- 

 ister. After his career no one could despise the profession of a. 

 schoolmaster. What did Arnold actually effect ? He taught boys, 

 to govern themselves. He substituted for a system in which the- 

 governors were allowed any license on condition that they denied 

 it to every one else, one in which the responsibility of the ruler was- 

 rated even more highly than the obligation of the ruled. He also 

 taught boys to think for themselves, to pierce beyond the veil of 

 words into the substance of things, to see realities, to touch and 

 taste and handle the matter of which they had before only talked.. 

 Thus he produced a vigorous character and a manly mind. Rugby- 

 boys, on passing to the university, thought and acted for them- 

 selves. They might be pardoned if in the first flush of enthusiasm, 

 they acted priggishly and thought wildly. But Arnold's teaching- 

 contained within it germs of much which he had never contemplated, 

 and of which he would have disapproved. It contained the germs 

 of the modern civilized life in schools, of which Rugby knew nothing 

 in 1840. Far, indeed, is the cry from that dim and crowded dining- 

 room where boys, sitting at a bare table, wiped their knives on the 

 iron band which surrounded it, and ate their meat and pudding off 

 the same] plate, to the luxurious arrangements of a modern pre- 



