PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION. 



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marks would be apportioned for these essentials. .1 think the average 

 public school boy is often lamentably deficient in all of these, and 

 that more attention should be paid to them at this stage of his 

 training. 



Mr. W. HosTE, B.A., said : Mr. White in his valuable paper has 

 disarmed criticism by welcoming it. But I do not think the serious 

 critics are from the ranks of the public schools — that is, from those who 

 know them best — but from without. Perhaps the criticism that the 

 public schools are an " aristocratic preserve " is aimed chiefly at 

 a few, such as Eton, Harrow or Winchester, but would not " pluto- 

 cratic " be more correct even in these cases ? Such schools are 

 full, not of aristocrats, but of very ordinary boys, whose parents 

 can afford the price. Probably most of those who inveigh against the 

 inequalities of life would not mind being able to " afford the price," 

 even at the risk of perpetuating those inequalities. As has been said, 

 " £5,000 a year and a seat in the Cabinet would cure most Socialists." 



A public school in the technical sense means an " atmosphere " 

 and a tradition, which cannot be manufactured, but must grow. 

 You might start a hundred institutions and label them " public 

 schools," but you could not command the real thing. One sentence 

 in the paper struck me especially. I think I quote it correctly : 

 " Parents are unwilling to submit their children to the hazard of 

 experiment.^' I had, what I considered, the great advantage of 

 being seven years at Clifton, under the late Bishop of Hereford, 

 John Percival. He was of the Broad School, and probably not out 

 of sympathy, to a moderate degree, with the Higher Critical Move- 

 ment, but I never heard one doubt raised by him as to the authenticity 

 of any part of the Holy Scriptures, either in sermon or divinity class. 

 Nor do I ever remember a hint from his lips of the existence even of 

 those redoubtable personages, J and E, or of that legendary 

 fragment P. His anxiety was not to show how " up-to-date " 

 he was by raising doubtful questions, but to put the fear of God 

 into our souls. In contrast with him, one of the under-masters, 

 who conveyed to us boys no impression whatever of true religious 

 conviction, used to spend the Divinity hour spinning into our 

 innocent heads the theories of Kuenen, Ewald, Welhausen. His 

 great forte was the Psalms — not their contents, however, nor their 

 message to us boys, but who wrote them, or rather who did not write 



