Ocr. I, [S97.] 
rtlE TROPICAL AGRIC JLTURIST. 
was 29th Wrangler and in the second class in 
the Classical Tripos.* 
Ceicket, 
both at school and in college, received 
from Mr. Martin Leake, much time and attention. 
BJackheath in the “ forties” was a very nursery of 
cricket. Kent with Fuller Pilch, N. Felix, the bro- 
thers Mynn, Wenman, &c., as its champions, had 
* Mr. Leake has favoured us with the following 
notice of “ Rcighy ” and “Cambridge” in his day, 
which is w’ell worth reproducing : — 
Rugby 5U years ago was thoroughly penetrated with 
the spirit of Arnold. Though the great headmaster 
had in 1845, when W. M. Leake went there, been for 
three years dead, and his mantle had thereon fallen 
on Dr. Tait, the future Archbishop ; the staff of 
masters were nearly all Arnold’s men who had been 
appointed by and worked with him during the stirring 
years of his headmastership. Further, the recent 
publication of his life and correspondence by Arthur 
Stanley had made more widely known than was 
possible during his life-time the nature of his work 
at the great midland Public School. Dean Bradley 
(Westminster), Prof. J. C. Shairp (St. Andrews), Prof. 
T. S. Eva-ns (Durham), Canon C. Evans were also 
masters of Rugby between 1845-50. 
Chief among the assistant masters at that date 
were Bonamy Price, afterwards Professor of Political 
Economy at Oxford, and George Edward Lynch 
Cotton, afterwards headmaster of Marlborough and 
Bishop of Calcutta, the “young master” of Tom 
Bi own’s schooldays. These two taught respectively 
“ The Twenty ” and “ The Fifth,” the two forms next 
below the Sixth. Never probably have boys had a more 
lively teacher than Bonamy Price, “ an alert and 
stimulating man ” as the writer of an obituary notice 
styled him. “In the Twenty,” Price put on the spur 
and kept us up to our best. He was an excellent 
master whom we all thoroughly liked and appreciated, 
all the more perhaps on account of his “ lively eccen- 
tricities, ” so writes the Very Rev. G. P. Pownall in 
his contribution to the Memoir of Bishop French of 
Lahore. Cotton, though quieter and colder in manner, 
was also a very efficient teacher. The two had this in 
common, that they were at their very best in lecturing on 
the New Testament, in Exetjesis as Price loved to call it. 
Another notable master, who had a lower Form, 
was Richard Congreve, the disciple of Comte, who 
afterwards was, at it "ere, the High Priest of Posi- 
tivism in England. He it was who in 1848, when 
the thrones of Europe were reeling under the strokes 
of the all-pervading Revolution, stirred the fags of 
the school to rise and throw off the thraldom of thp 
Preposters of the Sixth Form. Excited meetings 
were he;d in the Quad at which fiery harangues were 
delivered, but all in vain. The Sixth proved them- 
selves too strong for their more numerous foes, 
backed though they were by a Radical master. 
It was to Bonamy Price’s house that W. M. Leake 
went in the summer of 1845. He had the fortune 
at once to be chosen as a fag by George Lawrence, 
then head of the House, afterwards well known as the 
author of “ Guy Livingstone,” “Sword and Gown,” 
and other novels. Strange as it may seem to those who 
know him only by his books, there can be little 
doubt that Lawrence was himself the original of his 
own heroes. Life in his eyes was not worth living 
unless as a series of thrilling incidents ; he had no 
wish to live beyond the age of thirty, he would say, 
and meanwhile he would thoroughly run through 
every excitement that life can offer. He has now 
long been dead, though he lived for several years 
beyond the limit of his own naming. 
Among those who came to Price’s house in that 
same summer were George Joachim Goschen, now 
First Lord of the Admiralty (like W. M. Leake he came 
from Blackheath, but from the rival Old Proprietary 
School) and William Palliser, brother of the Pallisers 
of Raiiella, afterwards knighted for his inventions 
in connection with Big Guns and Chilled Shot. Even 
in his school-days Palliser shewed his leaning for 
firearms, for he managed to secrete an old shot-gun 
jn bis study, yyhicb had the repntSltio^ of shootiog 
played the rest of England on equal terras 
year after year at Lords and Canterbury ; and 
Blackheath and its schoolboys — especially those 
who were at the school kept by Mr. Wanos- 
trocht (that was the true name of the great 
Felix) — felt as if they shared in the glory of 
the country. Enthusiasm thus engendered at 
school was for Mr. Martin Leake further 
stirred by the proximity of his home to 
“Lords,” where at a very early age he used to 
see and criticize ali tire leading players of the 
round the corner, but none the less on occasion it 
would provide its owner with a stray pheasant, par- 
tridge, hare or rabbit, a savoury addition to the 
somewhat meagre school-fare of those days. 
W. M. Leake did not remain long a fag, was moved 
quickly up through the various Forms, arriving safely 
in the desired haven of the Sixth Form in January 
1848. In the upper Forms all lessons were prepared oat 
of school, in the house studies, two or three preparing 
the "ork together. Mention is made of this custom 
in the sketch of Rugby in the Memoir of Bishop 
French already referred to. In that case Pownall, 
the writer of the sketch, was associated in this way 
with French, the future Bishop, and Cross, now Lord 
Cross. The companions of W. M. Leake, in lesson- 
learning during the years 1848-50 were G. J. Goschen 
and .1. P, Beck, the latter, the eldest son of the late Mr. 
S. A. Beck, Chairman of the Gaslight (& Coke Co. 
from whom that hive of industry, the Beckton Gas- 
works, takes its name. This system, giving life as 
it does to what is apt to be, when done alone, a 
work of deadly darkness, is an admirable one. Learn, 
ing lessons under it became one of the most lively 
and sociable parts of the day. 
In 1849-50 Goschen became Head of the School; 
and the year of his Headship is marked in the 
annals of Rugby by the departure of Dr. Tait, whose 
health had for some time been very indifferent, on 
his appointment to the less onerous post of Dean of 
Carlisle. This was probably the first occasion on 
which the future Cabinet Minister bad a genuine 
opportunity for showing his powers of speech. Few 
masters can have had a more touching leave-taking 
than Dr. Tait on this occasion. The boys dragged 
him down to the Railway Station in his carriage, 
and the last scene in the stationyard dwells to this 
day in the memory of the survivors of those present. 
For the last few months of the school career of 
those who were leaving in 1850, the school was pre- 
sided over by that excellent man Dr. Goulburn, but 
good as he was he was never meant by nature for 
a schoolmaster. 
On looking back to the Rugby of those days, one 
of the most striking features is the number of 
distinguished schoolmasters sent out by the old 
school to propagate the Arnold tradition through 
the length and breadth of the land. Already in 
1845 Dr. Vaughan, one of Arnold's pupi.s, was pre- 
siding over Harrow. Dr. Bradley, now Dean of West- 
minster, also a pupil of Arnold’s and a master at 
Rugby in W. M. Leake’s time, succeeded Dr. Cotton as 
headmaster of Marlborough on the appointment 
of the latter as Bishop of Calcutta. Mr. A. G. Butler 
and Dr. T. W. Jex Blake, both contemporaries and 
friends of W. M. Leake, became headmasters respec- 
tively of Haileybury and Cheltenham, the former 
being succeeded in his post by Dr. B. H. Bradley, 
head boy at Rugby in 1845, the latter succeeding 
in his Mr. H. Highton who had bet-n both pupil and 
master at Rugby in Arnold’s time. Dr. Jex Blake, 
alone among the Headmasters of Rugby of tha 
last 70 years, was himself a Rugby boy. Further, Mr, 
Charles Evans (now Canon Evans) and Dr. Feroival 
(now Bishop of Hereford) and the late Dr. Benson 
(Archbishop of Canterbury) all Rugby masters in the 
early “fifties” presided over Birmingham, Clifton, and 
Wellington respectively. To these who all became 
headmasters might be added the names of efficient 
assistant masters too numerous to mention. In the 
case of Arnold it cannot be said that the gogcl be 
did was “interred with his bones.” 
(Coniinwii page.) 
