REFORM OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL. 
227 
But these merry scenes belong to the past. In making 
the Metropolitan Railway, twenty-four years ago, the spring, 
which supplied the Dean’s Yard pump, and formed on 
its way the King’s scholars’ pond in Tothill Fields, was 
cut across ; and two engines are now employed, night and 
day, at the Victoria underground station, one pumping 
away the water from the spring rising in Hyde Park at the 
rate of 1200 gallons per minute, the other pumping away 
the sewage from the King’s scholars’ sewer. By draining 
the subsoil at Westminster, the Dean’s Yard well is dried 
up, as also several other wells in the neighbourhood ; and 
the trees in the Dean’s Yard are, it is to be feared, in 
danger of dying from drought. 
As Dean of Westminster the busiest portion of Dean 
Buckland’s always busy life began, and in all the good 
works which were set on foot he was warmly seconded by 
his wife. Yet he was never so busy as to be prevented 
from journeying to Oxford to lecture on his favourite science. 
Rising soon after seven, he worked incessantly till two or 
three o’clock the next morning, allowing himself scarcely 
time for meals, and less for recreation. One of the practical 
tasks to be accomplished was the removal of many great 
abuses that had crept into Westminster School. " In that 
foundation,” Sir Roderick Murchison writes, “ education 
could be no longer obtained except at costly charges, and 
even when these were paid, the youths were ill fed and 
worse lodged. All these defects were speedily rectified by 
the vigour and perseverance of Dean Buckland. The 
charges were reduced ; good diet was provided ; the rooms 
were well ventilated, and the buildings properly under- 
