We give Thee thanks," it ran in Latin, "Almighty God, for our founder William of Wykeham, and the rest by whose benefits we are here brought up to good morals and the study of literature, beseeching Thee that we may well use these thy gifts, ad gloriam resurrectionis tuæ perducamur immortalem." There was something in this prayer that seemed to give utterance to the design of the founder, beyond the mere education of the scholars, beyond even the providing of a community of clergy, and to thrill with a personal and eternal love for every one of the spiritual sons that should be born to him. To him the notion of the priesthood was faint and indistinct; the idea of the Mass blurred and distorted beyond recognition; but each of us could realize what was meant by the immortal glory of the resurrection, and the thought that William of Wykeham had had that glory in view of us, lent a strange and indescribable interest to it, to himself and to our companions.

The ceremonies attendant upon election were of a highly elaborate kind, but it would take too long to tell of the receptions and the Latin orations, and the banquets, and of the final evening when some thousand guests assembled to hear the sweet Wykehamist song of "Domum" sung again and yet again in the soft summer air. And we must pass briefly over many points in our school life interesting and notable in themselves, if only for their singularity. College once entered, the grist was soon absorbed by the mill, and each boy was moulded unconsciously upon the same form. whole school days, and there were three of them besides Saturday, we had nine hours of school work and half an hour at chapel, besides which the greater part of our lessons and compositions. were done out of school. In the lower forms it was the custom to take places during repetition and to mark accordingly for every lesson; but this practice ceased in the higher classes, and the consequence was that as the chance of a provision for life at New College depended upon the position at eighteen years of age, and that position depended upon the place gained at about fourteen or fifteen, a boy was weighted with a very heavy responsibility at a much too early age. Moreover, there was a custom of learning Greek or Latin rules by heart and repeating some thousands of them in the course of a single week at midsummer, which greatly influenced the position at the crucial moment, and consequently added much to the burden of the place.

Prominent amongst the elements of school-life at Winchester was the institution of fagging, of which the college was the very stronghold. This practice is by no means to be confused with bullying, and it was systematized with us to a greater degree, probably, than anywhere else. Every hour of the day was parcelled

out; every scholar in the school had his appointed rank, not for school work only, but for fagging also, and the duties were as welldefined as they were multifarious. To prefects alone, namely, the eighteen senior boys, appertained the right to fag, to the ten seniors at any time or place, to the eight junior prefects only in the evenings when we lived in the dormitories, or rather "chambers.” Amongst the fags the duties were assigned, not according to position in the school, but to seniority of entrance, the position on the roll being preserved, and in each of the seven chambers was a set of fags called "junior in chambers," "second junior in chambers." and so on, chosen by the prefects at the commencement of each half year. No boy could, therefore, escape going through the entire mill unless, which rarely happened, eight vacancies should occur at once, in which case the lucky senior would become a "second junior in chambers" immediately upon entering college. Amongst the duties, too various to specify, were for the junior in chambers the calling several times repeated of the other boys in the same chamber; the cleaning and care of the candlesticks, extinguishers and snuffers by each boy, a filthy task; the fetching of shoes in the morning from "Edom," where they had been cleaned by the servants; attention to the fire, which, being composed of fagots put on from time to time, involved a great deal of labor, and such-like matters. The second junior was required to sweep up the chamber floor, and act as "valet" to one of the prefects; the third junior only to act as valet to another, and the fourth or fifth junior, a rank probably not attained for three years or more after entrance, generally escaped chamber fagging. Besides this, every boy in order of juniority was liable to be required by any one of the ten senior prefects (or “prefects in full power") to fag for him at cricket for any time not exceeding altogether two hours in the day; and if a boy found out that one of his seniors was fagging out he was bound to go and "take him off." This two hours' exaction was one of the things which told hardest upon the life of a junior; for what between school and fagging, he had never an instant of his own. Another regulation of a most severe and absurd character was that none but prefects were permitted to wear any covering on the head, merely because the old birrettas were abandoned as a "popish" custom, and no one in the course of three centuries had thought of replacing them. Consequently, boys used to go about with their heads uncovered in the midst of a scorching sun or a pouring rain, even when they were ill and under the doctor's care; nor was it till late in my own time that occasionally on a very hot day a junior was permitted to wear a cap when fagging out at cricket. All this created a terrible slavery, but to avoid the grinding of the machine was impossible.

Prefects were armed by authority with the power of "bending and ruthlessly did they exercise it. The flogging by a master was a flea-bite; but thirty or forty blows from a stout ground-ash stick was no joke at all. As for absolute disobedience, that meant expulsion, and expulsion from a public school in those days was little short of social ruin.

And what was the effect of this curious method of education, if method it could be called, where the only principle recognized was the denial of its own end and object upon the minds of those subjected to it? That is a question of no little interest, but it can be answered here only by personal analysis, and personal analysis, as Demosthenes observes, is always apt to be an invidious and ungrateful task. For one thing, it certainly taught us one Apostolic lesson, namely, "to obey at a word." An order once given, no matter whether by master or prefect, was performed without question or demur; and though to some persons this habit may appear to be slavish, it seems to us the very foundation of Catholic as of Apostolic discipline.

In positive attainments there was a fair proficiency in the subjects then considered to be proper to education, though how we acquired it we can hardly say, for we never received instruction, but had to find out everything for ourselves, in the "propria parte system, as it was classically termed. Of science we knew just as much as we chose to read for ourselves in such leisure as we possessed; of geography and history, whatever we might have brought from former schools, or have picked up from reading novels. Mathematics made a great stride during the time that we were there, for when we went there indignation was expressed at the third book of Euclid having been introduced into the final examination. for the highest class, while simple equations were about the limit of algebraic knowledge; but at the time of our leaving two or three of us were pretty well up, not only in the higher algebra, but also in trigonometry and analytical conics; nay, one of us had even dipped his nose into infinitesimal calculus, and vowed that the draught was delightful. Of French and German we were taught the rudiments, and some of us could read "Gil Blas" and "Wilhelm Tell" with the aid of a dictionary. That our own language contained a literature worthy of the deepest study was an idea which had not occurred at that time to any educationalist, however advanced; but, in some mysterious way, we picked up a sort of bowing acquaintance with Shakespeare and Tennyson and Pope and Byron, and read "Alton Locke," and "Sartor Resartus"; of Emerson, too, we had some knowledge, while Longfellow we regarded almost as a personal friend, and his poetry shared in familiarity with Macaulay's essays. Classical literature was, of course, the

real subject of our study, and as we spent eleven years of school life over it, of which six and a half were spent at Winchester, it was to be expected that some knowledge should be attained. Of Virgil and Horace we had not only read (with a few inconsiderable exceptions) the entire works, but had committed to memory large portions of each, especially of the "Odes" and the " Æneid." We had dipped into Lucretius, and were familiar with several writings of Cicero; nor were Livy and Juvenal forgotten. In Greek we had read pretty well the whole of the "Iliad," and some portion of the "Odyssey" (which we never could believe to be by the same hand), a book or two of Thucydides, and the same amount of Herodotus, some eight or ten Greek dramas, the idyls of Theocritus, the Pythian and Olympian odes of Pindar, and a few orations of Demosthenes; altogether a very respectable amount, sufficient to give one an insight into the true spirit of Greek literature. Original composition, also, both in Greek and Latin, not English, was constantly exacted from us; and every week we had to write a prose task of about forty lines, a verse task of about the same length, and three epigrams of exactly six lines invariably, sometimes Latin, sometimes Greek. Moreover, during one period of the year we had also to write Latin lyrics every week, and we remember sending up a long Greek ode, modelled upon one of Pindar's, and celebrating the birth of the young prince Napoleon, whereupon the headmaster politely requested that we would favor him with a Latin translation! Years afterwards, shortly before his untoward death, the young Prince Imperial honored us by a visit in our lodgings in London, and but for the sadness of the association we felt strongly inclined to tell him of our youthful effort in Pindaric verse.

Meanwhile, steadily if not speedily, the cup of time was filled to its surface. Term trod on term, and cricket was succeeded by election. The first years of fagging passed slowly away, and were succeeded by a period of somewhat less discomfort. Then came a couple of years of prefecture, and finally the last election was reached, the last examination passed, the last "Domum" sung, the last roll sent flying from the window, according to the extraordinary custom, borrowed apparently from the Cumaan Sibyl, into the hands of the expectant Prefect; and we can hear our school-fellow crying out, as he entered the chamber at midnight with the captured roll in his hand, “Bravo, Jack, you're second." So, "I got New College" after all. At this very moment, after the lapse of more than thirty years, after a life of vicissitudes sufficient to furnish an Odyssey, we can hardly believe but that we are still a scholar of Winchester, and that the changes since undergone are mere accidents to our Wykehamist identity. Now, as we write, the familiar scene is before our eyes, and it is hard to believe we

have no share in it. The Chamber Court is thronged again with eager faces, the scholars again "in the summer twilight sing their sweet song of home," the features live again which we shall see no more,

"Till with the dawn the angel faces smile

Whom I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

And so, with the undertone of that petition, "ut ad gloriam resurrectionis tuæ perducamur immortalem," ringing once more through the silence, the vision of Winchester fades solemnly out of view.

ANDOVER ORTHODOXY-WHITHER AWAY?

PROGRESSIVE ORTHODOXY" is the title of a volume of essays comprising sundry papers contributed to the Andover Review by its learned editors, who are, at the same time, professors in the Andover Seminary. The purpose of their discussion of the subject matter, as boldly set forth in the introductory preface, the frank acknowledgment that they are seekers rather than dogmatizers, and the tone of respectful reverence for the divine problems treated of which pervades every page, offer unquestionable assurance of their honesty, sincerity, and earnest resolve to abide by the consequences of this their first blow struck for religious.

freedom.

There is a strength and directness in this blow that cannot fail to stagger the " orthodoxy" they have aimed at. It remains to be seen if they have courage and wind enough to follow up their advantage, and pluck enough to take the knock-backs they have so defiantly provoked and will be sure of getting.

The perusal of the writings of these gentlemen has awakened no little interest in many minds; as it is easy to perceive, from the very outset, that they have thrown down the gauntlet, and invited a contest which sounds the note of "No surrender but to the right."

But one is also very soon made aware that it is a home question with them, the settlement of which is of far greater vital interest to themselves than it could possibly be to others; for they stake the affirmation of their own faith, after due, prayerful, and courageous inquiry, upon the solution of a dilemma as yet, we