and Latin, from which he had gathered his own stores of varied learning.-Wal⚫cott's Memorials of Westminster.

Once more evil days fell upon the rising school. The Abbey was desecrated, and the families of the scholars were threatened or assailed by the horrors of the Great Rebellion, when Parliament, having for about four years exercised power over the School through a Committee, in 1649 assumed a protectorate, entrusting the management of the School to a government of fifty members established in the Deanery. The fee or inheritance of many of the Abbey estates was sold; old rents only being reserved to the College. This control lasted until the Restoration in 1660; since which period the scholars have been maintained by the common revenues of the Collegiate Church, at a cost of about 12001. a year.

The Queen's Scholars wear caps and gowns; and there are four "Bishop's Boys" educated free, who wear purple gowns, and have 607. annually amongst them. Besides this foundation, a great number of sons of the nobility and gentry are educated here. Of the Queen's Scholars an examination takes place in Rogation week, when four are elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, and four to Christchurch, Oxford; scholarships of about 601. a year.

The scholars from the fourth, fifth, and Shell Forms "stand out" in Latin, Greek, and grammatical questionings, on the Wednesday before Ascension Day, in the presence of the Head Master, who presides as umpire, when the successful competitors being chosen to fill the vacancies, "the Captain of the Election" is chaired round Dean's Yard, or the school court. On Rogation Tuesday, a dinner is given to the electors, and all persons connected with the School, by the Dean and Chapter; and any old Westminster scholar of sufficient rank or standing is entitled to attend it. After dinner, epigrams are spoken by a large proportion of the Queen's Scholars. There are several funds available to needy' scholars; and the whole foundation and school is managed by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

The school buildings are in part ancient. You enter the School court from the Broad Sanctuary, through an archway in a block of houses of mediæval architecture. The porch of the School is stated to have been designed by Inigo Jones. On the north front is the racket-court, formed against part of the west wall of the dormitory. The venerable School itself, once the dormitory of the monks, ranges behind the eastern cloister of the Abbey. It is a long and spacious building, with a semicircular recess at one end, the Head Master's table standing in front of it; four tiers of forms, one above the other, are ranged along the castern and western walls; and the room has a massive open-timber roof of chestnut. The Upper and Lower Schools are divided by a bar, which formerly bore a curtain: over this bar on Shrove Tuesday, at eleven o'clock, the College cook, attended by a verger, having made his obeisance to the Masters, proceeds to toss a pancake into the Upper School, once a warning to proceed to dinner in the Hall.*

An interesting tradition is attached to the bar at the time it bore a curtain. Two boys at play, by chance made a grievous rent in the pendent drapery; and one of the delinquents suffered his generous companion to bear the penalty of the offence -a severe flogging. Long years went by; the Civil War had parted chief friends; and the boys had grown up to manhood, unknown to each other. One of them, now become a Judge and sturdy Republican, was presiding at the trial of some captive cavaliers, and was ready to upbraid and sentence them, when he recognized in the

The School is fraught with pious memories. Here "that sweet singer of the Temple, George Herbert," was reared; and that love of choral music, which was his heaven upon earth," was, no doubt, implanted here, while he went up to pray in the glorious Abbey. And it was here that South, in his loyal childhood, reader of the Latin prayers for the morning, publicly prayed for Charles I. by name, "but an hour or two at most before his sacred head was struck off." Nor can we forget among the ushers, the melody of whose Latin poems had led him to be called "Sweet Vinny Bourne;" or the mastership of Busby, who boasted his rod to be the sieve to prove good scholars, and walked with covered head before Charles II.; then humbly at the gate assured his Majesty that it was necessary for his dignity before his boys to be the greatest man there, even though a king were present. How successfully, too, is Busby commemorated in the whole-length portrait of the great school-master standing beside his favorite pupil, Spratt. Upon the walls are inscribed many great names; and in the library is preserved part of the form on which Dryden once sat, and on which his autograph is cut.

In the Census Alumnorum, or list of foundation scholars, are Bishops Overall and Ravis, translators of the Bible; Hakluyt, collector of Voyages; Gunter, inventor of the Scale; "Master George Herbert;" the poets Cowley and Dryden; South; Locke; Bishops Atterbury, Spratt, and Pearce; the poet Prior, and Stepney the statesman; Rowe and "Sweet Vinny Bourne," the poets; Churchill, the satirist; Warren Hastings; Everard Home, surgeon; Dr. Drury, of Harrow School, &c. Among the other eminent persons educated here are Lord Burleigh; Ben Jonson; Nat Lee; Sir Christopher Wren; Jasper Mayne, the poet; Barton Booth, the actor; Blackmore, Browne, Dyer, Hammond, Aaron Hill, Cowper, and Southey, the poets; Horne Tooke; Gibbon, the historian; Cumberland, the dramatist; Colman the Younger; Sir Francis Burdett; Harcourt, Archbishop of York; the Marquis of Lansdowne; Lord John Russell; the Marquis of Anglesey; Sir John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton); George Bidder, of calculating fame, now the eminent civil engineer.

Among the eminent Masters are Camden, "the Pausanias of England," who had Ben Jonson for a scholar; and Dr. Busby, who had Dryden, and who, out of the bench of bishops, taught sixteen.

The College Hall, originally the Abbot's refectory, was built by Abbot Litlington, temp. Edward III.: the floor is paved with chequered Turkish marble; at the south end is a musician's gallery, now used as a pantry, and behind are butteries and hatches; at the north side, upon a dais, is the high table; those below, of chestnut-wood, are said to have been formed out of the wreck of the Armada. The roof-timbers spring from carved corbels, with angels bearing shields of the Confessor's and Abbot's arms; and a small louvre rises above the central hearth, upon which in winter a wood and charcoal fire used to burn until the year 1850.* The Library is a modern Italian room, and contains several

worn features of one grey-haired veteran, the well-remembered look of the gallant boy who had once borne punishment for him. By certain answers, which in the examination he elicited, his suspicions were confirmed; and with an immediate resolve, he posted to London, where, by his influence with Oliver Cromwell, he succeeded in preserving his early friend from the scaffold.-Walcott's Memorials of Westminster

*Fires continued to be made on a hearth in the middle of the hall called the rere dos, in many college halls in Oxford and Cambridge, until about the year 1820.

memorials of the attachment of "Westminsters." The old dormitory, built in 1380, was the granary of the monastery; and was replaced by the present dormitory in 1722, from the designs of the Earl of Burlington: its walls are thickly inscribed with names. Here Latin plays are represented upon the second Thursday in December, and the Monday before and after that day. These performances superseded the old Mysteries and Moralities in the reign of Queen Mary, when the boy actors were chiefly the acolytes, who served at mass. Warton mentions that this "liberal exercise is yet preserved, and in the spirit of true classical purity, at the College of Westminster." Garrick designed scenery for these pieces; but the modern dresses formerly used were not exchanged for Greek costume until 1839. The plays acted of late years have been the Andria, Phormio, Eunuchus, and Adelphi, of Terence, with Latin prologue and epilogue pleasantly reflecting in their humor events of the day. Two new scenes were drawn for the theatre, in 1857, by Professor Cockerell, R. A.

Boating is a favorite recreation of the Westminsters, who have often contested the championship of the Thames with Eton. On May 4, 1837, the Westminsters won a match at Eton; when, by desire of William IV., the victors visited Windsor Castle, and were there received by the good-natured king.

RUGBY SCHOOL.

Rugby Grammar School was founded by Lawrence Sheriff, a native of Rugby, who had accumulated a large fortune in dealing with the fruits and spices of the West Indies. He was warden of the Grocers' Company in 1566; and in Fox's Book of Martyrs he is spoken of as "servant to the Lady Elizabeth, and sworn unto her Grace," which seems to imply that he was "grocer to the Queen:" he kept shop "near to Newgate Market." Sheriff died in 1567, and by his last will, made seven weeks previously, bequeathed a third of his Middlesex estate to the foundation of "a fair and convenient schoolhouse, and to the maintaining of an honest, discreet, and learned man to teach grammar;" the rents of that third, which then amounted to 87. annually, had swelled in 1825 to above 55001.

Immediately upon the founder's death, the school was commenced in a building in the rear of the house assigned for the master; it consisted of one large room, having no playground attached. The first page of the school register, commencing in 1675, shows that of the 26 entrances in that year, 12 were boys not upon the foundation, and one of them came even from Cumberland. The school now took a higher stamp; and early in the list we find the Earls of Stamford and Peterborough, the Lords Craven, Griffin, Stawell, and Ward, the younger sons of the houses of Cecil and Greville, and many of the baronets of the adjacent counties.

The school buildings were from time to time enlarged; until the improved value of the endowment enabled the trustees to commence, in 1809, the present structure, designed by Hakewill, in the Elizabethan style, and built nearly upon the same spot as the first humble dwelling. The buildings consist of cloisters on three sides of a court; the Great School, and the French and Writing Schools; the dining halls, and the chapel; and the master's house, where and in the town the boys are lodged. The group of buildings cost 35,000l., but are of “poor sham Gothic." A library has since been added. The only former playground was the churchyard; but Rugby has now its bowling-green close, with its tall

spiral elms; and its playground, where cricket and foot-ball are followed out-ofdoors with no less zest and delight than literature is pursued within.*

The instruction at Rugby retains the leading characteristics of the old school, being based on a thoroughly grounded study of Greek and Latin. But the treatment has been much improved: formerly the boys were ill-used, half imprisoned, and put on the smallest rations, a plentiful allowance of rod excepted; and a grim tower is pointed out in which a late pedagogue, Dr. Wooll, was accustomed to inflict the birch unsparingly. Nevertheless, in Wooll's time were added six exhibitions to the eight already instituted; books were first given as prizes for composition; and the successful candidates recited their poems before the trustees, thus establishing the Speeches.

To Dr. Woollt succeeded Dr. Thomas Arnold, the second and moral founder of Rugby. Of the great change which he introduced in the face of education here, we can speak but in brief. Soon after he had entered upon his office, he made this memorable declaration upon the expulsion of some incorrigible pupils: "It is not necessary that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen."

The three ends at which Arnold aimed were-first, to inculcate religious and moral principle, then gentlemanly conduct, and lastly, intellectual ability. One of his principal holds was in his boy sermons, that is, in sermons to which the young congregation could and did listen, and of which he was the absolute inventor. The feelings of love, reverence, and confidence which he inspired, led his pupils to place implicit trust on his decision, and to esteem his approbation as their highest reward. His government of the school was no reign of terror: he resorted to reasoning and talking as his first step, which failing, he applied the rod as his ultima ratio, and this for misdemeanors inevitable to youthlying, for instance,—and best cured by birch. He was not opposed to fagging, which boys accept as part and parcel of the institution of schools, and as the servitude of their feudal system; all he aimed to do was to regulate, and, as it were, to legalize the exercise of it. The keystone of his government was in the Sixth Form, which he held to be an intermediate power between the master and masses of the school; the value of which internal police he had learned from the Prefects at Winchester. But he carefully watched over this delegated authority, and put down any abuse of its power. The Præpositors themselves were no less benefited. "By appealing to their honor, by fostering their selfrespect, and calling out their powers of governing their inferiors, he ripened their manhood, and they early learnt habits of command; and this system, found to work so well, is continued, and with many of its excellent principles, is

*Foot-ball is the game, par excellence, of Rugby, as cricket is of Eton. The fascination of this gentle pastime is its mimic war, and it is waged with the individual prowess of the Homeric conflicts, and with the personal valor of the Orlandos of medieval chivalry, before villanous saltpetre had reduced the Knight-errant to the ranks. The play is played out by boys with that dogged determination to win, that endurance of pain, that bravery of combative spirit, by which the adult is trained to face the cannon-ball with equal alacrity.- Quarterly Review, No. 204.

† Dr. Wooll was small in stature, but powerful in stripes; and under his headmastership Lord Lyttleton suggested for the grim closet in which the rods are kept, the witty motto:-"Great Cry and Little Wool."-See the Book of Rugby School, its History and Daily Life. 1856.