that every new fact, every new experience, can be referred back to the one place where we originally learnt the meaning of love in its truest sense-home.

I have appealed to fathers and mothers of boys, I want now rather to appeal to the masters of public schools, and to the great public opinion whose influence alone can alter, if it will but rouse itself, so much that is disastrous in the life of the boys in public schools. The life of a boy in a preparatory school of the best sort is not much different from the life of a boy in a home of the best sort. The family is much larger, the love of the father and mother are not there, it is not a boy's life at its highest and best; but it is very good, and in the discipline, order and obedience to personal authority the likeness to home can be maintained.

But public-school life,-do we not feel that when our boys go to a large public school they are gone from us indeed; the best part of them, the immortal part of them? Do we not feel that as far as their ultimate development is concerned, as far as the effect of their

character upon the acts of their manhood is concerned, all influence is to be derived from a sphere quite separate from our own? Do we not deliberately renounce our responsibility as to our boys' formation of character as men?

And what is the influence to which we are thus handing them over? In sending boys to a preparatory school parents feel to a large extent that there is at the head of the school life there a definite, concentrated influence due to the line taken by the head-master upon the various points of importance in the education of boys, and handed on by him to the members of his staff, the masters and other grown-up people working in the school. There is a centre of superiority which the boys must respect and which makes the tone of the school. What is the influence in a public school? It is the influence of the boys themselves. It is their standard of right and wrong that rules the "tone," it is their undeveloped instinct that makes the laws and settles the limitations of their own world. And for this reason one fears when a boy leaves his home or leaves his preparatory

school to take his plunge into public school life.

From the first moment that a boy comes into a preparatory school one's thought for him is: "How will he do when he goes to a public school?" One's efforts are mainly directed to teaching him to be able to stand alone at the age of thirteen or fourteen. One judges all his actions, all his standards of right and wrong, from the standpoint of how his life with other boys will be affected. To a certain extent this must be inevitable, but I hope to be able to convince some of my readers that, in many respects, it is all wrong; and that there ought to exist in a boy's life at a public school, just as much as in every other phase of his life, influences outside himself and his contact with his like strong enough to guide, lead and dominate.

In each preparatory school as it comes into existence there is for its centre the influence of the one man who founds it. His influence must be paramount: if it should fail it would only mean that some one else was in reality at the head of the school; it would not affect the

fact of the constitution of the preparatory school as such, which is that one man alone is answerable to public opinion for what goes on in that school. The constitution is that of an autocracy. The case of public schools is quite different. The head-master there is appointed by a board or a council; upon the wisdom, upon the penetration, the judgment of character of a body of men depends the character of the head-master of any given school. Except inasmuch as the head-master has himself once been a boy, and thus given his mite of influence to the formation of the present public-school system, he is when he sets out to rule a public school-taking in hand an institution in the building up of which he has had no sort of "say". He is setting forth on the task of governing a country which already governs itself.

I was once sitting at the dinner-table of a friend there was a large party, mostly men, three of them old Etonians. We had been discussing the health of delicate boys and the way it was considered at public schools. Said my host (himself one of the

Etonians): "The system on which public schools are worked is absolutely and entirely wrong". I was somewhat startled and looked round the table there seemed to be a general sigh of acquiescence, and some one (the father of two little lads) said: "It's quite true". I said: "Why do we send our boys to them, then?" Made answer old Etonian No. 3: "What else are we to do?"

There

It is because there is nothing else to do, it is because there is no alternative for us, that public schools are allowed to have in their administration so much that is wrong. The system of public schools is in certain points the system of the "ring" of commerce. is, of course, an amount of competition in the matter of minor details, and-in one or two instances there is more than this, but as a general thing the public-school system is the same all England over. There may be more or less of this or that fault, of this or that virtue, in this or that school, but the standard of the highest possible that can be reached, the standard of the lowest possible that can be allowed, is much the same wherever we go.