tively useless in itself, its effect on an overgrown athleticism is positively pernicious. So long as the graver occupations of a boy's life are slavish and detested, he will throw himself heart and soul into any kind of amusement, and set himself to find his only happiness therein, while all knowledge, all that is either useful for practical life, or merely refining in itself, he will vaguely think must be in a way dismal; his view of it will be coloured by the memory of the toilsome and sterile hours he has spent with his books. And even if he is forced to learn something, such knowledge as he gains will be unproductive; he has no affection for it and does not care to impart it. It is remarkable how many men seem half ashamed even of such useful knowledge as they do possess. If boys' minds are to be elevated from athletics to anything higher, it will not be by such methods as these.

So let us suppose it to be admitted that a system of voluntary learning is desirable: how is it to be obtained? In answer to this it cannot be expected that any complete formulated scheme should be presented which would be certain to produce the effect desired. The working out of the general idea depends principally on individual influence for its success, and numberless obstacles have to be overcome; all that can be done is, that every one interested in education should consider and see if this idea of teaching is not the freest and most enlightened, in the hope of inducing unanimous effort in the same direction, and so increasing the amount of that individual influence.

There are, however, a few subsidiary points worth noticing. The numerous subjects which men of science, with Sir John Lubbock at their head, have succeeded in getting taught in public schools, have in most cases produced, or been incorporated with, the modern sides,' that is to say, certain curricula designed for those who wish to learn (besides science) modern languages, and certain forms of mathematics, &c., required for the army or diplomacy. But the movement has not stopped here. A further and most satisfactory result is noticeable in the recent establishment of workshops under proper control, where boys can gain some idea of the value of manual labour, and the respect due to careful handicraft. Museums too are encouraged, since they help in extending the front, so to speak, of the intellectual interest presented to the boys, and so increase the chance of alluring a greater number to pursue knowledge for its own sake. For those who know the natures of average boys, know that the process of leading them to learn is in reality a process of allurement. Thousands of boys have a strong instinctive antipathy to intellectual effort; their point of view with regard to it has to be modified; and if the attempt is made abruptly it will be ineffective; they suspect some sinister design, not knowing yet that what they are being led to is beautiful for its own sake, and capable of making them useful members of society. And to further this innocent deception, such

things as debating societies are valuable. They may induce an intellectual activity in quarters where there is often a marked tendency to stagnation, and stimulus may be given to thought, arrangement of ideas, and the hearing and imparting of facts, without aid of lexicons or fear of the ferule. But they are not often made to serve this purpose without considerable efforts being made towards sustaining them after they have once started. Transitory conditions may start them, and then generally a crisis supervenes demanding great care. Supposing, however, that this has been survived in safety, the society is liable to change its character. The debating element in its constitution is seen to lose prominence, and a club is formed of boys elected for their popularity, an aggregation of the influence of the school. There is of course a natural tendency to this, and the result is not unsatisfactory. Such a club embraces a class of boys whom a purely literary or debating society would probably exclude. They join it without the least intention of learning anything; but its usages should compel them by means of debates to take a livelier interest in rational subjects and enlarge their mental horizon. But there will very likely be room then for a purely literary society of a less compound nature, to co-exist side by side with this club, and provide. solely for the more studious portion of the community. For it can hardly be expected in any school that a club with members elected. for popularity, should coincide with another consisting of the scholars and the foremost devotees of learning.

Many schools also publish periodicals, written and supported by the boys themselves, and these periodicals are of two characters: those devoted wholly to the record of athletics, and those which, besides being athletic journals, contain original compositions, both poetry and prose. They serve a useful purpose, as well as the societies, by fostering a mental activity among the class hardest to reach. Many a young athlete must have first been induced to exert his immature powers, by writing (say) some reflections on certain aspects of football. The theme, doubtless, is somewhat humble, but he has to do his best, as his readers know the details of the question thoroughly, and will express their opinion as plainly as any weekly review. Perhaps he learns for the first time that having ideas is not the same thing as expressing them. But to promote the existence of journals which deal entirely with the school games is dangerous. A very definite impression is made on the younger boys if they are led to think there is only one subject on which their superiors think it worth while to express their ideas. An indefinite prestige is added to any subject, and still more to any name, by being immortalised in a few lines of letter-press, and it seems advisable that this glamour should not be thrown around one set of interests solely. The periodical should have a double character, and ought then to act in the same way as the two kinds of debating society

existing together; the serious portion of the journal would be the field for the literary efforts of the studious and the scholarlike, as the literary society would be for their speeches; while the athletic records can teach athletes to write, just as the debates of the fashionable club would help them to speak.

Now it may be said that these suggestions are unsatisfactory because they deal so much with the athletes, and tend to neglect the clever and industrious portion of the school. Unsatisfactory they may be, but not, I think, for that reason. The efforts of many educational reformers have been directed too exclusively to the improving of those who least need improvement; that is, to rendering the intellectual boys more intellectual, and the brilliant more brilliant still. It is a fascinating work, and rapid indeed is the progress made by a teacher among such learners. But any community suffers if chasms are allowed to form between the sections of its society, and numberless difficulties will be lessened if hearty efforts are rather made towards the improvement of the common run of lads, the bulk of the school. At present the opinion of the common run is apt to check individual development in different lines. It exacts excellence in one only, and to that alone pays its tribute of respect; and this general narrow-mindedness is a source of trouble, as will be seen plainly if we consider again the difficulties attendant on the government of boys by boys, the monitorial system. This system, as at present constructed, cannot be considered an ideal. The ideal to be aimed at is that certain boys, in virtue of certain excellences, should be chosen by the authorities to control the mass-those and those only whom the mass, if left to itself, would naturally choose. The same excellences which raise a boy in the eyes of the masters set over him, should at once commend themselves to the vulgus he is appointed to govern. At present there is no security that this result is arrived at, even in a fair number of cases. The boys' idea of what is admirable is often sadly at variance with the type set before them, and whenever that idea is formed solely from admiration of athleticism, there is a liability to social anarchy.

The boyish type of excellence should be modified: the young heroes of the time, the athletes, should be fitted for government according to school requirements, and then all would go well. No doubt these seem rather airy suggestions for resolving so grave a complication; but the practical outcome from them is this: If one class in a school is to be selected from the rest as especially demanding the care and attention of the masters, we should select not necessarily the most promising boys, the clever and the quick, but the class held in highest honour by the generality, that is to say in most cases, the athletes, no matter if, so far from being promising, they are lethargic and slow.

Such in main outline is the great athletic question as it has un

folded itself to the masters of most of our public schools. I say most, because it must be borne in mind that excessive athleticism is not a universal evil. In some schools, principally the newer ones, the masters feel and lament the absence of an athletic spirit. They feel that they must foster one, and their task, though far less complex than the one we are considering, deserves our hearty sympathy. But that should not prevent the evil consequent on an excess of this good thing, this athletic spirit, from being clearly seen. It appears that the gist of the evil resolves itself into this:-Granted an overgrown development of games, the boys' minds are so engrossed that they cannot be diverted to any branches of work, literary or practical, which would benefit them and their surroundings far more. Now it is often the case that when anything is going wrong, the promoters of that wrong, the very agents by whom it is kept up and continued, are the only ones who really know the extent of the damage done, and in this case I believe that very few know the power of athletics over a boy's thoughts and wishes save the athletes. The fascination of making progress in a game is unspeakable; the uninitiated, if I may use the term, cannot fully realise it. But athletes know its power, many of them from rueful experience; they know too that its infection is very potent, and, if unchecked, works among others than the athletes, setting loose among them a spirit of amusement, and estranging them from the love of work. And because this insight into the heart of the matter is confined to them, a laissez-aller attitude is so commonly adopted by the people most immediately concerned the parents of the boys. It is not at all right that they should not heed this question, seeing that while most material issues are involved in its solution, that solution depends principally upon them. Let us see how this is so. Such practical suggestions as can be made in this matter, are concerned with certain arrangements in school management which may have a useful effect upon the boys during term time. But what is to be said about the life at home? It is a farce to talk of debating societies and the like being really available to combat this or indeed any other difficulty, so long as boys are sent to school, primed since the nursery with the one idea that amusement is to be sought at school, and that a boy, if he is worth anything, will find it and make the most of it. The efforts of the professional teachers depend to a great and generally unappreciated extent on the co-operation of the parents. Meantime the mischief is frequently done before the school training begins. It is not very uncommon to find parents who have sent their son to a fashionable school, previously urging him to keep out of debt and make suitable' acquaintances, but at the same time warning the poor child against getting too fond of books. Others no doubt are more cautious; but the traces of a genuine stimulus from home towards useful work are lamentably rare, and more rarely still are habits of reading encouraged away

from school. Not, however, that we need always postulate reading; we may perhaps confess to a strong bias in its favour; we may recollect that discerning men, when the great literary pre-eminence of Germany is talked of in their presence, have been wont to point with pride to the broad diffusion of pure literary interest through the upper strata of our society, quite independent of any profession or hope of emolument, and challenge one to find the like in foreign lands; and we may judge from such indications as I have spoken of, and doubt if this superiority is as noticeable as ever. Again, we may feel besides this, that to bring up a boy in ignorance or contempt of reading is, from many points of view, a deplorable error. Non-reading parents, we may think, do not know what it is they are keeping from their son; how they are depriving him of a great safeguard against temptation in his youth, and a lasting resource against weariness in his maturer age. They cannot know what it is for harassed minds to be able to turn to literature and find there a refreshment that never fails in the midst of petty worries or heavy affliction, and not knowing this they tell him that he can do without reading, as if it were a thing of little worth. All this we may feel, but it is only a matter of opinion; our point of view just now may be thought peculiar; anyhow, we readily admit numberless other methods of awakening in a boy a genuine interest in one at least of the multitudinous forms of intellectual life which expand daily around him. There is no excuse for sending a boy to school with a disposition framed for frivolity, with idle instincts, to be freshly infused by every holiday time; whenever it so happens, something has gone wrong which need not have done so, and yet so it happens in thousands of cases every year. Parents do not do this designedly. It is not easy to realise at once that a boy requires incessant support if he is to overcome his natural antipathy to learning anything, and certainly they have very little idea what are the dangers attendant on an idle school career. Anyhow the result is an influx into so many schools of boys bred up to a spirit of inertia, and encouraged from home to nourish it.

From this unwise preparatory training the unruly growth of athleticism has sprung, the effects of which most of our older schools are now feeling. To the credit of our lads be it said, that the numbers who have been nurtured at home to idleness have chosen athletics, and have built up the great fabric we see before us. It has been reared contemporaneously with many great developments, and has reached its full stature in these times when men scrutinise, re-adjust, and improve everything around them and in them-from the principles of religion to those of dentistry and drainage; and it can hardly be expected that this less pretentious movement will long escape investigation. In that case, what attitude will people assume towards it?