IF Royal Commissions are to be issued at all, and if our national institutions in general are fair subjects for public inquiry and suggested reformation, it can have surprised no one that the ordeal should have been applied to our Public Schools. Rather, the wonder is that they should have escaped so long. Both extremities of our educational system had already been strictly dealt with; the old village schoolmaster had been dethroned in favour of a new dynasty of black boards, and method, and organisation; and every white-headed urchin that knows or does not know his letters has become an object of intense personal interest to her Majesty's Inspector. Ancient Oxford and Cambridge are remodelled; and the former especially, what with her own well-meant blunderings in the way of new examination statutes, and the sweeping changes forced upon her by the Commissioners, finds herself in this rather embarrassing position-her educational market stocked with a sudden wealth of open scholarships, for which every college naturally demands candidates who bid fair for a first-class, while the field of undergraduates, from which the choice has to be made, offers only an unlimited and increasing supply of plucks. Yet meanwhile, the great Public Schools, the nurseries of our higher and middle classes, seemed to bear a charmed existence, unassailed by any terrors of reform. Only an individual voice here and there ventured to call in question either their system or their details. The head-master sat upon his throne like Jove, looking down with a grand calmness upon mortal complaints, impassive to the groans of Paterfamilias over the bills, as of Tirunculus under the birch.

But the charm of that celestial quiet is broken. In these days of universal examination, perhaps the schoolmasters have no right to complain; otherwise, the tables seem to have been terribly turned upon them for a season. They have had to answer papers of examinationquestions longer and stiffer than the most exacting among them could ever have had the heart to set. The Winchester masters have been had

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up to books" even as the smallest college-boy; and the autocrats of Eton, Harrow, and Westminster have been "put on" in what, when they were fourth-form boys, they would have called "awfully stiff bits." All this searching process has, of course, been conducted by her Majesty's "trusty and well-beloved" Commissioners with the most perfect urbanity and politeness; every one whose fortune it has been, at any time, to stand on the wrong side of an examination-table, knows with what terrible civility the most disagreeable questions are put on such occasions.

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The result is a mass of information, much of which is extremely interesting occasionally rather startling, and not seldom very amusing-which would never have been got at in any other way; and for which in itself, independently of any educational reforms which may follow, the public might well feel very much indebted to her Majesty's Government. If the matter contained in the four Blue volumes just issued had been put into a different shape, and judiciously edited with something like sensation titles, the Stationery Office might have not only covered their expenses by the sale, but have made a very handsome profit by the speculation.

The Commission (issued in July 1861) was empowered to make in

quiry into the revenues, administration, and management of Eton, Winchester, Westminster, CharterHouse, St Paul's, Merchant Taylors', Harrow, Rugby, and Shrewsbury; and into the "system and course of studies" pursued in each school. It has taken something like two years and a half to complete its Report; but the work seems to have been done thoroughly. Not only were printed queries, embracing every possible subject of inquiry, sent round to the authorities of each of these schools, and the witnesses afterwards confronted with their written depositions, and subjected to a searching cross-examination thereupon; but some of the most intelligent of the scholars whom each school had lately sent up to the universities, were also examined on the same points of education and discipline; and, in order to test the system from every point of view, even a junior King's scholar of Eton, a junior college-boy of Winchester, and a junior foundationer of the Charter-House-boys from twelve to fourteen-were summoned to give evidence, more especially as to their personal experiences in the important matter of fagging. These several classes of witnesses were plainly necessary to the case, if anything like a thorough investigation was to be made. But the Commissioners would have gone much farther than this, if they had had their way. They proposed to have a special examination of "the senior boys, constituting about one-fifth of each school," in the subjects ordinarily taught Latin and Greek translation, Mathematics, History, &c.; and a circular, containing this proposal, was sent round to each of the head-masters. That such a proceeding, however plausible at first sight, was really "objectionable both in principle and details," was what sensible men like the Commissioners ought to have felt at once, and what they were soon reminded of by the unanimous remonstrance of the school authorities. We say

unanimous, because both Dr Temple and Dr Kennedy, who gave a very reluctant consent, expressed at the same time their distinct objections; and certainly neither Rugby nor Shrewsbury had any reason to shrink from any test which could be applied to their work, or any presumed comparison with the results at other public schools. The objections will be found ably and temperately stated in the replies of the several headmasters; it is enough to say here that all felt that the results of such an examination, if published, would assume a fallacious importance, and that the examination itself would be a serious infringement of the independent government of the school. So the Commissioners gave up that part of their scheme; finding, as they say in the closing letter of their correspondence, that they could not obtain "the general concurrence of the authorities; finding, as they should have said, that the authorities concurred unanimously in protesting against it, and that the common sense of every one interested in public education would in this instance have backed the masters.

But the Commission did not limit itself, in the collection of evidence, to schoolmasters or schoolboys. They issued a separate examination-paper for "Professors, Tutors, and others at the two universities; who thus found themselves a second time brought into court, but on this occasion rather as witnesses for the prosecution than as co-defendants. They were asked, amongst other questions, "how far the education given at the schools from which the university is fed, fulfils satisfactorily one of its main purposes, that of preparing boys for the university course, by grounding them in those studies;" "how far scholarship appears to have advanced or declined" of late years; whether they have "observed any marked differences between different schools;" and whether "the moral training and character of the

young men who have come up to the university from public schools" has improved or deteriorated.

On this latter question-to which, though it comes last upon the Commissioners' paper, we may be very sure they attached the first importance-we gladly say a few words at the outset, because they are very pleasant words to say. If there is one point on which the witnesses are unanimous, it is on this; that in the moral tone and habits of the young men who go up year after year from our public schools to the university there is an improvement, in a very marked degree, within the present generation. "The senior head of a house," says one Oxford witness, "is reported to have said that the improvement in the morals of the members of the university since the beginning of the century is not to be called a reformation, but a revolution." No doubt, the venerable author of this emphatic testimony has lived to see great and most desirable and needful change in the habits, not only of undergraduate life, but in the life of the senior common-room; but even much younger men trace thankfully the same improvement through later years, and readily admit that in this important respect the present day is better than their own. In point of morality, economy, sobriety, good sense in their amusements, and the absence of riot and disorder, the modern undergraduate comes out in very favourable contrast to those who occupied his rooms and trod the same old High Street twenty and thirty years ago. It is somewhat curious to remark the various causes, proximate or remote, to which the successive witnesses, all men of ability and experience, are inclined to attribute the change which they all gladly recognise. One-not himself a Rugby manadds yet another testimony to Rugby's great head-master: he dates the change distinctly "from the time that Arnold's pupils began to come up to Oxford." Another be

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lieves that he noticed a marked difference for the better," arising from "the fourteen-penny incometax" (which certainly has not had too many admirers), "and the wholesome stimulus of the Crimean war;" several attribute much of the happy result to the introduction of athletic sports; others again to "the multiplication of university examinations;" the closer per

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sonal relations that exist between tutor and pupils, both at school and college"-certainly one of the most encouraging features of modern education; and, what has perhaps really most of all to do with the change, though it is difficult to say whether as cause or as result,-the improved state of public opinion.

This marked improvement in the habits of English student life, to which those who are best qualified to judge bear such willing testimony, and which has long been patent to all who have even a slight knowledge of the university world. as it was and is, has been accompanied, as all good things are, with some slight drawbacks. The minor morals-so to speak-of the modern undergraduate are decidedly not an improvement upon those of his predecessors. In very gentle language-too gentle, we venture to think, for the occasion-some of the college officers notice that which threatens to be one counteracting evil to very much of promising good in the young men of our own day. "They are less attentive to small matters of discipline than they were." "Manners, in the popular sense of the term, have not improved; there is an ostentatious disregard of minor regulations, and a corresponding (I think consequent) falling off in the small courtesies which distinguish the gentleman." We could wish, indeed, that these words of mild and yet forcible rebuke-not as from a college tutor to undergraduates, but as from a gentleman to gentlemen were printed, not only in a Government blue-book, or even in these pages,

but in some conspicuous place in every college hall, debating society, club-room, sixth-form room, and school library. Would that every undergraduate who casts his eye on these lines as he picks up the Magazine from the table of the Union, would believe how those who have, for every reason, the most lively sympathies with undergraduate life, who recognise joyfully the immense amount of good which leavens it all in a degree unknown in their own younger days, are pained and vexed to notice this "falling off in the courtesies which distinguish the gentleman"! We may be "inclined to believe," with one of the Commissioners' witnesses, "that in essentials there is still as strong a sense of reverence and right as there has ever been;" but there can be no question that in outward demeanour and address towards their elders and towards those in authority, as well as in that proper self-respect which shows itself in the appropriate dress and bearing of a gentleman, there is a lamentable falling off. No one would wish to recall the days when the loungers of the High Street sunned themselves in the eyes of milliners' apprentices in flaunting waistcoats and ridiculous jewellery; but the short pipe and the cap of all colours are surely an aping of the absurdities of the German Bursch which sits but ill upon the English scholar. The courtesies and proprieties of "gentle life" are not to be put upon the same level as the moral virtues; but they form the complements of that character which, when complete, we are justified in ranking above all othersan English gentleman. No name stands higher in the grateful memory of Oxford-none should have greater weight with every publicschool man and university studentthan his, the courtier, the scholar, the statesman, and the Christian, the very founder of our public education, who bade his boys at Winchester observe the "curialis modus," and took for his own motto,

It is a

"Manners maketh man.' principle as old as St Paul, and which must last until all society is disorganised; the evil fashion of a day may affect bad manners, but they must go out again, like periwigs or hoops and patches.

The causes of this degeneracy in young men's manners the witnesses have not thought it worth while to investigate. Something of the same kind is noticed in society generally; so that in this, as has always been the case in other points of more importance, our sons are only exaggerating the sins of their fathers. And just as good springs out of evil-as the execrated double income-tax is said to have been the mother of undergraduate economy -so in this particular some evil has probably sprung out of an undoubted good, the more familiar and confidential relations which are now generally cultivated between a boy and his master at school, and an undergraduate and his college authorities. It would be going too far to say that this familiarity has bred anything like contempt, but it has certainly weakened the barriers of respect and deference. The blame is not entirely on the side of the younger party. If outward recognition of these duties is treated as a matter of indifference, it will soon be discontinued; and it will be strange if, in young and unformed minds, the feeling of what we may term reverence does not suffer in consequence. Certainly, if anything like "an ostentatious disregard of minor regulations" correctly describes the state of things in an English university, the blame rests in quite a different quarter to that in which the witness intended to apply it. Ostentatious disobedience on the part of those in statu pupillari is to be met by an equally "ostentatious" exercise of authority. Nor do we exactly understand what, in a question of discipline, "minor" regulations mean. If they are unnecessary or vexatious, let them be discontinued; if they are wholesome

and judicious, let them be enforced. But we have very grave doubts whether the improvement which has been justly remarked in the habits of the younger members of the university is to be attributed to any corresponding improvement in college discipline or supervision.

This favourable evidence from the universities is only what might reasonably be expected from what comes out, most clearly and satisfactorily, in the course of this inquiry, as to the moral tone and state of feeling in the schools themselves. Scholarship may not be all that is to be desired; there may be abuses and negligences which deserve exposure and call for reformation; but public schools are no longer what an excellent man once called them, with a too near approach to truth, "the seats and nurseries of vice." There may be sceptics who might hesitate to accept without reservation the testimony here borne by the masters as to the general character of their scholars; such witnesses would naturally, it might be said, make the best of the results of a training for which they are themselves responsible; but no one can read the honest-hearted and independent testimony of the young men who have just gone up from their respective schools to college, without placing the most implicit confidence in the good word which they give their old school and their old schoolfellows. Captains of the school, captains of the eleven, captains of the boats-successful scholars or successful athletes-young noblemen of Eton, or hard-working commoners of Rugby (and the Commissioners wisely took care to have before them representatives of each) all who have had the best means of knowing school-life intimately in all its shades of good and evil, speak of it in terms which may well carry hope and comfort to the heart of many an anxious parent. Very few of them, indeed, will give a confident reply to a pet question of the Commissioners, whether

they think that, on the whole, "their time was profitably spent" at school, and whether they "are satisfied with the result?" (let us be thankful that no Royal Commission is empowered to exact such an account of our maturer years); some of them think, as any of us may think, that they "might have done more;" but all agree, each for their own school, with only such shades of difference that it would be invidious to distinguish them, that the tone of public feeling among the boys themselves is, on the whole, sound and healthy; that "there would be a general reprobation of anything ungentlemanlike or dishonourable;" that drinking and other gross vices, though not unknown, are confined to a small set, whose reputation amongst their schoolfellows is not good, and usually carried on with such secrecy, that the danger of contagious example becomes comparatively small; that swearing, lying, gambling, and bullying, were almost universally discountenanced by popular opinion. Even lying to a master-in which respect school morality in past years was very conventional indeed-has come to be considered, at least by the upper forms, in the light which it deserves. Smoking, which schoolboys have been apt to aspire to as a manly virtue, has gone out of fashion at Eton, and is voted "very silly" at Rugby. Into the higher question of religious training-always a difficult and delicate subject to handle with schoolboys-we do not choose to enter here, further than to say that the evidence elicited on this important point fully justifies the words of the Report, that "much of it is very satisfactory."

But the satisfaction which the Commissioners have expressed as to the moral training of our public schools, as having been, "upon the whole, eminently successful," and "greatly improved during the last thirty or forty years”—a conclusion in which they are fully justified by the evidence-is not extended to