hates the history of schooldays as much as I do their memory, he will
easily pardon my passing by the topic altogether. If the first purpose
of all great public institutions is to stand still; the great schools of
England, fifty years ago, were righteous adherents to their contract;
they never moved. The world might whirl round them as it would; there
remained the grey milestones, only measuring the speed with which every
thing on the road passed them. This, they say, has largely and
fortunately changed in later years. But the change must proceed; the
venerable cripples must throw by their crutches, and try the effect of
flesh and blood. Flogging and fagging, are the education for a footman;
they disgrace the common sense, and offend the feelings of a manly
people. The pugilist must be expelled, and the puppy must follow him.
The detestable grossness of classical impurity, must be no longer the
price at which Latin "quantities" are to be learned. The last lesson of
the "prodigal son," must not be the first learned by the son of the
gentleman of England--to be fed on the "husks" fit only for the swine.

* * * * *

On my delighted release from this supreme laboratory of statesmen, I
found the state of things considerably altered at Mortimer Castle. I had
left it a stately but rather melancholy-looking household; I found the
mansion glittering in all the novelty of French furniture, gilding, and
_or-molu_--crowded with fashion, and all its menial tribe, from the
groom in the stables to the gentleman's gentleman, who slipped along the
chambers in soft silence, and seemed an embodying of Etiquette, all in
new equipments of all kinds--the avenue trimmed, until it resembled a
theatrical wood; and the grounds, once sober and silent enough for a
Jacques to escape from the sight of human kind, and hold dialogues with
the deer; now levelled, opened, shorn, and shaved, with the precision of