Sawston School had been founded by a tradesman in the seventeenth
century. It was then a tiny grammar-school in a tiny town, and
the City Company who governed it had to drive half a day through
the woods and heath on the occasion of their annual visit. In the
twentieth century they still drove, but only from the railway
station; and found themselves not in a tiny town, nor yet in a
large one, but amongst innumerable residences, detached and
semi-detached, which had gathered round the school. For the
intentions of the founder had been altered, or at all events
amplified, instead of educating the "poore of my home," he now
educated the upper classes of England. The change had taken place
not so very far back. Till the nineteenth century the
grammar-school was still composed of day scholars from the
neighbourhood. Then two things happened. Firstly, the school's
property rose in value, and it became rich. Secondly, for no
obvious reason, it suddenly emitted a quantity of bishops. The
bishops, like the stars from a Roman candle, were all colours,
and flew in all directions, some high, some low, some to distant
colonies, one into the Church of Rome. But many a father traced
their course in the papers; many a mother wondered whether her
son, if properly ignited, might not burn as bright; many a family
moved to the place where living and education were so cheap,
where day-boys were not looked down upon, and where the orthodox
and the up-to-date were said to be combined. The school doubled
its numbers. It built new class-rooms, laboratories and a
gymnasium. It dropped the prefix "Grammar." It coaxed the sons of
the local tradesmen into a new foundation, the "Commercial
School," built a couple of miles away. And it started
boarding-houses. It had not the gracious antiquity of Eton or