necessity, or where there is strong hereditary talent--which is
always an exceptional case--that the children of actors and
actresses take to the stage. Persons therefore need not in the
least fear that by helping to endow these schools they would help
to overstock the dramatic market. They would do directly the
reverse, for they would divert into channels of public distinction
and usefulness those good qualities which would otherwise languish
in that market's over-rich superabundance.

This project has received the support of the head of the most
popular of our English public schools. On the committee stands the
name of that eminent scholar and gentleman, the Provost of Eton.
You justly admire this liberal spirit, and your admiration--which I
cordially share--brings me naturally to what I wish to say, that I
believe there is not in England any institution so socially liberal
as a public school. It has been called a little cosmos of life
outside, and I think it is so, with the exception of one of life's
worst foibles--for, as far as I know, nowhere in this country is
there so complete an absence of servility to mere rank, to mere
position, to mere riches as in a public school. A boy there is
always what his abilities or his personal qualities make him. We
may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the
frank, free, manly, independent spirit preserved in our public
schools, I apprehend there can be no kind of question. It has
happened in these later times that objection has been made to
children of dramatic artists in certain little snivelling private
schools--but in public schools never. Therefore, I hold that the
actors are wise, and gratefully wise, in recognizing the capacious
liberality of a public school, in seeking not a little hole-and-
corner place of education for their children exclusively, but in