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THE

A Paradox-Symmetry, &c.
Our Inventors' Čolumn..

OUR BOYS AT SCHOOL.

BY RICHARD A. PROCTOR.

12

15

15

HE death of one of the boys at King's College School, through ill-treatment by his fellows, will probably have been inquired into fully, and the matter disposed of, before these lines are read. But in any case my remarks will be general, and such as could be properly made while the matter is still sub judice.

It appears to me that the question of school discipline is one which needs very careful study in Great Britain. If there is one article of national faith which the Briton of the top-boot type regards as sacred, it is that our public schools are noble institutions where the best and bravest types of British manhood were formed. It has always seemed to me, however, that if our public school system fails to turn any boy subjected into a cross between the bully and the sneak, it can only be because the boy has a singularly good disposition by nature, and because his school has fortunately been under the control of an exceptionally strong and able ruler. Many talk as though such work as Arnold and Temple did at Rugby had been done once and for ever-as though bullying had been killed because it was scotched there and then. Unfortunately, this is far from being the case. Bullying is literally encouraged by our public school system, just as slavery was encouraged of old in America. It is made worth a boy's while to become a bully as soon as he can escape being bullied. If he is of too good a nature to learn the art of bullying, he comes off worse than boys of coarser disposition. If a head-master can make bullies wretched by developing a brave and manly tone, the mischief may for a while be checked, or even stopped altogether. But the evil of the system remains.

This is a serious matter. Fathers of families commit their boys, at a time when as yet the character is unformed, to emphatically evil influences. Unfortunately, they have scarce any choice in the matter. As social and business life is constituted, and must be constituted, in all busy communities, a man cannot take charge or even watch over the education of his boys. Then boys cannot be properly trained for the struggle of life at home, or even, perhaps, as private pupils, "where only a limited number can be received," an arrangement which is often

as disastrous in its results as public school training can be. A man has to send his boys either to a public school or to some private school, which may or may not be a good one.

What we want is an overhauling of the whole system of our public schools, and indeed of all our schools. The savage idea underlying the working part of the system, the idea that the best sort of training for boys is that by which the qualities of a bull-dog, or of that sweet creature the Tasmanian devil, may be most thoroughly developed, should have died out long since. It belongs to the days when we were savages, when, perhaps, had we not been savages, we should have been wiped out of existence the good old times of the Tudors which the modern survivals of savagery, the Jingoes and top-boot Tories, regard as England's best days. It will be held in future ages as a perfect marvel of idiotic conservatism that England should have retained to the last quarter of the nineteenth century a school-system fit only for the rearing of buccaneers and horse-thieves.

The vital defect of our school system is that it leaves the weakest to go to the wall. Every boy who passes through the course of training involved in the system must be for a time among the victims of this injustice; and nearly every such boy has to pass through the yet severer ordeal of being for a while possessed of power over fresh victims of this stupid and brutal system. "Is there any man living," says one who has passed through both parts of the school discipline, "is there any man living who has ever been to a public school, who can place his hand on his heart and say that at one time or another his school life was not a hell upon earth?" Strong words, but not one whit too strong. Every form of fiendish cruelty is practised by school bullies on their wretched. victims. Not only so, but evil is developed by example, and even by precept, while good is discouraged. The boys of best disposition among the elders are for the most part silent, partly because they are outnumbered, and partly because in all communities evil is always louder and more prominent than good. A boy must be far above the average to escape the evil influence of bad example and brutal bullying while he is one of the weak: the chances are great that he will be himself a brutal bully, and in other ways set an evil example, when he has become one of the strong.

It may be urged that a large proportion of our best men have been brought up at public schools. Let it be granted. But even if all our worthiest had been so reared, that would prove nothing; for nearly all those who have any chance of high distinction must-for want of better-go to a public school. The argument is like that absurd reasoning in favour of studying two dead languages by way of preparation for life's struggle, that many of England's greatest men have been well versed in classical lore, and could, perhaps, still turn a police-court trial into Greek Iambics when already high in the service of their country. How could such men help being well ahead, as boys, in the only subject given them to work at ? If chess and whist had been the chief subjects of their school work, they would have been well ahead in gambits and the conduct of trumps. Our great men who have come out from public school life undefiled and unbrutalised have done so despite the inherent savagery of the public school system: their greatness has owed about as much to their school training as the colour of their hair. If any one of our statesmen who have been at public schools could lay his hand on his heart and say, "It was when I was kicked daily, or welted with a stump every cricket afternoon,

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that my powers as a statesman were first unconsciously developed in me," or perhaps, contrariwise, "It was when I used to welt young Brown and Jones, holding them in slave-like obedience to my supreme will, that I first learned to control the fortunes of men and nations," then, indeed, we might form a different opinion (of him, if not of the school system). But no one acquainted with the real facts can for a moment doubt that our leading men have become great despite, and not because of, their public-school training.

But there is another aspect in which such brutalities as have recently been heard of may be viewed. It is singular how inapt many are to perceive the true meaning of boyish wickedness as developed at some schools. They talk of the misfortune that so many bad boys, cruel blackguardly louts, and so forth, should by chance have gone to such and such a school; and compare with the bad fortune of one school in this respect the good fortune of another, where the tone is so much braver and purer. Few seem to recognise the fact that a boy's nature is singularly plastic-in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. It yields to surrounding influences-as the growing tree to the action of causes which when grown would produce

little effect upon it. Where the boys of a school are bad, it is nearly always-nay, for my own part, I say "always" -because the influences to which they are exposed are evil; where the tone among the boys of a school is good, one may be well assured that they are under the influence of good men.

Oddly enough, I predicted, now nearly two years ago, the development of evil qualities at the very place where an unfortunate lad has been done to death. In an article on "Our Boys at School," which appeared in Knowledge for August 21, 1883, I called the attention of parents to the necessity of inquiring carefully whether the masters of schools where their boys were to go, had the qualities essential for the development of good feeling among the lads under their control. I named no names, but I was moved to write the article by the necessity which had, in my opinion, arisen for removing three boys of my own from King's College School. I recognised, in what my lads told me, clear evidence that the tone among the boys at the school was bad; and I knew that this can only be interpreted in one way. "If," I said, a parent finds, when talking the matter over with his boys, that "there are many mean fellows' among the boys, fellows who

let others be punished for their offences, who cringe when they are not bullying, and bully when they are not cringing, be sure there is something wrong among the masters." Such evidence is far better than actual complaints of unfairness on the masters' part, for boys, like men, may complain without cause. But among a given number of boys there will always be a large proportion whose characters take their tone from the character of the masters; they will be among the good fellows if the masters help them that way; but they will sink into the ranks of the bad fellows (sneaks, bullies, and cowards) if the masters are of that kind.

I have in my thoughts two marked examples, each double in its significance, of the influence of good and bad masters, and especially of good and bad head-masters. In one case the tone in a school had been decidedly bad, many of the boys being bullies and cowards, selfish and treacherous. A new master (whom I have the pleasure of knowing well personally) replaced the master under whom the school had had this unpleasant character. Shortly after my own boys went to that school. They talk to this day with enthusiasm of the splendid tone pre-line there. The lads were neither bullies nor cowar ls,

neither brutes nor sneaks-simply because the few boys who were really bad (some such there are in every gathering of boys) had their badness shamed out of them. The discipline was strict but just. Every boy knew what he had to expect, and was never disappointed, either in the way of reward or of punishment. At another school, of which I knew something, an excellent tone prevailed ten or twelve years ago. A change of masters came about, and now among the boys of that school brutality and meanness, vice and profanity (yet it is a professedly religious school, where all things are to be conducted sancte et sapienter) are rampant. The moral of this evidence should be obvious. The lesson it teaches is of vital importance-socially, morally, and nationally.Newcastle Daily Chronicle.

MYSTERIES AND MORALITIES. BY EDWARD CLODD.

I.

THE Revised Version of the Scriptures, now completed by the issue of the Old Testament, which seems somewhat in danger of being nicknamed the Caper-berry Bible, is a recognition of the possible imperfections of the translations that have preceded it, as also of the uncertainty of meaning of the most ancient texts, the oldest of which are relatively modern, on comparison of which the textus receptus is based. The work of the revisers is, therefore, a distinct move in the direction of that more intelligent treatment of these venerable writings which will do more than theories concerning their divine authority to secure their abidingplace among the priceless records of human experience and spiritual development.

The revisers, who are presumably not influenced by commercial motives in their work, would have better shown their sense of its importance by issuing the complete version at such a price-say a few pence per copy-as would place it within the reach of the poorest, and, as the New Testament section appears to be a drug with the booksellers, the wisdom of cheap editions justifies itself.

Coincident with this publication is a re-issue of the celebrated Biblia Pauperum, or Bible of the Poor. This redemption, accompanied by verses from the Scriptures is a collection of pictures illustrating the story of man's in Latin, and, together with the "Mirror of Human Salvation" (Speculum Humane Salvationis) was the chief text-book used by the preaching monks. It was compiled in the thirteenth century, and printed in the fifteenth century, being probably the first book in which blocks were used, and it was followed, a few years later, by the printing and secret conveyance into England of Tyndale's New Testament, in fulfilment of that noble martyr's vow that "if God would spare his life, ere many years he would cause the boy who driveth the plough to know more of the Scriptures than did all the priests."

The completion of the Revised Version, and the republication of the Biblia Pauperum, suggests some account of methods employed both here and on the Continent, when the Bible was an unknown or prohibited book, for bringing home to the people the central facts of which it is the vehicle-an account the interest of which is greater for the student of human progress than for the antiquarian.

For many centuries such knowledge of the events nar

V.de Times, June 12th.

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rated in the Bible as the unlettered laity possessed was diffused orally by means of paraphrases in local dialects and alliterative metre. The first native poem having these events for its subject was the work of Cædmon, a cowherd of the monastery of Whitby, concerning whom the tradition is that when sleeping in the stable-loft One came who said, "Sing, Cadmon, some song to me." Suddenly poetic inspiration seized him, and he poured forth verses which, on awaking, he recited to his fellowservants. The Abbess Hilda was told this, and promoted Cadmon from the cowshed to the cloister, where he spent his days in making many poems "of the terrors of judgment to come, and of the horrors of hell-pangs, and of the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom," till his death in 680 A.D.

The paraphrases to which his work gave impetus were largely interspersed with quaint and absurd stories and legends, which, however, added to the dramatic element in them, and gave occasion for a certain degree of action on the part of the reciters. These found a willing audience among the retainers in castle-halls before whom the wandering minstrel had sung his ballad, and among the peasants on the village common before whom the strolling mountebanks had performed their tricks and pantomimes. They smoothed the way for that more elaborate presentment of the historical parts of the Old and New Testaments, and of incidents in the lives of the saints, which were the subjects of the early Christian drama and of the Mysteries and Moralities of the Middle Ages.

Miracle Plays is the name commonly given to this drama, but, speaking accurately, the Miracle Play is concerned with some event in the career of martyrs and confessors, while the Mystery, which is later in date, deals with Bible narrative only, the most frequent subject being the redemption of mankind as the central fact around which all the others gather.

In most dictionaries our word mystery is erroneously derived through the French from the Latin mysterium, as treating of the "mysteries" of the Christian faith, whereas it is the French mystère, originally written mistère, and derived from ministère, because the clergy, the ministerium or ministri ecclesiæ, were the first actors of religious plays.

The Morality was a didactic allegory, in which virtue and vice, passion and feeling, were personified by the actors; but although it arose independently of, and long remained distinct from, the Mystery, a fusion between them occurred later on, the allegorical figures alternating with historical characters. The plays were originally performed within abbey walls, and viewing the attitude of antagonism which the Church had for ages manifested towards the drama an attitude justified by the degrading influences of which it had become a too willing agent in its decadence under the Empire-it is at first glance matter for surprise that its revival occurred under her ægis. But the abolition of the theatre did not destroy the passion innate in man for dramatic presentment of life's affairs, or the love and need of some sort of recreation, and this had long found satisfaction in rude and rough amusements which fostered neither morality nor gentleness. In England there was no lack of religious and national festivals. So numerous were they, that in the reign of Henry VIII. the Commons petitioned for their reduction, the more so that they were made occasion for "execrable vices" and "idle and wanton sports." Not only did the restraints upon the clerics and the nuns cause a reaction which expressed itself in travesties of services and rites in the sacred

buildings, but the feasts and holy days of the pagan faiths which Christianity had displaced, and which were older than any organised religions, survived with new associations, with new names, and under grotesque and often licentious forms. They typified the character of the rougher races of the North, and flourished with the connivance of a clergy itself not too pure in life. With that profound insight into human nature which has rarely deserted her, with that unerring touch of the material with which she has to deal, which has been a truer inspiration than the higher guidance she has claimed, the Church was moved to gradually utilise for loftier purposes that which had been put to base uses. Whilst tightening her hold she extended her usefulness by recognising in the drama (into whose mould the pre-Christian beliefs were poured, the pagan mysteries being essentially dramatic), a powerful and pliable instrument for relieving the monotony of the monastic and conventual life, and for instructing the unlearned in the history and doctrines which she claimed sole divine authority to teach. In later days, with the supercession of the religious and ethical by the purely secular drama, she disowned and maltreated her foster-offspring, refusing to the players her consoling rites, and denying them burial in consecrated soil; but no desertion of hers can destroy the fact that she was the nursing-mother of Shakspere, Molière, and Goethe, and that the first revival of the theatre is to be found in the religious plays.

Traces occur as far back as the second century of plays the incidents in which are founded on the Bible, and the framework of which is modelled on classic lines,* as in the Passion of Jesus (Christos Paschôn), which is after the manner of Euripides, the old choruses being represented by Christian hymns, and as in some plays by Hroswitha, a Benedictine nun of the tenth century, who dramatized legends of the saints on the model of the comedies of Terence. It is probable that her dramas were performed. at Gandersheim, within the nunnery, as aids to the instruction of the children under the care of the religious foundations. Three plays by Hilarius, an English monk of the twelfth century, have for their several subjects the raising of Lazarus, the story of Daniel, and a miracle wrought by St. Nicholas, of whom tradition records that even while he was an infant he conformed so rigidly to ecclesiastical rule, that he fasted from the breast on Wednesdays and Fridays!

The earliest recorded performance of a miracle-play is of the play of St. Katherine (Ludus de S. Katherina) at Dunstable, in 1119, when the actors borrowed their dresses from the abbey of St. Alban's. This play is referred to by Matthew Paris, a writer in the following century, as of the kind "quem miracula vulgariter appellamus." Performed privately at first, as remarked above, within monastery walls for the recreation of the featureless lives of the inmates, the plays were extended to the church, with the clergy and choristers as actors, and gradually became more popular in form and less restricted in their audiences as their wholesome influence grew more apparent. Originally written in Latin, they were rendered into Norman-French to adapt them for exhibition before the Court, and then into the vernaculart for

*The first drama known to have been written on a Scripture subject is a Jewish play, of which fragments are extant in Greek Iambics. It is taken from the Exodus, and the leading characters are Moses, Sapphora, and God in the burning bush.

In the Brit. Mus. MS. of the Chester Plays, it is related that the author was thrice at Rome before he could obtain leave of the Pope to have them in the English tongue."

the entertainment and edification of the people,* the clerical character of the actors being shown by the retention of the stage directions in Latin. In 1210, Innocent III. sanctioned their performance outside the churches, before the door or in the churchyard, or in other open places, on fixed or movable stages; and a further step towards secularization was made when the control of the plays passed into lay hands, from the clergy to the trade guilds, by whom they were acted in the chief thoroughfares of the large towns.

These innovations were due not merely to the increasing importance of the miracle plays as sources of instruction, but also to the growing demand of the townspeople for diversion as material progress left a larger margin of leisure. And it is interesting to note that the passage of the plays from beyond the church nave is connected with the growth of another institution of unsuspected ecclesiastical origin-the national fair-which had its rise in supplying the needs of pilgrims gathered round abbey walls and shrines to honour the festival of the patron saint whose relics lay beneath the altar.

As late as the reign of Henry VII. half England was fen and forest. Through the dense masses of the one wandered the roe and the red deer, and the silence of the immense breadths of the other was broken only by the cry of wild birds, the bustard, and the swan, and by the ringing of the vesper bell from the monastery rising like a beacon across the wastes.

The richest lands, mostly pasture, were in the hands of the monks, who swarmed in thousands like locusts over the country, whilst round them was a peasant class, often reduced by severe fluctuations in harvests to eat bread made of peas, vetches, and fern roots. Moreover, the centres of supply were too scattered, and the garners of the abbeys too limited, to feed the hungry crowd that, attracted by their holy relics, encamped in or about the grounds in tents which survive amongst us in the booths of country fairs. With these were the stalls of the dealers and the bazaars of the travelling merchants, who took advantage of the concourse for bargaining their wares, and for purposes of general trading. The fair was named after the saint whose festa brought the pilgrims together, and which was utilised by the clergy for acting the Miracle Play, or some series of events from scripture history in the Mystery. "Thus in the time of Constantine, Jews, Gentiles, and Christians assembled in great numbers to perform their several rites about a tree reported to be the oak Mambre, under which Abraham received the angels; at the same place," adds Zosimus, "there also came together many traders, both for sale and purchase of their wares."+ In the larger towns,

the trade guilds had each their patron saint, and the day dedicated to him became the occasion for pageants, in which a miracle play was performed, first in the hall of the guild, and then in the thoroughfares. The stage appointments became more elaborate, the characters of the plays underwent extensive alteration, tragedy was relieved by comedy, the sacred story enlivened with jest and tinged with local colouring, and the way gradually opened for the ultimate release of the drama from eccle

There is a MS. of the sixteenth century extant in the Bodleian Library of three miracle-plays written in the old Cymric of Cornwall, the subjects of which are "The Origin of the World," "The Passion of our Lord," and "The Resurrection of our Lord"; and Carew, in his "Survey of Cornwall" (1602), describes the earthern amphitheatres built by the Cornishmen for the performance of miracle-plays. Cf. "Morley's Eng. Writers," vol. I., 748. + Morley's "Bartholomew Fair," p. 16.

siastical swaddling-clothes, and the bestowal upon it of that independent life which grew into such vigour and splendour in the England of Elizabeth.

THE

OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS.
By E. A. BUTLER.
COLEOPTERA (continued).

HE beetles whose ravages and life history have already occupied our attention illustrate very well two of the great primary divisions of the Coleoptera, viz., the Teredilia, or Wood-borers, containing the deathwatch and its allies, which are all summed up in a single small family, and the Clavicornia, or Clubhorns, to which the bacon-beetle and its skin-devouring relatives are referable. We thus see that in each section, out of some hundreds of species of more or less similar structure, only a very small proportion, and those almost entirely confined to a single family in each case, bring themselves into collision with human household interests.

And in the same way, to get our next illustrations, we must go to another great primary section of the order, and select a few species therefrom. This section is called the Heteromera, a word which, being literally translated from the Greek, means "different joints," and is given in reference to a peculiarity by which these insects are sharply distinguished from most of those already referred to, viz., that while the tarsi, or feet, of the first two pairs of legs consist of five little joints succeeding one another in longitudinal row, those of the hind pair have only four such joints, our preceding examples, except the little oddity Mycetea, having been furnished with five on all their limbs.

The Heteromera are a remarkable set of insects, more

fully represented in tropical countries than in our own islands. We possess less than 120 species, and these do not all rightfully belong to us; but even this small number includes insects of such diverse habits and structure as to necessitate their subdivision into nearly sixty genera. The economy of some, too-such as the familiar oil-beetle-is more wonderful than that of any other Coleoptera whatever.

Fig. 1. Blaps mucronata. A, side view of elytra.

Our first example from this group is the insect known to science as Blaps mucronata (Fig. 1), and popularly called the "churchyard beetle" and "cellar beetle." It is utterly unlike any other British insect except the other two members of its own genus, and these it resembles so closely as to be with difficulty distinguishable from them. It is a dull-black creature, nearly an inch in length, with long straggling legs, and without wings, though the wing-covers, or elytra, are even more

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