and such a kind, as they display their qualities in the world.

3. The various reforms which I propose may be divided into two classes.

(a) Those that are quite practicable (many of them having already been put into practice at some schools), and necessary to the development of robust health, and all that this implies. Such reforms should be introduced into all schools as soon as possible.

(b) Those that have not been tried, are not at once recognised as necessary, and are more opposed to the general ideas of society. Such reforms should not be introduced without much consideration.

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CHAPTER II.

OUTDOOR EXERCISE.

I WILL begin with the great subject of outdoor exerAnd before considering reforms, let us first clearly understand the state of things usually existing at the present time in our great Public Schools.

During the football season most boys are supposed to play about three times a week. But this rule is by no means rigorously enforced throughout the school, and it sometimes happens that a boy escapes notice and scarcely plays at all, and such a boy is often the very one who suffers most from not being forced to play. Those boys who are forbidden by the doctor to play are frequently left to look after themselves, and take exercise or not as they please.

During the period when practice for the athletic games is going on, only those boys necessarily take exercise who intend to be competitors. And this is usually only a small portion of the school.

During the cricket season a certain proportion of the

1

school, varying in different schools, is expected to play two or three times a week. The rest of the school play or not, according as they feel inclined, or can find a ground to play upon. The members of the eleven usually practise with assiduity; the competitors for the eleven usually with mischievous excess, frequently prejudicial both to themselves and their cricket.2

But I will not content myself with a general statement of this kind. I will describe what I have myself

1 How many of the great schools possess grounds sufficiently large to admit of the whole school being employed at the same time in playing either cricket or football? Even under present conditions, when only a portion of the school is playing, the cricket games are frequently played in such close proximity to one another as to be dangerous to the players and prejudicial to the game. And yet, this being the state of things, large sums of money will be expended to erect museums, art schools, and the like. How can such a state of things be defended? Surely no boy ought to be prevented from playing either football or cricket whenever he wishes to do so, or whenever it is right that he should do so, owing to there being no ground for him to play upon. Otherwise, are we not failing to keep a tacit contract that we enter into with every parent when he places his boy with us— the contract that he should at least have full opportunity given him of exercising his body out of doors at all times when it is right for him to do so, in one or other of our great national games?

2 Of course I do not intend to imply that no greater proportion of boys than might seem to be inferred from the above description do actually take outdoor exercise. But I believe I have given a correct description of the outdoor exercise which a boy does necessarily take at many schools. That is, the rest is generally left to be decided by the inclination of the boys themselves. Such inclination is, in many cases, the most untrustworthy guide.

seen at one or other of a few of the great schools in England, which I have had opportunities of observing. And I have no reason to think that these schools are exceptions to the general rule.

It is a Saturday afternoon in winter, and it happens to be the last week of the term, a time in which every schoolmaster knows that, owing to the general unsettledness that prevails, it is more than usually important that boys should be actively employed out of doors. It is also a very bitter day.

Down the main street of the town there stroll scores and scores of boys with their hands in their pocketsshrivelled up with the cold, and relieving the monotony of their promenade by an occasional visit to the pastry cook's.

Let us leave the streets and go to the school field. There we find one somewhat languid football game going on, watched by a score or so of somewhat indifferent boy spectators, also with their hands in their pockets. And a small and select knot of boys, standing by themselves, are engaged in alternately looking up at the game and down on to some school-book, from which they are apparently learning their "lines."

And this is all. No-in splendid nonconformity to the established custom of physical sloth, one single game is being played in another field, composed, as I afterwards learned, of the members of one particular house. And it did my heart good to see them. How fortunate

are they, compared with the other hundreds of idle strollers and starved spectators! The keen wind serves but to brace them and harden them; to clear their brains and sweeten their tempers; to purify not merely their blood, but surely to help, in so far as we can be helped by such agencies, to purify also their hearts. Let any schoolmaster or parent contrast the condition that evening of the house into which these thirty boys shall have run, all aglow, and freshened and hardened by the wholesome exercise, defying, nay courting, wind and weather; and the condition of the other houses, into which, by driblets of twos and threes, there shall have sauntered the chilled and shivering groups that we have seen hanging about with their hands in their pockets.

And yet it is through no fault of the boys that this is so; that, other things being equal, the members of this one house will be likely to possess clearer heads, sweeter tempers, healthier blood, and purer hearts, and be more naturally inclined to do the thing that is right, than the members of the other houses.

It is not the fault of the boys: it is the fault of the masters.

It happened that a certain housemaster had come to see that it was his first duty to take care that his boys did, in so far as he could induce them to do so, conform in their lives to the known laws of health.

Hence all this difference. And dare any schoolmaster maintain that the difference must not be a great one,