I could speak from personal experience of an interest in literature created entirely by the influence of a public school, and of enthusiasms first kindled and then fostered by the boys and masters with whom I came in contact. I could name many a boy in the school I now serve, apart from those who have reached the highest form (to whom even Mr. Benson could not ascribe a complete absence of intellectual interests), whose literary or scientific interests and enthusiasms have developed steadily and apparently unhindered during their school career; and I have watched such boys not losing their enthusiasms but imparting them to others, and leavening the general mass with their wholesome interests. Above all, I protest against the ascription to the public schools of the failings of the army. Army education' is fast bound by Government regulations, by a prescribed examination which leaves us no choice. The result is that, in the matter of education, boys preparing for the army are with us, but not of us.' That the public schools are most successful in preparing for that examination I know well; but I believe that the examination itself is a bad one, and that the want of ideas and interests ascribed to army men is due to that point in which the teaching it necessitates differs from the rest of our education. I refer to the limitation of a boy to certain stages in certain subjects, and the necessary refusal to pursue a branch of knowledge beyond a certain point, because it doesn't pay' in the examination. It is just this limitation which seems to many of us to mar the army training, and, I may add, to make it unrepresentative of public-school education.

But what the public, our employer, has a right to expect from public schoolmasters in reference to a question of this kind is not so much a denial of the charge as a statement of what actually are the intellectual influences at work in our schools. How far, and by what means, does our system lend itself to fostering such influences? The personality of the masters, which must necessarily be an important element in the matter, I prefer to pass over. I would only say that some even of us might claim to be 'live people, engaged in real and progressive work and full of enthusiasm for it a class which Sir Oliver Lodge thinks the boy is first likely to encounter in the University 'don.' But, putting aside the character of the teachers, the intellectual atmosphere of the school will depend largely on two elements on the boys, and on the curriculum.

What steps do we take to secure that the boys then selves shall be favourable to an atmosphere of intellectual ideas? I believe that more depends upon this than is always realised. A few boys with real enthusiasms for subjects other than athletics will speedily kindle interests and awaken enthusiasm in a House. It is just for this reason that we value so much our entrance scholarships, not primarily as providing us with boys who will do us credit afterwards, but as furnishing an intellectual leaven, as securing not infrequently intelli

gent boys from a different class, to whom the high fees of a school like that to which I belong would be otherwise prohibitive. Such boys fully repay what is given them in the majority of cases. In most public schools they are distributed among the different boardinghouses, and eventually supply the chief, though not of course the whole, of the sixth-form rulers of those houses. If, like Plato's republic, we claim 'dues of nurture' from those whom we so train, and make our philosophers kings, who shall blame us?

In this particular, I am aware, not all schools have the same system. I cannot help thinking that the difference between Mr. Benson's experience and mine in this question of the intellectual standard of our schools may be due in part to the different treatment of scholars to which we are accustomed. The Eton practice of reserving one house for the scholars, on whom other schools depend largely to leaven the whole lump, may have advantages of its own, but must certainly have the disadvantage of depriving the rest of the school of most valuable intellectual influences. In this respect, at any rate, we may claim that Eton and Winchester, if the most historic, are not the most representative, of our public schools. I believe the difference to be of fundamental importance.

But it is by diversity of intellectual interests as well as by a leaven of intelligence that ideas will be fostered. Most of our schools now are no longer confined to one groove. The scientific boy is housed with the classical, the historian and the mathematician live side by side, and the juxtaposition necessarily produces a certain rivalry of studies and interchange of ideas. In few, if any, of our public schools now is it possible for a boy to grow up thinking that his own groove is the only one. In this way, I am sure, any school which has not a modern side as well as a classical, and which does not also give opportunities for more definite specialisation in science and mathematics and history, loses a valuable intellectual asset.

This brings me to the subject of our curriculum, against which, so far as I understand him, Sir Oliver Lodge's main attack is really directed. He talks rather vaguely of a surfeit of book-knowledge and dead and fusty material,' and tells us that 'everything is so portentously dull' in our subjects, 'that degrees of unattractiveness seem unworthy of attention.' Without taking quite seriously a statement so sweeping and unjust as this, we may understand him to believe that most of what is taught in our schools has no interest of its own, and is calculated to chill rather than foster enthusiasm. It is the old cynical criticism, that our education consists in teaching boys subjects they hate by methods which make them hate them still more.' What truth, or rather what basis of truth, is there in this accusation?

I should like to say one word on this term ' interesting,' which is so commonly applied now as the test of teaching. It seems likely

that interest' is to be the fetish of the new schoolmaster, as 'accuracy' was of the old. Both are good things, but both are liable to be exalted at the expense of true education. Much work must be done in life to which the term 'interesting' can hardly be applied, and any education which exalts 'interest' at the expense of application is, to my mind, going on the wrong tack. To be 'stimulating,' I should say, rather than to be 'interesting,' is the true ideal for the teacher. Interest is undoubtedly one of the most stimulating elements, but it is not everything.

With this proviso, I do not for a moment deny that, if it be true that our subjects are completely lacking in interest, we are failing in our educational duty. But let it be remembered that there are various kinds of interest. There is the superficial pleasure of hearing new information, or seeing new experiments. That will always form part, though not a very large part, of our education. But there is the higher interest of grappling with new difficulties, of realising by practical experiment one's own mental growth. The exercise of the faculty of understanding is in itself pleasant, if once the boy can be got to realise it. Mr. Benson's bribe of easier work to follow, whereby he persuades an unwilling form to grapple with Greek conditional sentences, is a confession of weakness hardly to be expected from so good a teacher. There is no reason why a problem of language of this kind, involving as it does an insight into the working of our own minds, and not merely into Greek constructions, should not be as interesting, as it gradually becomes clearer to the intelligence, as any of the thousand and one puzzles with which a boy voluntarily employs himself. In such a case I do not believe it is the subject which is at fault.

To the growing mind, no subject need be dull in which the boy feels that he is 'getting on.' Ask a small boy what subject he likes best, and ten to one he will name the one in which he finds that he can make most progress. To the weak linguist, science or mathematics or history or English literature lessons will be the most interesting. To another boy who lacks (as so many boys do up to quite a late period in their development) the power of grasping the meaning of English literature or history or Scripture, the Latin prose or Greek translation will give the most satisfaction, because it is in this that he feels he can get most grip.' Stagnation is always dull; but no subject is dull to the specialist in it.

We at the public schools are, I think, realising this more and more. We are beginning to make provision to allow boys who have a special bent in any direction to concentrate upon it, to the partial (but not complete) exclusion of others. The historian, the scientist, the mathematician, is provided for in this way as well as the classic. I hope that we may soon see the purely literary, as opposed to the linguistic, faculty similarly recognised, and that boys to whom the

higher and more accurate side of scholarship is unattainable may yet be admitted to a wide reading of the classics, even at the expense of some of that grammatical accuracy which is so valuable to the real scholar and so great a stumbling-block to his weaker, though perhaps hardly less appreciative, brother. I admit that tradition and Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations stand in the way ; yet I have reason to believe that a change on these lines would be welcomed by many of the leading teachers of our public schools.

If I may return, in conclusion, to Mr. Benson's book, I would suggest that he seems to feel himself more tied and bound than many of us do by the limitations of system. English literature is not to be taught as a subject because its treatment by commentators is as a rule so profoundly unintelligent.' If so, why use commentators? No English literature lesson need be dependent on special editions, if the teacher chooses to shake himself free. That the individuality of the teacher need not be cramped by routine may be realised by anyone who passes from Mr. Benson's book to read the recently published Life of Edward Bowen of Harrow. We cannot all have his originality or his freedom of action; but some measure of both is welcomed and allowed, I doubt not, by every wise headmaster to his colleagues. Not in a complete upheaval of our old system, but in the broadening and adaptation or it, lies to my mind the hope of the future. We have in our public schools and in the classics two much criticised, but long-valued, bases of education. In both, I believe, there is life and vigour yet, if we will but use them to the full. 'Spartam nacti sumus: hanc exornemus.'

FRANK FLETCHER.

IS SOCIETY WORSE THAN IT WAS?

WHEN Queen Victoria began to reign, her youth and innocence had such an effect on Society that people, conscious of their imperfections, began to amend their former ways. Respectability became the fashion, and those whose conduct had not been irreproachable were ashamed, and, outwardly at least, conformed to all rules of propriety.

This, however, lasted only for the lifetime of one generation, and then, as Society grew larger, people became more and more worldly, and less and less careful to maintain a high standard until now, when though perhaps not sufficiently ashamed of it they are not altogether pleased with the state of affairs.

If the question be asked, 'Is Society now better than it was a hundred years ago?' the frequent answer hastily and cheerfully given is, 'Yes, undoubtedly, for people are more sober, more refined, and no longer swear.'

This is true to a certain extent, but when we consider how much more educated, refined, and sober the whole nation has become, and what vast strides have been made in science and all kinds of knowledge, then in comparison Society seems to have made little, if any, progress. There may be now as many wise, charming, and brilliantly clever people as there were then, but they have not increased in number, though Society has.

Society has its rules, and claims as heretofore to be an example in good manners and honourable behaviour. Any person openly convicted of cheating, or of breaking the marriage laws, is expelled. A few who manage to conceal their misdoings and appear outwardly respectable are welcome to remain.

There are others, really noble and good, who, though in the world, are not of the world, whose homes are an example of all that is best in the British nation, and whose good influence would be felt if Society had not grown so large that it can no longer be controlled by one set. There are now many circles within it, each containing people who consider themselves leaders of their own surroundings,. some of whom are so far from being patterns of good behaviour that it