CHAPTER IX.

It had never been intended by Mr. Hollis that his son should remain long at Harfield, and the accounts which that young gentleman gave of Dionysius Dickson, and which Dionysius Dickson gave of him, were not of a nature to extend his term of residence. At the age of twelve, Master Adolphus was removed to the public school of Winton. Everybody-who is anybody knows Winton by experience or report. Generals and Statesmen, designed for those elevated positions from their earliest youth, have been brought up at that seminary in numbers sufficient to fill ten Westminster Abbeys. Wintonians flood the peerage; they speak, and sleep, and vote in scores amongst the Commons; in the pulpits, in the law courts, popular or drones, notorious or briefless, Winton has countless scions. She is the nursery of the supporters of the gentlemanly interest; she teaches Latin verses and "the tone." The Latin verses are taught in a more mitigated manner at other places, but at Winton there is-or was when Master Hollis knew it-nothing but Latin verses

taught, save Greek ones. The tone (which costs 250l. a-year) cannot be procured at any other establishment in the kingdom. No Wintonian ever loses it. It is inoculated into his system, and protects him from the small-pox of vulgarity for the remainder of his days. Nobody can define the tone it is like the highest kind of suggestive and metaphysical poetry; and if you don't feel the effects of it, and appreciate at once its inestimable but inconvertible value, you are a radical and a snob. It is by no means the sort of thing which goes by the same name in the practice of medicine, and to revive which bark is taken; but, on the contrary, it is rather a used-up, sublime, phlegmatic, and patent-leathery tone. Its motto is "Cui bono?" and its arms a double opera-glass.

Nevertheless, Winton has good gifts. The British schoolboy is certainly less like a brute animal there than elsewhere. Public feeling, rarely just and good amongst boys, is there at least far from bad. We have known bullies at Winton forced to expiate their cruel acts by running the gauntlet through ranks of several hundreds of their schoolfellows, with very few to spare them. No young gentleman of fifteen and upwards is there entrusted with the power of thrashing his companions by reason of his being "in the sixth;" no monitorial system (art of keeping a school without a suffi

cient number of assistant masters) permits, at Winton, youth to stand over youth, with cane after cane, until the victim drops. No gentle reproof from the authorities, allowing the monitor had "exceeded his duty;" no general verdict from the boys of" served him right," would in such case have been awarded there; but expulsion, and "a college hiding" into the bargain, would await any such cruel prig. Withering epigrams would have been written upon such an offender in the Greek tongue, and perhaps delivered in Winton Hall by thin-legged scholars in knee-breeches and silk stockings; nay, he would be conveyed to a certain chamber (known to the writer), accompanied by a great troop of his companions, and there flogged before them all upon a wooden block, in the most indecent manner that can possibly be conceived.

"Floreat Wintona," say we; only we do wish, during The Times' controversy upon the great swishing" case at Winton, that the Illustrated London News, or other pictorial paper, had favoured the public with a woodcut of the actual proceedings in such cases, for we believe it would have been rather astonished by the same. The monitorial schools have the like punishment, it is true, but it is not inflicted publicly. "Nobody can imagine," writes an advocate of their system, "with what feelings of awe and shame our boys

regard the flogging-block, not only before, but after they have suffered upon it; they never even allude to it, if allusion can be avoided, among themselves." Yet, at the very seminary to which this writer alludes, a match at cricket was got up very recently between two elevens, of "flogged" and "unflogged" youths.

"It don't hurt," wrote Master Adolphus to his father, from Winton, "half so much as the cane did at Harfield; and as for the shame of a swishing, that, at all events, is nothing at all after the first time. The best fun of the thing is to see Gracechurch (the head master and the most delicate man in the world)—in the execution of this office, which he is known to loathe a great deal more than the victims. He holds the rod, as some one writes, 'as if it were a lily,' and spreads it out in its descent like a fan, as though to hide as much as possible of the usually concealed portion of the offender's person. It is easy enough to get off it once or twice, if you have had a brother or a father here before you. First fault, if you please, sir,' was my modest request to the Doctor, when I was told to stay,' for the second time.

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Nay, sir,' said he, 'I remember your name down in the list before.'

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My father, perhaps, sir,' suggested I, very respectfully.

"I will look in my book,' said the Doctor. 'But he never did it.'

To his mother, as usual, Master Adolphus was very communicative.

"I board at a male Dame's, or Dominie's, as you know, and have a large airy room to sleep in, besides a kind of watch-box, in which I am supposed to construct my Latin verses. I find this place, however, remarkably tight and warm, and prefer to receive Apollo in a room less like a shower-bath, and in a chair less similar to a baby's. A great monster, of the name of Harris, paid me a visit upon the first evening, and was obliging enough to remain several hours; he engaged himself during the greater part of that time in flipping my legs with the wetted end of a towel. He was a raw-boned, slouching person, with a voice like the combined efforts of a rookery, and with an intelligence below that of a magpie. He is not in the fifth form, and therefore has not any legal right to flip my legs; but he does it all the same, and he is such a liar, that when I catch him at my crockery cupboard bagging tea and sugar (which is, however, a permitted larceny at Winton)-he always protests that they are for Jones, the captain of the horse. I am Jones's seventh fag; he is fond of setting us all in a line, and running a wicket along our noses,