duty not simply but relatively. I believe there will be found very few of those gifted with the necessary qualifications, who do not learn in this way to look upon diligence and obedience as inferior in abstract value to successfulness in daily or weekly contests with their equals. To go through his task alone,--merely for conscience sake,-and without regard to others engaged in similar tasks, is not at all what a school boy thinks expected of him. The obligation to industry on the grounds of bare single-minded obedience is seldom held up to his observance. Responsibility for the use of his time, and other talents may be perhaps now and then the theme of a perfunctory admonition in the fly-leaf of his father's letter, but it is not impressed on him as the one awful reason against idleness; it is not by his delegated ruler half so frequently or stringently applied to his daily conduct, as is the exhortation to aim at distinctions which he is taught to value more as ends than means. I from daring to assert that the moral and essential motives of good conduct are neglected by those to whom parents entrust their own authority,-how many would gainsay such an assertion with the jealous words of gratitude, and bear witness to the good they have felt in heart as well as in mind, from the occasional warnings of their instructors! But nevertheless, one may safely appeal to the recollections of home, and the lingering echoes of the catechism, from the ambiguous code of school ethics, by which even the most gifted of our "alumni" are for a time unconsciously enslaved. Far am Hardly with due reverence could I venture to treat of the Scriptural grounds of educational principles. It is enough for my purpose that neither party in a controversy about emulation, can claim direct warranty for their opinions from any unquestioned declaration of the Wise Teachers. It is enough to rely on what nearly every one will confess-that it is almost impossible to separate the idea of rivalry from that of envy-that even the most generous, and sober-minded find it difficult to compete for distinctions without over-estimating the joy and honour of reaching the first place—that the rebellious blood will often, in spite of forced magnanimity, run warmer in resentment of the slights and defeats to which the ambitious are liable. Can any one say that his feelings towards his school-fellow, or even his friend, are not altered for the worse, by competition with him? Is there any one, who, on a review of his Eton life, does not remember how often he fell into, or but narrowly escaped, the defilements of unkind and unlovely thoughts, about his antagonists, his superiors, and himself, very alien from that single-hearted dutifulness which wise men take as the lantern for their feet? And what if these thoughts are not subdued, before they find utterance? What if they are the sources of words and actions, when coming in collision with those of the rival, who is their object, or in unwholesome sympathy with those of a companion, who is not their object, only because he is not an equal in age or attainments? Does it not thus become a contagious disorder, of which the symptoms are estrangement, evil surmises, mean craftiness, bitter though paltry jealousies-all, it may be, veiled under the contortions of a precocious hypocrisy ? If we do not see or hear much of this outwardly, may we not be sure that it does exist from so frequently hearing the defeated take credit to themselves for bearing no grudges? Does it not work itself out in groundless complaints of the umpire's partiality-in countless petty forms of "the pride that apes humility?" or Surely, my honest reader, you must be bigotted to the popular veneration for prizes and "show-pennies,' you must be an unintentional traitor to your own memory, if you tell me that you have not seen humility defaced, friendly confidence impaired, the sense of shame misused, obedience dethroned from her rightful heart-rule, and the precept of preferring one another in honour, almost blotted out, by the manifold workings of this secular and usurping motive. You must have learnt how dangerous and unhealthy is a fitful thirst for applause-how unworthy of him that is striving to be essentially a man is that eagerness for display, which our popular incentives so frequently engender. But if you do deny all this, either wholly or in part, yet suffer me at least to vouch for my own experiences-and believe me that I have found this emulation of ours as a motive, insufficient and unstable; as a guide, purblind and wayward; as a staff to support me, untrustworthy; but as a rod to chasten me, most irritating and venomous. I do not go so far as to say that emulation is but a conventional term for envy, or that it is of necessity associated with corrupt feelings in all cases. But I do say that it is more fit for the elevation of depraved human nature into the Kaλoxȧyafía beyond which pagans could not aspire, than for the nurture of those, for whose cdification, our anointed and saintly Founder-our true lowly-hearted Plantagenet-reared this hallowed structure. Earnestly, and almost passionately do I say, that we are in our daily practice, relying too much on a weapon forged out of man's unregenerate propensities, instead of * "Schaupfennig," the German term for "medal," seems to me a happily Sarcastic word. being content with the armoury once stored up for us, wherein lie arms brighter than what Numa is fabled to have received from the sky. We have grown old in the territories of our heathen step-fathers-" anciliorum, et nominis, et togæ obliti." Duty-a word for which Greeks and Romans have no equivalent, is not with us so living in substance, or so familiar in sound, as it would be, if we were more habitually constrained to perseverance on the score of responsibility, and taught to compare ourselves, not so much with our school-fellows, as with our former selves, and with what ought to be our future selves, and above all, with that one object of imitation, which ought to absorb all earthly aspirations. Still do we persist in being on every possible occasion, competitors for praise; were it not wiser to seek, without having respect to the relative chances and advantages of those who are seeking the same? We are always hastily assuming the title of candidates for this and that; were it not worth while in this our novitiate, to be more emphatically candidates, as young probationers, clad in the white robes of patience, modesty, and docility? Let us suppose our fond hopes realized. By the time that every well-nurtured boy has within his reach the acquisition of such honorary presents as sweeten his toil by the assurance of his teacher's approbation, the privileges of the merely clever will have dwindled down, the vulgar temptations to judge of what is praiseworthy, only through the medium of odious companions, will have been lessened; and our showy distinctionism will be giving place to a more uniform and disinterested allegiance to duty. Things seem, if I may dare conjecture, to be tending this way. Our παιδαγωγοί * are year by year becoming more parental in their rule, and strengthening their influence into a more stringent and penetrative control. More frequently now than formerly, are prizes aimed at in mere submission to the wish of the authoritative adviser, by those, whose chief wish is not so much to show off their endowments, as to work upon a prescribed plan with chivalrous obedience. Competitors of this stamp are even now, I fear, as few as they are unobstrusive. May they in coming years increase and multiply, till duty displaces emulation, and honorary rewards become mere proofs of obedience, and stepping stones in our moral progress. Thus might the next generation of Etonians, even though poorer in such rare instances of brilliant scholarship, as we are wont to boast of, wear a more sober and uniform garb of academical diligence, and walk more steadfastly in the ancient ways marked out for them by their Royal and Christian Founder. FOR EVER. For Ever!-Pause we as we think on ever- Now the envenom'd sting which never Hope softens, Mercy soothes, or Time destroys. For ever! has no end, no mean, no birth— While agony unmixt its boon to hell. * Shame on us that our low notions of education have made " pedagogue" se contemptuous a term, that one must have resort to the Greek. |