"if they are detected in falsehood, if they slip from the yoke, if they murmur against it, or complain in ever so little a degree, let them be most severely whipt, and spare neither the scourge, nor mitigate the punishment, till the proud heart shall be subdued, and they shall have become smoother than oil, and softer than a pumpkin.”

And of Mulcaster, the famous head-master of Merchant Taylors', it is written that "in a morning he would exactly and plainly construe and parse the lesson to his scholars, which done, he slept his hour (custom made him critical to proportion it) in his desk in the school; but woe be to the scholar that slept the while. Awaking, he heard them accurately; and Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him just as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending children." And this at a time when some of the school statutes decreed that boys were not to be admitted below four years of age!

Though founded by the boy-king, Edward VI., whose traditional character is one of gentleness, Christ Hospital seemed to exceed most schools in the severity it meted out to any scholars detected

in the attempt to run away. For a first offence the culprit was put "into fetters," for the second he was confined in one of the dungeons, where, as Charles Lamb says, "a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and a blanket-a mattress, I think, was afterwards substituted-with a peep of light, let in askance, from a prison orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight of any one but the porter, who brought him his bread and water-who might not speak to him; or of the beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to receive his periodical chastisement, which was almost welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval from solitude; and here he was shut up by himself of nights, out of the reach of any sound, to suffer whatever horrors the weak nerves and superstition, incident to his time of life, might subject him to."

More like the present-day school-boy than this sad captive is the Wykehamist, to whom Queen Elizabeth on her visit to Winchester addressed the inquiry whether he had ever endured the famous Winton birch, and who answered at once, "Infandum Regina, jubes renovare dolorem."

But this is the dark side of the picture: and

cheerful enough is the account of the Eton Collegers being called at five in the morning by one of the præpostors of the chamber, crying out Surgite in a loud voice; and the boys while dressing themselves, and making their beds, repeating a prayer in alternate verses. "Each boy swept that part of the dormitory about his bed, and the præpostor chose four boys to collect the dirt into a heap and remove it. The whole of the boys. then went in a row to wash, and afterwards repaired to school. . . . One præpostor's special duty was to examine the scholars' hands and faces, and report any who came unwashed."

Westminster and St. Paul's were well-established schools at this time, and Stowe tells how "under a wide-spreading tree in the churchyard of St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, the scholars of St. Peter's annually enter the lists of grammar, chivalrously asserting the intellectual supremacy of Westminster against all comers."

And Dean Colet's Statutes for St. Paul's are a delightful collection of wise previsions for bringing up boys. "There shall be taught in the Scole," says his Statute concerning "The Children," "Children of all Nations and Contres indifferently, to the number of One Hundred and Fiftythree, according to the number of the Seates in

the Scole.

The Maister shall admit these Children as they be offirid from tyme to tyme; but first se that they canne saye the Catechyzon, and also that he can rede and write competently, else let him not be admitted in no wise."

"A Childe at the first admission, once for ever, shall paye 4d. for wrytinge of his name; this money of the admissions shal the poor Scholer have that swepeth the Schole and keepeth the seats cleane."

"In every Forme one principall childe shal be placid in the chayre, President of that Forme."

"The children shall come into the Schole in the Mornynge at Seven of the clocke, both Winter and Somer, and tarye there untyll Eleven, and returne againe at One of the clocke, and departe at Five."

These hours, with prayers three times a day, which the Statutes enjoin, seem somewhat lengthy to our ideas, especially as the Dean goes on to say, "I will they bring no meate nor drinke, nor bottel, nor use in the Scole no breakfasts, nor drinkings, in the time of learninge in no wise."

"In the Scole," he says, "in no tyme of the yere, they shall use talough candell in no wise, but allonly wax candell, at the costes of their frendes."

In a work on education, published in 1612, the routine of grammar-school life is described as follows:

Work to begin at six, and an hour to be spent then in Latin exercises, and preparation of classwork to be carried on until nine o'clock. One quarter of an hour is here allowed for recreation, and we should hope for breakfast, and then school again until eleven, when there is an interval of two hours. Work goes on again during most of the afternoon, and ends at halfpast five, when the Master reads part of a chapter from the Bible, two staves of a Psalm and some prayers, after which this somewhat laborious schoolday comes to an end.

In the Statutes of Durham it is decreed that "if any one is found dull and without a taste for literature, the Dean should remove him, lest, like a drone, he devour the honey of the bees;" and there is the same provision made in many instances, which seems highly desirable, as the hours were devoted so exclusively to gathering the honey of learning that the drones devoid of intellectual tastes must have been equally troublesome to themselves and the "Maister."

There must have been sports among the boys, and regular times for recreation; in the Harrow

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