could in those days have been made to accommodate anything like the number of boys they did in separate bedrooms. The only thing I remember at Stevens’ was a boy who was at that time in sixth form, high up in the boats, and in various ways a “great swell” in the eyes of all fourth-form boys and newcomers. We looked on him as a sort of god, not perhaps so great as the headmaster, or so much to be feared as “Stiggins,” who was then the bugbear of all small idle boys and other delinquents, but still as a being of quite a different station to our own. Some years afterwards when I was a subaltern in the Guards and probably thought as much of myself as the “great swel ” did at Eton, I went into some office on business and found the same man quill-driving at a desk. Though I hope he has made his fortune, I could not help pitying him at the time and thinking how are the mighty fallen.
Reminiscences of Eton from more able pens than mine have been so numerous that I must pass rapidly over the four years which I spent there. I cannot, however, omit some mention of the very curious system of education prevailing at the time, which, however theoretically wrong, has certainly produced extraordinary results, if success in after life be taken as a criterion of successful education. In the first place the masters, though nearly all gentlemen and, I suppose, all more or less scholars, were in some cases so lamentably deficient in the art of teaching and managing boys that they were clearly unfit for their work. I remember one most amiable gentleman who had absolutely no power whatever of keeping order, and whose division in consequence were so noisy and dis¬ orderly that, when sitting with three or four other classes in “ upper school, 5 ’ other masters used to send messages to him requesting him to keep such a degree of silence that they could hear their own classes. I recollect another to whom I was up for two halves who would regularly allow you to read the lesson which you were supposed to have learnt by heart from the book on his own desk, and when he saw you reading only moved it a little more on one side. In consequence I seldom or never learnt a “saying lesson” the whole time I was up to him, and very seldom got punished for not knowing it.
Then the punishments were ridiculous. Fifty lines of Virgil written out was a minor punishment, which might be increased up to five hundred, and when, as often happened, the number of lines accumulated to a point which became impossible without sacrificing all one’s playtime, they were wiped out by a complaint to the headmaster, usually ending in a “swish- ing.” This time-honoured punishment at that time was no disgrace and a plucky boy often preferred it to the lines. Only in cases where it was inflicted for conduct which in school estimation was blackguard was there any particular odium about being swished, though in such cases two birches were used and as many as twelve cuts were given. There was a notorious young scamp, though a Duke’s eldest son, at Eton then, who was complained of and swished for deliberately shooting with a catapult into the face of an old gentleman who happened to be passing along “the wall.” He is reported to have taken a large pin with him which he stuck into the legs of the Collegers who at that time performed the office of "holding down" with such effect that they let go of him. Dr. Goodford, however,
