who chooses to go to the univer- parent results. On one occasion, I resities receives, on passing a moderate member the sixth form were dancing to examination at the age of eighteen, a chorus of Dante instead of construing he thought an exhibition of £80 per annum to a play of Sophocles, as There was a præpostor of one form who, any college, for four years: or an outfit of £100 is given him, if he being a little mite, but a clever scholar, was put by Dr. Russell at the head of goes into the army or navy, or his class, but he said it was torture to otherwise requires such help. Behim above everything: he felt all the sides the foundation scholars, there responsibilities of his place. Dr. Russell have usually of late been between would call out, Fifth form, where is your forty and fifty boarders, and about præpostor?' 'Please, sir, here he is!' the same number of day-boys. But at and they would hold him up by the neck. one time, in consequence of what You cannot wonder if after that the seems to have been a sudden and school fell."-Evidence, 544-546. temporary popularity, the numbers rose in a remarkable manner; in the year 1825 there were as many as 480. The cause of this sudden rise and collapse is explained in the very amusing and characteristic evidence of the present Dean of Peterborough an old Carthusian, and late head-master of the school. "I was a boy in the school, in 1818, at the height of its prosperity; Dr. Russell, had just introduced the Bell system. The Bell system was turning a public school into a national school, making the boys teach each other, and govern each other. It had a wonderful effect at first; it captivated people most immensely. We were drawn up before the governors, examiners, and visitors to question each other; we were drilled to handle particular sets of questions, which were to be answered before the examiners, Dr. Mant and Dr. Doyley, who were, to boys' ideas a little soft. I was præpostor myself at one time, and I had been trained to ask these questions, as well as to give these answers, and these gentlemen went away wonderstruck. Our parents were taken in; they saw what appeared to them the results of this wonderful teaching, and said nothing could be equal to it; but when the sons became old enough themselves to go to the university, and to judge of it, then down fell the school. Each separate form had a cocky little boy who was put at the head of the class, and who taught the rest of the boys. Dr. Russell reigned Jupiter Tonans over the whole of the school, working himself brilliantly and indefatigably. He thought the work of the school was going on beautifully, but he was certainly taken in by ap In the next ten years the numbers had sunk to ninety-nine. The larger numbers were more than the school or the boarding-houses could fairly accommodate, and some of the bedrooms were "crowded fearfully." The governors interfered, but I do not think Dr. Russell cared very much. There is a memorandum in Dr. Russell's order that their former order limiting the hand, The governors were pleased to number of boys should be attended to.”” And after relieving his conscience by this entry, the indefatigable Doctor went on crowding his rooms as before, and petting his little præpostors. One feature in his system was the attempt to do away with corporal punishment; which was 66 a great shock," says the Dean of Peterborough, to the feelings of the school. He tried to substitute a system of pecuniary fines, which the school voted "most ungentie manly." In fact, there was a regular popular rebellion, whose object was "the abolition of fines and the restoration of flogging." The Doctor gave way; and "I think," continues the Dean, we had our hearts' content." "The day after abolishing fines, when we all walked into school together, we found a perfect forest of birchi rods, and I should think that the whole school time of two hours was expended in the use and application of them." This popular "right of birch," is maintained in all its integrity at Charter-House to this day, and is enjoyed about twice or three times a week,-rather a high average in these days, as proportioned to the speaking; the Company even deny. number of boys. The Commis- any legal obligation to maintain sioners consider this somewhat too the school at all; "they consider great an indulgence, especially as it that no one could challenge their follows upon ordinary school faults, act if they were to abolish it altoif a boy's name is found in the gether." It is, in point of fact, "black book" three times in one a private school, though it has week. usually ranked amongst the public The recommendation of the Re- ones. "If we choose to expend port is, that Charter-House, as being £2000 a-year on it," says the Master chiefly a boarding-school, should be of the Company in his evidence, removed into the country, its foun- "well and good; but if we choose dation scholarships being thrown to put that money into our own open, as in other cases, to general pockets, we may do so." Expendcompetition. Archdeacon Hale, ing, however, as they do, something the Master" (not schoolmaster) more than this sum annually in of the Hospital, would strongly salaries to masters and the general object to both. He argues, with maintenance of the school, they are some truth, against this perpetual enabled to reduce the total schoolcompetition, that "there is no charges to each boy as low as £10 reason whatever to believe that the per annum. This does not include founder proposed to educate only board, with which, in fact, the clever children:" certainly, if all school arrangements have nothing these old benefactions are to be to do: as in the case of St. Paul's, thus disposed of, it is time that the boys either board at home or some modern benefactor should wherever their parents choose to arise to found an hospital, like old place them. Some of the masters Sutton's, for the stupid ones. ones. take boarders (which is not the Opening" foundations may, in a case at St. Paul's); but this is encertain sense, be merely limiting tirely a matter of private arrangethem to boys who have already the ment. The education given is so advantage over their fellows of good, and the terms so low, that natural genius, or opportunities of the nominations, which are given superior early instruction. If the by the "Master, Wardens, and electors who have these valuable Assistants" of the Company in prizes in their gift would only rotation, are pretty eagerly sought regard them conscientiously as pub- after by professional men and the lic trusts; if gentlemen who are higher class of tradesinen. Properfectly able to give their sons an bably the great attraction, in many independent education would ab- cases, lies in the liberal endowments stain from shameless solicitation for which the school has received in what is, after all, a charity,-a the way of scholarships and exhibilarger reform would be effected tions. Though the Oxford Comthan all these competitive examina- missioners, and the Privy Council tions will ever effect. After all, it together, have made sad havoc is a hard case that a hard-working with Sir Thomas White's, magnificlergyman or professional man, cent foundation at St. John'swith half-a-dozen children, or a which formerly made Merchant widow thrown upon her own resources with a young family, should be excluded from these educational aids because their boys do not happen to be geniuses. Taylors' the richest school in England-there still remains to it a very considerable share of university good things. It has no longer its thirty-seven fellowships, virIt remains to say a few words on tually entered upon immediately the excellent school maintained by on leaving school, and tenable for the Merchant Taylors' Company. life, which it enjoyed up to 1862; It has no foundation, strictly these have shrunk, under the Privy ship which in 1811 he obtained, we are not prepared to say; but he was certainly not indebted for that advancement to the honours carried off in the schools; and the English prize essay, creditable to the College as it was, would not have turned the scale in his favour had it stood alone. Whately was by nature a hard worker. He could never "rest and be thankful" himself, nor allow any body else to rest out of whom he conceived that work ought to be got. He was, likewise, a great reformer of abuses, real and imaginary. This is conspicuously shown in the declension which his opinions underwent, from what are generally regarded as High Church dogmata to their opposites. He had no belief latterly in tradition, and very little in the doctrine of an apostolical succession, both of which had originally found favour with him. On the other hand, his faith in the great principles of Christianity never wavered. How ever oddly he might at times enunciate that faith, however eccentric he might be in his manner of discharging the functions of his office, Whately, from boyhood to the hour of death, remained firm in his acceptance of the fundamental principles of Christianity. For example, he looked to a life beyond the grave, solely on the grounds laid down for that inheritance in the New Testament. Unlike Lord Brougham and other philosophers whom he admired, Whately scouted the idea of the natural immortality of the soul. All the inferences which these draw from the phenomena of dreams, and the exercise of memory and imagination, went with him for nothing. He was as much convinced as they that the vital principle in man, and indeed in all animals, is immaterial: but he found, neither in that conviction nor in the speculations of Aristotle or Plato, the slightest reason for coming to the conclusion that the soul of man must necessarily be immortal. On the contrary, he filled several pages of his common-place book with observations which show that, in his opinion, not one of the heathen philosophers entertained or had the faintest reason for entertaining decided views on that subject; and that Aristotle in particular, to whom Lord Brougham refers as accepting a future state of reward and punishment, distinctly rejects the notion. We recommend our readers to look into this interesting little essay, which they will find in the volume entitled Miscellaneous Remains,' which the piety of Dr. Whately's gifted daughter has induced her to publish. It will amply repay the light labour of a perusal. Besides busying himself in the correction of College and University abuses, and indulging his natural taste for literary and philosophical composition, Whately threw himself into the work of tuition, both public and private. Besides teaching a class as one of the recognised tutors of Oriel, he read at by-hours with a select few of the more aspiring undergraduates, and helped them in the race after honours. It is characteristic of the man that he persevered in this course, not only in spite of a constitutional dislike to the occupation, but in some sort because the occupation was distasteful to him. 1 "It is curious to consider," he wrote tuition such a poison to me as it seems in 1818, "what it is that makes public The thing that most to be. . fatigues the mind seems to be that which is felt as a task; I mean that the latter circumstance is the cause of the former, not vice versa. So, at least, it is with me, who often do the same thing with pleasure when voluntary, which fags me when I am compelled to it. This, however, is the case both with private and public tuition; but the latter seems to derive its greatly superior effect from the anxiety. Every man requires to be separately watched, and requires, in some degree, a different treatment; and hardly ever will the whole of a class be going on well. So as compared with private tuition, it is like balancing ten things at once. Besides this, there is a personal interest in each additional private pupil which, if he goes on well, is a vast lightening of labour, and which is felt in but a very weak and watery manner towards each of so many public pupils. I work from a sense of duty; but my affections cannot be engaged by a body corporate." If Whately took a personal interest in each of his private pupils, a large majority of those who profited by his instructions and scholarship repaid the feeling fourfold. To the case of one of these gentlemen, recently taken away from among us, we may be permitted to allude. ters could confer. Senior and Whately became fast friends at once; and to Senior more, perhaps, than to Earl Grey himself, Whately was, in point of fact, indebted for his advancement to the see of Dublin. For Senior, a man of great talent-which a very silly manner and a vast amount of vanity could not mar-made himself useful to the Whigs in various ways, and was especially consulted by them in the preparation of their new Poor Law. It happened that, during an interview with Earl Grey, the latter The late Mr. Nassau Senior, going spoke of the death of Archbishop in for his bachelor's degree, was Magee, and of the difficulty which plucked. He failed, if we recollect he experienced in finding a succesright, in divinity-to break down in sor for that prelate from among a which, as it formed the first subject body so tinctured as the more emion which the aspirant was then nent of the clergy then were with examined, rendered fruitless any Toryism. "You need not go far amount of general learning; and for a man who will fill the see with insured immediate rejection. No- credit to you and honour to himwise distrustful of himself, Mr. Senior determined to try again at the next examination; and, in the meanwhile, looked out for a private tutor with whom to read. He called upon Whately, and expressed a wish to be received by him as a pupil. Whately, never very tender of the feelings of others, though as little delighting in the pain which he inflicted, as man could well be, scarcely took the trouble to look his visitor in the face, but answered, "You were plucked, I believe. I never receive pupils unless I see reason to assume that they mean to aspire at honours." I mean to aspire at honours," replied Senior. "You do, do you?" was the answer. "May I ask what class you intend to take?" “A first class," said Senior, coolly. Whately's brow relaxed. He seemed tickled with the idea that a lad who had been plucked in November, should propose to get into the first clsss in March; and he at once desired Senior to come to be coached. Never were tutor and pupil better matched. Senior read hard -went up, as he had proposed to do, into the schools in March- and came out of them with the highest honours which the examining mas self," said Senior. Then followed an account of Whately-of his scholarship, his reforming propensities, his acquaintance with the principles of political economy, and his Liberalism. Lord Grey listened attentively, inquired farther about Whately, and finally, in a manner most gratifying to the subject of this sketch, offered him the archbishopric. But we must not anticipate the incidents of our story. Whately pursued the tenor of his eccentric way as fellow and tutor of Oriel from 1812 till the summer of 1822. He contracted during that interval, various intimacies, some of which carried within them, from the first, the seeds of early dissolution; while others, founded on general similarity of tastes and views, promised to be, though all were not, enduring. Dr. Newman, for example, a very young man when Whately and he first became acquainted, acknowledged the influence of a nature harder than his own, yet bore the yoke impatiently. Arnold and Blanco White, on the other hand (the latter a Spanish exile for conscience' sake, who fixed his residence in Oxford, and was much sought after by the diversity of opinion on that point never interfered with the friendship between the two men, probably because both of them considered that no great principle was at issue; -that the question was one of speculative opinion, and nothing more. It more intellectual of the resident members of the University), took to him with all their hearts. Arnold continued on terms of the closest intimacy with Whately till his own death. It was not so with Blanco White. That unfortunate man, after going through every phase of religious belief, from the highest An- Besides Newman, Arnold, Keble, glicanism down to the depth of Pusey, and Blanco White (the latter Unitarianism, took refuge from fur- an outsider), Whately numbered ther doubt in total infidelity; and among his contemporaries and acthen, though not without a pang, quaintances at Oxford, Davison, Whately threw him off. What a Froude, R. Wilberforce, Spencer, story is his! How distressing to Hawkins, Lloyd, and Hamden. read, yet how full of warning and cannot be said, however, that, with instruction, especially to the young! the exceptions above enumerated, With Keble, Pusey, and others of he looked much into that gifted. their way of thinking, on the other circle for the companions of his hand, Whately was all along in a state lighter hours. Already that taste of restrained antagonism. He went began to develop itself which bewith them so far as to assert the came a master-passion in later life. natural independence of the Church He delighted in being looked up to, upon the State, arguing only for the and infinitely preferred to the sobeneficial effect to both of a union ciety of giants in intellect that of on fair terms. But the doctrine of persons who were willing to make apostolical succession, with its his views their own. Let us not, necessary inference, that there however, be unjust to such men is a marked difference between as Hinds, late Bishop of Norwich, Churches, one of which is Episco- Dr. Fitzgerald, afterwards Bishop pally governed, while the other of Cork, Dr. Dickinson, Bishop of acknowledges no special Episcopal order among the clergy, be received at first with considerable misgiving, and by-and-by with derision. This and his contempt for the doctrine of tradition, a feeling which he never concealed, placed between him and the founders of the Tractarian school an impassable gulf. It was not so in the case of Arnold. Arnold, as we need scarcely stop to explain, held and Whately removed to a vicarage taught that the Church both is, and in Suffolk in 1822, and shortly ought to be, the creature of the afterwards took to himself a wife. State; that the clergy, whether A family came fast to add to his bishops or presbyters, take their cares, and to stimulate his industry. proper place in society only when It was untiring. He did little for they feel themselves to be as his parish, it is true. His training much servants of the civil power as a college don-liberal don as he as magistrates or constables; and was disqualified him from dealing that the idea of receiving, from the usefully with a peasant population. imposition of hands any special But he studied hard and wrote character of sanctity, is the merest much, on a great variety of subsuperstition. Now, no one could jects. In 1822, the first year of reject this notion more decidedly in his incumbency, he preached the his own way than Whately. Yet Bampton Lectures, selecting for his Meath, and Dr. West. They were indeed Whately's satellites, and owed to him the preferments to which they attained. But looking to the circle in which they moved, and the principles which they professed, their worst enemy, if they have one, will not deny to them the posession of great good sense, and at least a fair measure of literary and practical ability. |