large schools are the worst possible places in which to train boys to virtue and good manners.

This deduction, however, is very far from the truth. The direct influence of the private tutor is, I believe, less, and the indirect influence of the masters of a school more, than Locke and those who side with him imagine. Indeed, the influence of

a really great head-master over the whole school is immense, as was proved by Dr. Arnold. Then, again, the system and the traditions of a great school are very powerful, and almost compel a boy to aim at the established standard of excellence, whereas the boy at home has no such standard before him, and the boy at the small school may possibly have one which is worse than none at all.* As far as our character

* At nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are beginning to develop themselves; or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are there forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate into conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the benefits which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of that guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually. But the small private schools of which I had opportunities for gathering some brief experience-schools containing from thirty to forty boys were models of ignoble manners, as regarded part of the juniors, and of favouritism as regarded the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice so broadly exemplified as in an English public school on the old Edward VI. or Elizabeth foundation. There is not in the universe such an Areopagus of fair play and abhorrence of all crooked ways as an English mob, or one of the time-honoured English "foundation" schools.' (De Quincey's Autobiographic Sketches, Works, i. 150.) Of late years, the age at which boys are mostly sent to the great public schools has advanced from ten or eleven to thirteen or fourteen. I think this a gain, where boys can be kept at home, but very much the reverse when they are sent as boarders to private schools. What we stand urgently in need of is good day schools for the younger boys of all classes.

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depends on others, it is formed mainly by our companions at every age. Men have not enough in common with boys to be their companions, even when they are never out of their company. The character of boys must, therefore, be formed chiefly by boys, and where they associate together in large numbers and are allowed as much freedom as is consistent with discipline, the healthy feeling of 'open-airiness,'* the common sense of most, and the love of right which is found ultimately both in boys and men, prove most powerful in checking flagrant wrongdoing and forming a type of character which has many good points in it.

But whichever side may seem to have the best of the argument, our public schools may fairly meet their assailants by an appeal to results. We know, indeed, that parents, as a rule, are too careless about the learning their boys acquire at Eton and Harrow, and that many leave these schools with little Latin, less Greek, and no book knowledge besides; but parents are not yet indifferent about the morals and manners of their children, and if it were found that the generality of public school-men were less virtuous and less gentlemanly than the generality of those who had been educated elsewhere, our public schools could hardly enjoy their present popularity.

Locke had himself acquired great influence over his pupil, a delicate youth, who, under Locke's care, became a strong man. By this the philosopher was

* I borrow the phrase from Miss Davies, who, in her excellent little book on 'The Higher Education of Women,' advocates the starting of schools for girls on the model of our public schools.

led to exaggerate the effects of formal education so much, that he ascribes to it nine parts out of ten in every man. I believe this estimate to be quite erroneous. Nature seems to have placed a fairly healthy state, both of body and mind, as it were in stable equilibrium. There are certain things necessary for the existence of the body-food, air, exercise. But when a sufficient amount of these is once secured, the quantity and quality may vary considerably, without making any important difference. Moreover, the healthy body has, to some extent, the power of resisting noxious influences. If we were as liable to injuries as anxious mothers suppose, we should have to give almost all our time and attention to the care of our health, and even then could hardly hope to preserve it. The same, probably, is true of the mind, though not to so great a degree.

These facts are fully recognised by the majority of mankind, who look to them for a justification of laissez faire. But writers on education, on dietetics, and the like, in their great zeal against laissez faire, generally run into the opposite extreme, and talk as if narrow indeed were the way that leads to health, and as if only the few who implicitly followed their directions could ever find it.

If I agreed with Locke, that nine parts out of ten in the pupil were due to the master, I should also agree that the master of a school could not bestow proper attention on all the boys.

As Locke had studied medicine, and had been prevented from undertaking the cure of other peoples' maladies only by his own, he naturally attached great

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importance to physical education, and begins his work with it. He was a champion of the hardening system, which has, no doubt, as Mr. H. Spencer puts it, hardened many children out of the world. Scanty clothing, thin boots with holes to admit wet, hard fare, and irregular meals, are now condemned by all our best authorities. In other particulars, where he seems more happy, Locke's suggestions have become established customs. We have got to believe in the use of cold water, though we should not think to appease the fears of mothers by quoting the example of Seneca. But there are two or three points in Locke's very practical directions which are still worth special attention. He urges that all clothes should be loose, and speaks as emphatically as every doctor has spoken since against the madness of 'strait lacing.' He rejoices that mothers cannot attempt any improvements in their children's shapes before birth; otherwise, says he, we should have no perfect children born. Do we not seem to hear the voice of Rousseau ?

Another point on which he is very emphatic is, that action of the bowels should be secured daily at the same hour by the force of habit.

The following quotation would have been thought folly only a few years ago. Now, it has a chance of a fair hearing. Have a great care of tampering that way [i.e. with apothecaries' medicines], lest, instead of preventing, you draw on diseases. Nor even upon every little indisposition is physic to be given, or the physician called to children, especially if he be a busy man that will presently fill their

windows with gallipots and their stomachs with drugs. It is safer to leave them wholly to Nature than to put them into the hands of one forward to tamper, or that thinks children are to be cured in ordinary distempers by anything but diet, or by a method very little distant from it; it seeming suitable both to my reason and experience, that the tender constitutions of children should have as little done to them as possible, and as the absolute necessity of the case requires.' Among many practical suggestions which he gives in this part of the book, the following shows that his hardening discipline did not proceed from want of sympathy with the little ones. Let children be very carefully aroused in the morning with the voice only, and let them have nothing but kind treatment before they are wide awake.'*

6

Locke's own summing up of his recommendations concerning the body and health is-Plenty of open air, exercise, and sleep, plain diet, no wine or strong drink, and very little or no physic; not too warm and strait clothes, especially the head and feet kept cold, and the feet often used to cold water, and exposed to wet.'

'As the strength of the body lies chiefly in being able to endure hardships, so also does that of the mind, and the great principle and foundation of all virtue and worth is placed in this-that a man is able to deny himself his own desires, cross his own inclinations, and purely follow what reason directs as best, though the appetite leans the other way.'

* Locke is, however, only copying from Montaigne, who tells us that, in his childhood, his father had him awakened by music.