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in the history either of the place itself or of the country are connected with the name of Eton. It is on the whole natural that it should be so. Schools are less in the high road and trade of thought than Universities, and their politics have a more local colour. Neither at Eton nor at Winchester is much English history to be learnt. Indeed, if we may judge from the 'Consuetudinarium' of 1560, the school seems to have gone through the fiery trial of Mary's reign without much scorching. The names which strike our attention as connected with the school are those of Richard Cox, Head Master from 1528 to 1554, formerly tutor to Edward VI. and afterwards a strong Protestant in dangerous times; who, if he scandalized Christ Church by bringing Mrs. Cox to reside at the Deanery, and has a bad name both as a pluralist and a reckless destroyer of Oxford libraries, deserves also recognition as having been one of the memorable commission who met at Windsor in January 1548, with Archbishop Cranmer in the chair, the result of whose labours was the Book of Common Prayer. His subsequent history, the disputes at Frankfort between him and the Calvinists, Drs. Knox and Fox, his return to England and promotion to Ely, where he is said to have wasted the woods' of his see; his second marriage, and the great Queen's famous threat to 'unfrock' him, may all be read in Fuller and Wood. Cox was succeeded by Udall, a man of indisferent character, chiefly noted as being a great beater'; Malim, who shares a like reputation for severity; Sir Thomas Smith, Provost and Secretary of State, of whom Mr. Lyte omits to tell us that he was Professor of Greek at Cambridge; Cole, his successor in the Provostship, who preached an uncharitable sermon at the burning of Cranmer; Savile, the editor of the 'Eton Chrysostom,' 'the worthy English Knight who set forth the golden-mouthed Father in a silver print," spending his fortune upon the costly enterprise, but doing honour to his place and College. The printing press stood in that range of buildings which was occupied by Dr. Hawtrey, and has been the dwelling-house of successive Head Masters since his time. Here we may imagine the tall figure of Savile, in his grave scholarly attire with doublet and ruff, as we see him in the portrait which hangs in the Provost's Lodge, talking to the printers and consulting with Casaubon, Montague, and the ' ever memorable' John Hales, the last two of whom were made Fellows of the College by Savile's own influence. Savile stands high among those who desired to make Eton not

* Fuller, quoted, p. 186.

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only a school for the young but a seat of learning. The library owes many of its treasures to his care and to the sums which he persuaded the Fellows to expend on books during his Provostship; an example which we venture to recommend to the present trustees of the College revenues. Montague and Hales were Fellows of the same College and reputed followers of the same party, yet no men had less in common. Montague did his best to set Church and Parliament on fire by his injudicious book, 'Appello Cæsarem.' Hales's object all his life was 'to seek peace and ensue it'; the one had a stormy and shortlived reputation as a controversialist, and the other's memory lives greenly wherever religion and philosophy are honoured as kindred powers.

Hales would not be buried within the walls of the Church, 'for,' said he, 'as in my life I have done the Church no service, so will I not that in my death the Church do me any honour,' or, in his own words to his friend Anthony Farindon, because I was neither the founder of it, nor have I been the benefactor to it ;' and his simple tomb in the graveyard under the Chapel with its beautiful inscription (not given by Mr. Lyte) is as much neglected as he would himself have wished it to be. If his friend Wotton is commemorated by the sentence 'disputandi pruritus fit ecclesiarum scabies' engraved on his tombstone in Eton Chapel, Hales may be remembered by his answer to Laud's offer of such preferment as he desired, 'May it please your Grace, I have what I desire.'

The College, like other institutions, had to conform to the Puritan model. The Provost put in by the Parliament in 1644 after the death of Sir Henry Wotton (who is so well known that he needs no commemoration here) was Sir Francis Rous, M.P. for Truro and Speaker of the Little Parliament, one of Montague's critics in 1625, and he held the office till his death in 1659. We are glad to think that he did not molest John Hales, who held his Fellowship till the King's death; after which date the new Government required an engagement' from all beneficed persons, to the terms of which Hales could not agree, and so was deprived. Rous was a benefactor to the College and founder of some exhibitions at Pembroke College, Oxford. He is also commonly credited with the planting of the elms in the Playing Fields. His portrait in his robes as Speaker hangs in the Lodge, and he is not forgotten at Eton; 'a place' (as he said) which hath my dear affections and prayers that it may be a flourishing nursery of piety and learning to the end of the world.'

The Restoration brought with it among other changes an important

important addition to the School buildings. The Upper School, closing the great quadrangle or school yard, was built entirely at his own expense, nobile sibi monumentum, by Provost Allestree. The present structure is not that erected in 1670, but was built twenty years later in consequence, we are told, of the weak construction of Allestree's building. The details of the two buildings resemble each other so closely that we may be certain that most of the old material was worked up in the new building. From this date till 1863, when the New Schools' were built, the Upper School remained the focus of Eton lifethe room in which Chatham, Fox, the Cannings, Wellesleys, and other eminent Etonians, learned to hold their own, cut their famous names on the panels, and scamped or learned their lessons amidst unceasing clamour, tempered only by the louder voices of clamosi magistri, and the perambulations of the Sixth Form Præpostor with his heavy key. There Barnard, Davies, Goodall, and Keate, taught or seemed to teach classes of 150 boys. There year after year the tradition of declamation has been kept up by the ancient custom of Speeches,' whether before the world on the Fourth of June and Election Saturday, or in the presence of a smaller but not less formidable circle of schoolfellows. Publicity was then the rule of school life; boys did their lessons in a crowd, ate, slept, and played in a crowd; the only privacy was to be found in the Dames' houses, and in the squalid rooms which Collegers hired up town' as a refuge from Long Chamber. The name of the first Head Master who taught in the Upper School, Dr. Newborough, is perhaps best known in connection with his prophecy that Robert Walpole (whose bust is now to be seen on the walls of the room) would turn out a good orator.' Newborough enjoyed the reputation of being a suc·cessful governor and teacher, and an elegant and vigorous scholar whose reading went far outside the ordinary run of commentaries. He taught St. John and Wyndham, as well as Walpole and Townshend.

The most important alteration in the Eton buildings in the period between Allestree's Provostship and the reign of her present Majesty was the handsome and costly, if incongruous, stall-work and roof erected in the time, and partly at the charges, of Provost Godolphin, a magnificent don, brother of my lord Treasurer,' whose name is recorded on the base of Francis Bird's statue of the Founder, set up by him in the school yard. Mr. Lyte's account of it is as follows:

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The work undertaken in the previous year was carried out according to the taste of the time, no regard being paid to the original

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style of the building. The east wall was concealed from view by aa elaborate altar-piece of inlaid wood; a new roof was constructed, plastered and painted; stalls and high panelling were placed in front of the old mural paintings; and a huge organ-loft, about twenty-five feet in depth, approached by a flight of steps, was placed across the church, within the choir. The old altar-rails were removed to Burnham Church. Seven new vaults were made, and some of the seats for the parishioners were removed into the so-called ante-chapel. The new woodwork, however inappropriate to its position, was good of its kind, and very costly.-P. 268.

Mr. Lyte, we fancy, does not regret the black and white marble pavement, nor the old oak fittings of the chapel, the canopy, louvre, and Palladian windows of the hall. No doubt they were incongruous, and never ought to have been put in a Gothic building. But after a century of 'restoration,' beginning with Strawberry Hill and Fonthill Abbey Gothic, and proceeding through the courageous blundering of Wyattville, Essex, Blore, and Wilkins, to the timid correctness of to-day, we have not yet found a style, and hardly an architect or two, and we are beginning to doubt whether we are much wiser than our fathers. The voice of the leaders of art is now opposed to restoration altogether; and it is probably safer to preserve what is old, bad or good, wherever it is possible, till a generation arises which builds naturally and not by rule. Meanwhile much beautiful Renaissance work has perished, and the history of our buildings has suffered. Those reformers who did away with the old stalls at Canterbury and Wimborne forgot that in doing so they were obliterating the memory of an earlier piety, and destroying the witness which buildings give to the history of the Church and country. It is true that medieval builders swept away earlier work without regard for its beauty or antiquity; but they did so on the ground of utility, seldom if ever on that of art. When the idea of copying what had once been, or might have been, took possession of the minds of architects and their patrons, the continuity of English architecture was broken. It may seem a contradiction to speak of continuity through this period. But the continuity is that of English life. The art of the sixteenth and the following centuries is a part of the history of the country; and this continuity was a reality at Eton. We can no longer see the place where Ashton was remembered by Horace Walpole, 'standing up funking over against a conduct to be catechised,' nor the stalls where the young noblemen (as in Great St. Mary's at Cambridge) sat side by side with the dons; and there and then ate packets of almonds and raisins, without

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any consciousness of wrong doing; nor, to speak more gravely, the Church as it was in ancient days, in which so many generations of Eton boys worshipped, and which was a haven of rest from the turbulence of their school life. We can only guess at the place where the epistle was read,' where Bishop Longland was buried; and, till a few years ago, Provost Wotton's gravestone was almost hidden by an ugly wooden organ loft, now replaced by Mr. Street's handsome though somewhat incongruous screen. We hope that the twentieth century will spare the stalls and seats (good of their kind and very costly') which the liberality of the Etonians of 1848 put in the place of Godolphin's pavement and stalls; though it is possible they may think that those who did so were more liberal than well inspired.

It is curious how little is recorded of the school-days of great men. Why did not their teachers oftener foresee what they were going to be? Why have we been content to know that Chatham was pronounced by his tutor, Mr. Burchett (whose name we record honoris causa) to have 'made a great progress since his coming hither? Indeed I never was concerned with a young gentleman of so good abilities, and at the same time of so good a disposition,' and that his bill for half a year (including 5s. paid for curing his 'chilblanes') amounted to 297. Os. 3d.; that Charles Fox spent four months at Spa, which he might have spent better at Eton; and when he came back to Eton, was laughed at by the boys, and soundly flogged by the head master,' Dr. Barnard, of whom, by the way, it is recorded that he was a scholar and wit, and that to check the foppishness of his boys, 'he burnt all their ruffles and cut off their queues.' The most familiar record of Fox at Eton is his own name cut in gigantic characters on the panels of the Upper School, close to that of his friend Lord Carlisle. Why are we only told that Lord Wellesley wrote elegant verses, and made the King weep' at speeches; that his greater brother beat Bobus' Smith in a fight, and was flogged with eighty-two others for a mutiny; that Hookham Frere's first impressions of Eton were that Dr. Davies was a greater man than even his own father; that Porson was more remarkable for memory than scholarship; and Charles Simeon for ugliness than piety? A few have left records of themselves in journals like that of Lord Metcalfe or literary memorials such as the 'Etonian' of Praed and Sidney Walker, and the Microcosm' of Canning and Frere; but for the rest Father Thames is invoked in vain to tell us something of that barren theme, the Boyhood of Great Men.' 'The records of their school-days are scanty,' says Mr. Lyte. Scanty?' we wish they could be extended even to scantiness. Vol. 171.-No. 341.

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