Council ordinance, into twenty-one scholarships of £100, tenable for seven years, of which three are to be filled up by competition annually. Besides these, the school has a large number of exhibitions from different benefactors of £60 and under, so that no boy of the most moderate merit enters the universities without some such assistance. The number in the school is formally limited to 250, and always keeps a little over that mark.

It is not surprising that, with these stimulants, Merchant Taylors' appears to have had a larger proportion of university honours than any other of the London schools.* This success seems to be attained under some disadvantages. The staff of classical masters is clearly inadequate, being only six to 260 boys44 on the average to each; and even of these six, the four undermasters teach mathematics also. Dr Hessey admits the insufficiency of his staff, and has no doubt but that the liberality of the Company would at once increase it; but there is at present no accommodation, in the way of class-rooms, for a greater number. His evidence shows a system of hearty and earnest work throughout the school, which may go some way towards explaining its successful progress under difficulties. Its system has some peculiar features, which quite deserve more special notice than the Commission has bestowed upon them in its brief report. The boys themselves are partially employed as what may be called pupil-teachers. It is no doubt the remains of a very ancient system (still in existence also at Winchester College), and had prevailed in the school to even greater extent before the time of the pre

sent head-master. When a young boy enters the school who is rather backward, or at any time when he may seem to require temporary help, -the head-master, to use his own words, "recommends to the parent some discreet elder boy who is willing to undertake the charge," and to whom a small fee is paid for his trouble. The monitors (the headboys in the school) are also occasionally employed in looking over some of the lower boys' exercises, or even taking a form in the absence of one of the masters; which they do, says Dr Hessey, "very nicely indeed."

"The monitors look over certain exercises, and mark any passage which they consider objectionable. When a monitor has examined an exercise, he puts his name at the bottom of it. I then glance over it, and call the boy up, when I perhaps say to him, B has looked over your exercise, and I agree with his criticism: I should have marked the same faults myself.' Or I call up the monitor, and say, 'Do you mean to find fault with this particular passage?' He does not like to be found out in marking a fault where there was none, and this makes him more careful for the future. Or perhaps I say,

'How is this? You have allowed this mistake to pass.' It makes them critical, obliges them to look into many minute points, and thus improves their own scholarship."

Flogging is very rarely used. A mode of punishment is adopted occasionally, in the higher part of the school, which is no doubt effective in judicious hands. The offender receives a "public rebuke:" "the school is silent," says Dr Hessey, while I tell him my mind in reference to his particular offence. It produces a considerable effect upon the school; the boys are very unwilling to have themselves brought up to me; not that I am severe in my way of punishing them, but that they do not like to fall under my censure or displeasure." Dr Hessey thinks that his system is on the whole successful. If his own account of it be a fair one, it at least deserves to be :

"When a boy goes to the sixth form, I call him to me, and say to him, 'You are now coming under me; I trust that you will be honest, and a truth-teller. I have no interest whatever except in your progress. Let us be on good and honourable terms with each other:' and the boys perfectly understand me.

Of course, there is a black sheep occasionally. A boy will tell a falsehood now and then; but I had rather occasionally be deceived than lead the school to understand that I thought I had a set of deceivers about me."-Evid., 617.

On the whole, the Londoners have sufficient good schools-sua si bona norint. It may be doubted whether they appreciate them sufficiently: people do not even know, says Archdeacon Hale, where the

Charter-House is.* They may be made more generally available than they are, if some of the Commissioners' recommendations be carried out. But unless it be in the exceptional case of the Charter-House, they will be wise to resist any scheme of removing them into the country. The Report declares that "the evidence does not appear to confirm the view, that a school in London is less healthy," though this is a view very popularly entertained. St Paul's and Merchant Taylors' should remain, as they now are, the great day-schools of the metropolis, their cheap and excellent education spread over a larger area by judicious reforms; and though the objections to the removal of Westminster are said to be mainly "sentimental," it is a sentiment with which we cordially sympathise: it would be "no longer," as one of the witnesses says, "Westminster School."

TOWARDS the construction of a biography which is to repay the trouble of reading, two incidents are absolutely necessary. First, there must be proper materials with which to work; and next, the biographer should be capable of making use of these materials when he gets them. We are sorry to say that we can discover little trace of the presence of either incident in the volumes now before us. To do him justice, Mr Fitzpatrick makes no pretence of fitness in any respect for the task which he has undertaken. "I cannot say," he observes, in his preface, "that I was at the Archbishop's elbow through life." In point of fact, his acquaintance with the Archbishop was of the slightest kind. They bowed when they passed each other in the street, and perhaps shook hands if by chance they happened to meet in a room. Access to Archbishop Whately's unpublished correspondence he certainly had none; and, judging from the results, seems to have held little confidential communication with persons in this respect more fortunate than himself. To be sure we are told that some able men who possessed that great advantage, but whose names our author is not at liberty to disclose, have supplied that deficiency [what deficiency?] by placing at his disposal much valuable memoranda and notes." And to get possession of "much notes," whether they be really valuable or not, is a feat worth achieving. But the true spur to action on the present occasion was neither knowledge of the subject nor the "much notes and memoranda" here alluded to. On the contrary, "A letter from Oxford," in 'Notes and Queries,' requesting illustrations of the inexhaustible fund of wit and humour

which was perpetually flowing from the late Archbishop, fired the soul and stirred the ambition of Mr William John Fitzpatrick. Was he not conversant with not a few of the reputed sayings and doings of the late Archbishop? Could he not, by a little diligence in applying to his Grace's chaplains and flatterers, make himself master of more? It was evident that the point of view in which the public desired to look at Dr Whately was the comic point. Only let him succeed in collecting jokes enough, and he might certainly hope to describe a Merry-Andrew as well as anybody else. To work therefore he went, and the results are two volumes post octavo, made up of scraps and anecdotes; the former evidently supplied by ladies and gentlemen who had taken the measure of their correspondent, the latter entirely his

own.

"The able men who possessed that great advantage," and who "placed at Mr Fitzpatrick's disposal much valuable memoranda and notes," had reasons of their own for keeping their names out of sight. What these names may have been we shall not stop to inquire; but this judgment at least may safely be hazarded-they gave him no assistance in the compilation of his introductory chapter. That is his own throughout; and we learn from it that " when George IV. lay in his cradle, there lived at Nonsuch Park a young cleric named Joseph Whately;" that "Nonsuch Park was begun by Henry VIII. and finished by Queen Elizabeth;" that "Queen Anne, and subsequently James I., occupied it;" that "in 1730 the Duke of Grafton sold it to Joseph Thompson, Esq.;" that "by-and

by, in 1591, Lord Lumley conveyed it to the Crown." We admit the importance as well as the peculiarity of this information; but what connection it has with the : late Archbishop Whately is not I quite so evident. Richard Whately I was not born at Nonsuch Park, nor yet in the prebendal house at Bris: tol "which is still pointed out." Moreover, his father was not a pre: bend, but a prebendary. But this is not all. "Richard," we are as: sured, "was the youngest of eight children, most of whom died 'unsung,' though neither 'unwept nor unhonoured." It is satisfactory to know that among the Whatelys the good old custom still prevails of singing dirges, or dragees, over the coffins of such members of the family as die at home. The unfortunates to whom Mr Fitzpatrick alludes so touchingly paid the debt of nature, we presume, far from the paternal roof. Had circumstances brought them back to die in their own beds, their wakes would have - been kept with all the fervour which marks similar proceedings in the Liberties of Dublin, or among poteen - inspired mourners of St Giles in London. However, we are consoled by the information that they were neither unwept nor unhonoured. But here a fresh trouble awaits us. We cannot quite see, from Mr Fitzpatrick's account of the matter, which of the eight Whatelys are really dead, and which still alive. Of the four daughters he disposes satisfactorily enough. Only one, "the relict of a physician," survives; the other three sickened, died, were waked, and, we suppose, buried. But over the fates of the brothers veil of mystery is spread.

a

"The Rev. Thomas Whately, rector of Chetwynd, and the senior of the late Archbishop by fifteen years, is also shop by still alive. William Whately officiated for some time as a vicar in Berkshire; and Joseph, who, who, having assumed the name of Hasley by royal sign-manual, and represented St Albans in two par

liaments, prematurely died some fiveand-forty years ago."

Is Joseph Whately dead? and if he be, what has become of him? "Having assumed a new name, sat in two parliaments, and died"what next? As to William, he may still be officiating, for aught we know to the contrary, as vicar or rector- or what not-if not in Berkshire, somewhere else. We ask for explanations on these heads, and hope that when Mr Fitzpatrick prepares a new edition of his work he will supply them.

It is not, however, solely on points like these that Mr Fitzpatrick is carried, by the power of his own genius, out of the common course of mundane affairs. We are informed, for example, that under the care of a Mr Phillips, who kept a school in Bristol, and was always referred to by Dr Whately as a skilful and judicious teacher, Richard Whately received a comprehensive course of general instruction. This is at least curious. Neither among men nor among horses were we aware till now that it was possible to receive a course either of instruction or running. The former were supposed to receive or acquire some amount of knowledge, greater or less, by going through a course of instruction; the latter, to win or lose plates according as they were first or last in getting over the course. But Mr Fitzpatrick knows better, and is, besides, singularly instructed, in his own way, respecting Oxford and its usages. Thus we learn from him not only that Richard Whately was placed, at the age of eighteen, in Oriel College, but that Oriel was then the great school of speculative philosophy; that Whately at once attracted attention because of his originality; "that notwithstanding this originality, and the notoriety incident to it, his undergraduate course is said to have been quiet;" that obtaining a double second, he was still, "in the scholars' race, more than once tripped;" and that "from the time he entered Oxford, Whately was remarkable for a certain amount of originality, both of thought and action, which sometimes amounted to rank eccentricity." In spite of all this, howeverin spite of the eccentricity which caused his "undergraduate course to be quiet," and his frequent trips in the scholars' race, Whately "at last made good his footing, and turned the corner cleverly." "In 1808 he graduated, and in 1810 he won a twenty-guinea prize." In 1811, the highest honours which it was possible to confer, unless the Provost's chair of Oriel, reached Whately in the shape of a Fellowship; and in 1812, he became a Bachelor of Divinity. "In estimating the value of these triumphs," continues our author, "it must be remembered that Whately, even at this early period of life, was beset with enemies, who first reviled him as an impudent pretender, and at a later date stigmatised him as an object of grave suspicion." A second-class in classics and mathematics, and election to a Fellowship of his College, were, equally with the prize for the English essay, legitimate grounds of triumph to Whately; but they must have shrunk into nothing in comparison with such a premature elevation to the dignity of Bachelor of Divinity as is vouched for here. We are sorry to say, however, that we doubt the fact of the elevation. We suspect that in 1812 Whately attained, as other men do, by length of standing, the right to take his Master's degree, and that the Bachelorship of Divinity came later. Be this, however, as it may, Mr Fitzpatrick, we are afraid, allows a lively imagination to run away with him when he describes Oriel, in the days of Whately's freshmanship, as the great school of speculative philosophy in Oxford. If Oriel ever deserved to be so considered

in contradistinction to other colleges, it was after Newman, Keble, and Whately himself had become fellows; and their own tastes, as well as the course of events elsewhere, led them into speculations which, whether philosophical or not,

exercised for good or for evil no little influence over the minds of the rising generation.

We began this paper by confessing that we could discover little trace in Mr Fitzpatrick's pages of either of the incidents, a happy combination of which is necessary to the production of a readable biography. No letters, no papers, no journals of the man about whom he proposed to write, appear to have been placed at Mr F.'s disposal. A little gossip more or less trustworthy, with a few curt answers to questions asked, appear to comprise the sum total of his stock in trade-if we except newspaper articles, notices in magazines or annual registers, and here and there a county history. But it is too evident that, had the whole wealth of Whately's private diaries been handed over to Mr Fitzpatrick, and all who were deepest in Whately's confidence stood at his elbow to prompt him, the reading public, so far as this biography is concerned, would have gained little from the circumstances. Mr Fitzpatrick and Archbishop Whately have nothing in common. The former is not only incapable of understanding what the latter was, but he cannot always express in intelligible English the ideas, such as they are, which fill his own mind. What, for example, does he mean to say in sentences like these : "The choice of a profession was now the question. It is impossible to doubt, from the deep thought evinced in his able lecture 'On the Influence of the Professions on the Character,' that the adoption of the clerical was other than the result of mature consideration. We do not think that Whately was likely to have been unduly dazzled by the many brilliant minds which flung their light around him, and had already fired the ambition of numbers who soared merely to fall."

We are inclined to believe that our readers, like ourselves, have by this time had enough of Mr Fitzpatrick and his crudities. That