I PITY the man who does not love his old school! To such a one the years of boyhood, to which most of us are wont to look back with such fondness, are diminished and shrunk to a poor ten weeks each. He has nothing pleasant to remember, save the Midsummer and Christmas holidays; those bright, brief, evanescent days of perpetual plum-pudding and lollypops ad libitum. It is but a short time since a valued friend of mine confessed to me, that, above all things, he wished he could look back with any thing resembling a feeling of affection for his old school or his old master, for he should then be able to fill up (such was his expression) what was now a sort of blank in his existence.

It is in one of those delightful essays of Charles Lambe, that a schoolmaster's letter is quoted, in which he is made to express his regret that he never knew what it was to be loved by his pupils. He represents himself to his correspondent, real or imaginary, as visited by one of his former flock, now arrived at manhood; and he says, sadly-" He did never love me; and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but the pleasant sensation which all persons feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes and fears, and the seeing on equal terms the man whom they were accustomed to look up to with reverence." It may be so in some, perhaps though I would fain hope otherwise - in the majority of cases. Doubtless there are, and will be, pedagogues that never can be loved, be the nature of their disciples ever so loving; and disciples that will never love, be their pedagogues ever so loveable. But I do stoutly deny the position of Elia's schoolmaster_that the relation of master and scholar forbids the existence of any thing like attachment between them and, if need were, I should not want for backers. The schoolmaster in question was, however, as any body who takes the pains to read his letter will perceive, a private schoolmaster; and this, I think, will tend, in some measure, to account for, though not to establish, his dictum. It would, perhaps, be somewhat difficult to lay

down the precise line which now-adays separates public schools from private. We of the eight or we of the nine, for I do not see why the Blue-coats should be shut outmust, I fear, consent to admit some strangers within our pale. We are, alas! becoming daily less and less exclusive; but it is sufficient that almost every body understands what distinction, and what state of things we mean to imply, when we speak of private, as opposed to public, schools. At these, I think it may be laid down as a general rule, that boys seldom continue to any advanced period of boyhood-they are either transplanted in due season to one of the public schools, or, when they have acquired a sufficient stock of information for the particular purpose to which they may be destined, they are taken away, and set to work forthwith. They seldom remain at a private school till they are capable of any thing like serious, sensible thinking for themselves; at public schools they do; not to mention that these latter contribute, in no inconsiderable degree, to accelerate the capacity; and somewhere hereabouts, if I am not mistaken, lies the secret of the complaint above quoted; for few, I think, will venture to deny, that, though at a public school somewhat less attention than private ones generally show is paid to comfort-that word and thing so peculiarly English - yet there is far more real love and esteem entertained for the master by his quondam scholars than falls to the lot of those who sway the destinies of "Classical academies" and "Establishments for young gentlemen." Perhaps I may be wrong-and perhaps I cannot claim to be considered as a perfectly impartial witness-for I am all for public schools; and had I the very thought makes me shudder-all the sons of Ægyptus, and all the wealth of Cræsus, I should not think I could employ the latter better than in giving the former an opportunity of learning those lessons of open, honest, manly independence of fighting one's own way fairly, and honourably, and boldly-which a public school, and a public school only, can teach to a boy;

I am, then, all for large public schools-the larger the better; and, from my own experience of such places, I venture to assert that there is to be found in them much genuine esteem and affection entertained by the pupil towards his master. I have one in my mind's eye at this moment, where it is pre-eminently the case; I do not mean my own, though I think we would scarcely yield even to the men in liking for our preceptors. Foul befall us, indeed, when we learn to remember, with any thing save affectionate gratitude, the names of our old and kind masters-when we cease to honour and bless the memory of "good old Thomas Sutton," and acknowledge not within our bosoms a sentiment of semi-filial regard at the very mention of Charter-House!

not

We boast not, indeed, to be the neighbours of royalty, as do our brethren of Eton. We have around us the pleasant fields of our cousins of Harrow and Rugby. We cannot show cathedrals with our kinsmen of Winchester, and Westminster, and St Paul's; but we are not with out our share of attractions nevertheless. Nor will we, in addition to our intrinsic merits, disdain to acknowledge some trifling obligation to the advantages of contrast. We are, at the same time, fortunate and unfortu. nate in our locality. The bellowings of Smithfield, in spite of the "mugitus boum" of the Georgics, are any thing but classical. We are compassed about by fat bulls a pearl literally among swine. Wilderness Row sends forth a dense and dingy population, con tinually belying the name it bears; and on our western boundary we are not far removed from the multitudinous tribes of Clerkenwell and Saffron Hill, ανιπτοποδες χαμαιευναι, dense, and, alas! more dirt One solitary ray of glory, indeed, streams upon the massive wall, now bending

with age, which confines us on the east-Goswell Street bids fair to have its name immortalized as having been deemed worthy to be the residence of the immortal Pickwick; but I know not that we have any other neighbour " renowned in story or in song." Nobody who knew us not would suspect us of lurking so quietly among such uncongenial streets, and lanes, and courts, and alleys. But only do us the favour to turn up CharterHouse Lane, or into Carthusian Street, and you shall not be without your reward. Does the quiet of the square strike you as refreshing after the confusion and hurly-burly you have just quitted? You have not yet half fathomed the depths of our stillness. Keep on, if you please-sounderthe great archway on your leftand you are in a moment more out of the world than in any college on the banks of Isis or Camus. You look up at the old rude semi-Cyclopian wall, and the windows of an elder fashion, with a silent expression of wonderment at lighting upon such things in such a place. You walk about delicately, as if fearing to disturb the deep repose of the genius loci. You peep through arched passages and half-closed doorways with a timid curiosity, half expecting to be terrified and "taken in the manner" by the apparition of some strange form suited to so strange a habitation; some disembodied monk, searching in vain for the cell which was his earthly dwell ing-place, retaining still, according to the creed of Sir Kenelm Digby, "a bias and a languishing" towards his bodily haunts, muttering, as he flits by, whispered Pater-Nosters and hollow-sounding Ave-Marys. You turn to flee at the first glimpse of an old man in a black cloak; but pause, half ashamed of your own apprehensions. Look again-take courage; there is nothing so very terrible about poor old brother A. Walk on, and you shall see many such as he, and learn to look on them too without alarm. Yonder is a group of themaprici senes seated on the bench in the great court in that quiet basking gossiping idleness which old age asks and loves-canvassing the merits of the new building now in progress of erection-the warmth of to-day's sun as compared with that of yesterdayor the number of minutes yet to elapse

ere the bell summons them to their social meal. Happy souls! that have no heavier cares than these to load the evening hours of life, and make them drag wearily to a close-that can forget in this tranquil retreat the chances and changes which compelled them to seek its shelter! Many a gossip used I to have with those old fellows in my time, waylaying them as they toddled through the short cloister adjoining what used to be called Watkinson's Arch, on their way to their afternoon devotions; and many a queer tale did I hear when they happened to be in a more than usually communicative humour. There were some of the poor brothers of the Charter-House in those days, whose stories, "stranger than fiction," might put many a novel to the blush.

Nor leave, I charge you, a single corner unexplored, till you have found and admired our great hall, its old dark wainscotings, its lanterned roof, its galleries for fair dames and merry minstrelsy, and its quaint old fireplace garnished with mimic instruments of war. Still less, if thou canst by any means make interest with one in authority, neglect to persuade him to open to thy wondering eyes our governor's room, with its huge latticed bay-window, its tapestried walls, and its gorgeous chimneypiece. Let him take thee, too, into our chapel, pausing duly, ere thou enterest, to peruse the iambics which declare the end of Nicholas Mann, "Olim magister, nunc remis tus pulvere." Let him point out to thee the resting-place of the munificent old man, that noble sample of Britain's merchant sons, whose bounty it is our duty and our pride annually to commemorate:-let him show thee where sleeps, not far from his side, one of the worthiest of his many worthy sons, "clarum et venerabile nomen," Carthusian Ellenborough:-and then let him lead thee out upon the terraced walk, and display to thy astonished gaze an extent of territory whose very existence in such a spot is to more than half the world a thing unknown, undreamed of, and almost, save to actual vision, incredible. Yet one thing more: let the heart of thy cicerone warm towards thee, as thou expressest thy increasing gratification at all which he showeth thee: let him take thee, at the proper hour, nothing loth, into that ne plus ultra of comfort,

NO. CCXCVI, VOL. XLVII.

hight Brooke Hall, that snuggest of symposiac chambers, albeit Dan Phœbus with his jolly visage peereth in never at its windows: let him make thee free of its happy corporationseat thee at its hospitable boardfeast thee with its dainties cheer thee with its social converse-send thee away when the hour of parting comes, grieving only that it comes so soon:-and if that day is not noted as a white day in thy calendar-if ever thenceforth thou speakest word or syllable of Charter-House save in its honour, thou hast less taste and more ingratitude than, whoever thou mayst be, I would willingly give thee credit for.

To me there are few greater pleasures in life than an occasional afternoon's visit to my old school. It seems to me a positive duty to hold it, and to cause it to be held, in honour. I am as jealous of its reputation as of my own. Whoever filches from it its good name, goes nigh to commit a similar depredation upon myself. He who slanders my school wounds not my school alone-my own ribs are bruised by its thumps. I would do battle for its claims against the champion of any other school in the three kingdoms, and feel myself thrice armed in the justice of my quarrel. I have only to learn that such a one is a Charter-House man, and I look upon him forthwith with a kindlier eye-with a sort of free-masonic brotherly feeling. But he must (at any rate, so far as regards our common school) be "likeminded" with myself, or I shrink from him as I would from a chimney-sweeper in a narrow passage. I know of nothing which more stirs my bile, than to hear a coxcombical jackanapes affect to despise and make scoff of the source of whatever little knowledge (for in such cases it always is little) he may happen to possess. I am naturally and constitutionally a man of peace, but I could tweak the nose of the fellow with the most unalloyed satisfaction: - I long to kick him:like Maria, " I can hardly forbear hurling things at him." He is one of those thankless children whom it is "sharper than a serpent's tooth" to have; an intellectual matricide: Icould even find in my heart to give him, like those iron old Romans, his sack, his viper, and his ape-I never could un

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derstand on what grounds they added the cock and the dog-and hold him kicking under the water till he was within half a gulp of bidding defiance to the efforts of the Humane Society. I am, as I said, pacifically disposed, yet I could pick a quarrel even with Cowper, that most peaceable specimen of the "genus irritabile," for the merely so much as hinting that to "love the play-place of our early days" can by any possibility be " a weakness;" and yet, though he rails at schools roundly, he describes so well the pleasure which one feels in revisiting them in after life, that I do not believe he could in his heart have entertained much dislike for them. "A weakness," forsooth! Then do I glory in my infirmity for I am proud of loving the spot where I sported away the few years which we "little victims," as Gray calls us, are allowed to gallop through, before care jumps up in the saddle behind us. I look-profane wretch that I am! - with a peculiar pleasure at the chapel window, happily not painted, through which one memorable afternoon I "swiped" the cricket-ball:-at the corner behind whose shelter I used, in daring defiance of magisterial edicts, and ambitious imitation of maturer manhood, to inhale the fragrance of the forbidden and furtive "weed:" -at the roof over which I scrambled night after night, at the peril of life and limb, for no earthly object save the chance of a sound flogging the following morning. I cannot but confess to a slight compunctious visiting at the sight of the window, from whose "coign of vantage" I more than once saluted some unsuspicious passer-by, now with a shower of peppering peas or innocuous nutshells, now perchance with a not scanty libation of that pure element, which Pindar and the teetotallers pronounce most excellent. Some little twitches of conscience, I say, I cannot but acknowledge; but, after all, I would not give a fig for a man who could go back to his old school and not find a spot pregnant with some reminiscence of mischief. Your stiff-starched, steady-going juvenile, who never gets into a scrape, and looks virtuously indignant at the bare mention of a birch, is no boy after my heart: - I have something of Sir Oliver Surface in me.

I stroll down the old cloister, and

lo! in that central recess, hight Middle Briers, seems to rise up before me the identical dispenser of sweet things, whom it was my prime delight years ago to torment. Alas! it is but one of Fancy's pranks-like Macbeth's air-drawn dagger, "there's no such thing." There have been strange revolutions in the last few years. I knew in my time three dynasties of piemen. There is another now, and for all I know there may have been a dozen more between. And could not thy gentler sex, O enticing Mrs Clayton! preserve thee from usurping violence? What man of iron heart could seize thy sceptre and transfer thine ancient seat of empire? I miss thee sore, O gentle autocrat of tarts! Never again shall I fall upon thy dainties, as I was wont to do of yore, with all the indiscriminating appetite of thirteen! Never more shall I wantonly upset thine orange-basket, as of old, and take to my heels, leaving thee, like some anile Atalanta, to gather up as thou best mightest the golden fruit, bearing me, kind soul, no greater malice than wishing thou couldst "just ketch that young warmint, that's all."

There is one, and one only lack about my old school which always strikes me very forcibly. I have walked through other great schools, and in their halls, their dormitories, their schoolrooms I see, above and around me, hundreds of names that have thrown a fresh glory on the pulpit, the bar, the senate, the camp, and the quarterdeck-names that will die only when the last man dies anxiously preserved and proudly displayed-names carved or traced perchance ere yet a dream of future greatness had flitted across the young vision-when the height of the boy's ambition was to leave some memorial of himself, however rude, behind him-that his name might not be utterly forgotten in the spot which it was destined one day to hallow. The thickly-lettered walls of such places are their simplest, noblest, most eloquent panegyric. Their men must look up at them with somewhat of that pride which animated him who, after long gazing in speechless ecstasy on the masterpiece of the great master of his art, broke forth at last into the exulting boast, " And I, too, am a painter!"

We have none of these-at least we

had none till within these few years

and these are somewhat scattered; and all, moreover, carved by the monoto nous uncharacterising hand of the artificer. They are all the same, unrelieved by any picturesque variety of type or hue-all formal, priggish, copy-book, tombstone-like, looking inscriptions-immortality purchased at threepence per letter! I know not to what this nakedness of our walls is to be attributed; but I do not now expect ever to see it remedied. He would be a bold spirit who should first mar with his rude autograph the whiteness of the virgin plaster: -illi robur et æs triplex circa pectus erit,--and, if the latter be not somewhere else, as well as circa pectus, he will stand a good chance of smarting for his audacity. But let it not be thought that we show no great names, because we have none such to boast. No, we have our full share, and more than our full share. What a glorious alphabet we could make: - Par exemple, A, Addison-B, Blackstone-bah! I am stopped at the outset, for I must not make invidious distinctions, and already I want a second B for Barrow. I do not know that to me, individually, the absence of these mural records is a matter of much moment, for I and I trust all good Carthusians-have most of them by heart: but we want them for the public, who have no interest in searching out our glories, and need to have them pointed out to them before they hold us in due honour. To my mind's eye they are as visible as though they met my bodily vision, in real tangible black and white, at every step I take. They puff me up in my own esteem, and make me shine in my own eyes with a reflected glory. But that is not all they do for me. These departed sons of Charter-House stand to me, of whose future existence they had not the remotest idea, in a relation of which they never dreamed. They are the sureties for my good behaviour-my involuntary godfathers. Were I ever to transgress the sixth commandment, my nightly couch would be haunted by 500 spirits, besides that of the murdered man. In my dreams I should see them, bending all upon me their serious, reverend, reproving glances; and hear their solemn accents saying, with a severity not unmixed with sorrow, "Thou a son of Sutton, and didst thou do this?" I am fain to confess that on this ground I stand,

comparatively speaking, alone. My best friends, good and true Carthusians into the bargain, feel it not, and smile-thank Heaven, not sneeringly

at what they are pleased to call my hobby, my crotchet, my foible, or, as the phrase is nowadays, my idiosyncrasy. Well, be it so. It were ungrateful in me to grudge them a harmless laugh at my expense, who am wont to enjoy so many at theirs. Laugh and let laugh, so long as there be nothing sardonie in the grin, is, to my thinking, a fair and honest maxim: I love not a friend whom I cannot rally with impunity. But for myself I confess I hold the ties of societiesif I may so express myself of such societies I mean as a school or a college, whose names are hallowed in our minds by many a bright recollection of the past-by many a common benefactor whose memory we can bless -by many an illustrious son, to whom we can point with a common pride - by many a near and dear friend there won - I hold, I say, the ties and the claims which such fellowships have upon us, to be inferior in strength only to those of country and of blood; and in the next degree of shame to him who brings disgrace on the gray hairs of his sire and the honour of his ancestors, do I place the man who feels no reverence for the well springs whence his spirit drank its earliest draughts, and scruples not, without one qualm of conscience, to put his " alma mater" to the blush. I love that fond old classical epithet of "alma mater:" I see no reason why it should not be applied to a school as well as to a university; nay, I know not indeed whether it be not the more proper application of the two; but, however that may be, it smacks of a wholesome respect, a reverential affection in the choice spirits who were wont to use it, which alone would be sufficient to warm my heart towards their memories. But I bid fair to wander.

That old chapel too-what a host of recollections does it not awaken! It was not often my lot to kneel within its walls as a worshipper, for I had numerous and kind friends around, who made my Sabbath-days for the most part holidays; but I well remember being once debarred from this indulgence, as a punishment for some scrape I had got into, and having to attend its services for three or four suc