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as great, yet even so what student of Victorian Eton will not ask to lay one flower on those graves while he heaps the rest with laurels?

Lastly, a word on the Eton buildings. We have shown that they were in the styles of four successive centuries from Chapel to College Library. What, then, is meant when people talk of the style of Eton'? The style of Eton is not exclusively gothic or classic, stone or brick. The style of Eton is strict and dignified reserve, 'leying a parte superfluite of to grete curiouse werkes of entaille and besy moldyng.' The valid criticism of the 'Memorial Buildings' is not that they carry forward the English style of later Wren from the earlier Wren of Upper School across the road, but that gross unnecessary ornament overloads the simple lines of the main masses. The sides and back of the Hall, the Vestibule, the curve of the dome, and the interior plan of the Library-one of the most beautiful rooms in the country-show how much dignity has been obscured by lavish or unstructural decoration. For any future memorial this lesson is not lightly to be forgotten. But for those who pin their faith to one exclusive style there is a useful warning ready to hand. It is not generally known that it was once proposed to bring Upper School into harmony with the' Eton Style,' and an appalling architectural elevation in College Library shows all that western front of College transfigured with the crockets and pinnacles and pointed arches of pretentiously feeble gothic. Let it be laid down that an artist can only worthily express himself in the style which his country, his period, or his genius has made natural to him. For the more ancient buildings we believe that since the egregious routing of Lord Grimthorpe's assault on Savile House, due care is now assured. It is in picking at petty details that the danger lurks, and it is true that a protest from all the Old Etonians of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments was treated as negligible so lately as in 1912 by a majority of the new Fellows of Eton. A Headmaster whose first reform was to vindicate the Founder's schoolroom from its disgraceful indignities is not likely to be wanting in reverence for the rest. In all such matters history must be the criterion, not the taste' of this or

that amateur. Many passages in the books on Eton show how amusingly unreliable that taste may be. Take, for example, College Chapel after the Wilder Restoration': 'It is a rare specimen of Church architecture and embellishment; its side windows, no less than sixteen in number, have been decorated with stained glass of the highest order-and it may now be truly said to contain a most perfect and interesting collection of such art' (Ralph Nevill, Floreat Etona,' p. 305).

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And this was the verdict of a late monarch. But, says Mr Clutton Brock (p. 150), the restoration of the Chapel 'was most of it money wasted. The windows in particular are unsurpassed in ugliness and would entirely destroy the beauty of any less beautiful building.' Yet, if we prize and preserve our buildings as they deserve, what a pity it is that numbers of boys leave without ever seeing the state rooms of the cloisters and the incomparable portraits of the Lodge! To fix a time when members of the school might have access without the sense of intrusion would be a privilege adding new reverence to all memories, and a fresh pride in the splendid endowment of what Mr Gladstone called, not the 'cream,' as in Mr G. Coleridge's report, but the 'Queen of all the schools of all the world.'

To sum up, the typical England of our day has been apt to care more for the body than the mind, more for sports than for intellectual pursuits, more for social efficiency than for high endeavour. This has been true, and it is a pity, for the two ideals are not mutually exclusive. In so representative a school as Eton there cannot but be some reflexion of the national temper. It would be disgraceful that any boy should spend five years in any school and leave without any sound knowledge or any habit of effective application, or any reverence or love for learning. We believe that to be no longer true of Eton. There is good work done throughout the school. The younger boys seem invariably happy, and elder boys get not only wider teaching, but a social experience which should have the friendships and enthusiasms of University life without idleness or rowdyism. But the terrible stress of war and the prospects of the future warn the British not to be content

until the utmost use is made of all our resources.

The intelligence of the gentry can no more be allowed to lie fallow than their lands. At last we are going-as Mr Lowe advised-to educate our masters'; and they perhaps will not tolerate an idle upper class living for sport and pleasure, nor will that class itself desire it.

We have to hold on to these ideals, also remembering that there are other qualities which it would be deplorable to lose. Nothing can replace the spirit which Eton engenders, a spirit shown in the following extract from a letter just received, and almost too intimately sacred to print, yet too precious to omit as evidence of what the public schools are now giving us. They are the words of one who, born an American, and trained at Harvard, would be no mean or partial judge of what goes to make a man :

'A week ago we did a big attack, and he was one of those who lived to reach the objective. It was as he wished it to be--he told me himself-in the very front line of the attack, carrying on. He was very eager. He went in as he told me some weeks ago he was going to do-as if it were the greatest game in the world, and he was playing for Eton. The night before we went in we read the King's speech from "Henry V " -"and gentlemen in England now abed." But he didn't need to read it; he's inspired like that all the time-Eton and England have lost one of their staunchest and most loving sons-the keenest Etonian I've ever known. I verily believe that it was the thought of Eton more than of family or England that inspired all his work out here. L. G., who was at Mr Lubbock's, is another. I knew him almost better than L. L. Do you wonder that I adore Eton when such nobleness and strength, gentleness, sweetness and purity is in the hearts of those whom she sends forth? My love and thanks to Eton for having given me such friends.'

H. E. LUXMOORE.

Art. 2.—BELGIUM AND LUXEMBURG, 1831–1839.

ONE of the most serious difficulties, perhaps the most serious of all those encountered in the establishment of the Belgian kingdom in 1831, was the settlement of its frontiers; they were to be fixed according to the part to be played by the new State in the European system. The feelings of the London Conference with regard to the Belgian nation varied with the course of events. Its principal task was, in the view of most of the members of the Conference, to preserve so far as possible the results achieved by the Congress of Vienna, i.e. to keep a powerful barrier against France, and for that purpose to combine the military system of Belgium with that of Holland. This territorial question, therefore, was a European problem. In its wish to remain literally faithful to the decisions of the Congress of Vienna, the London Conference was led to rob Belgium of its most extensive province, which had served as its bulwark against Germany ever since the Belgian principalities had been united under the Dukes of Burgundy. The Duchy of Luxemburg contained the greater part of the large wooded table-land of the Ardennes and a stronghold of the highest strategic value, the fortress of Luxemburg, which commands the road leading from Trèves to Longwy and Verdun. It had been especially coveted by Louis XIV, who conquered it in 1681, but had to restore it at the Peace of Rijswijk in 1697. From that time, it remained one of the most important fortresses of Belgium and one of the bases of its defensive system.

The Congress of Vienna, however, gave it a new international status in 1815. It agreed to a proposal of Hans von Gagern, the spokesman of the dynasty of Nassau, to turn that province into a Grand Duchy in exchange for a much less extensive and less populous territory, the old patrimony of that dynasty in Germany, which was ceded to Prussia; and it settled the Grand Duchy upon the Sovereign of the Netherlands in his own right, at the same time making him, in so far as the Grand Duchy was concerned, a member of the German Confederation. William I, however, treated Luxemburg exactly like the other provinces of the kingdom of the Netherlands. He gave seats in the States General to its

deputies, and invariably enforced the laws and institutions of the Netherlands there. Moreover, he deliberately neglected to fulfil his obligations towards the German Confederation, although these obligations were of the lightest, as the Confederation was a mere defensive alliance. He refused to provide the federal military contingent claimed by the Diet of Frankfurt; and it was his wish to turn the federal garrison out of the fortress of Luxemburg. The presence of this garrison, a body of Prussian soldiers, was the only sign of the difference made in international law between the Grand Duchy and the other Belgian provinces. The Grand Duchy, therefore, was a mere diplomatic fiction, an artificial creation intended to satisfy dynastic interests without regarding either historical traditions or the wishes of the inhabitants.

When the Revolution broke out, in September 1830, the people of Luxemburg mostly joined it with enthusiasm; and, as the French Government said some months after, they showed themselves 'more Belgian than the Belgians anywhere else.' Still, they did not attack the fortress, the gates of which were immediately closed by the commander of the Prussian garrison, who declared that the revolutionaries were rebels. On Oct. 15, William I's representative with the Diet called upon it to intervene, and promised that his Sovereign would henceforth strictly fulfil his federal duties and use every means to support the federal (i.e. Prussian) garrison quartered in Luxemburg. The situation might have become very critical, had not the Conference of London promptly taken the decision to suspend hostilities between Belgian and Dutch troops (November). This decision was to exercise the most unfavourable influence upon the future of Belgium, and especially upon its territorial status, for at that time only the old Barrier' fortresses built against France had passed into Belgian possession. The more important strongholds of the interior, the Citadel of Antwerp and Maastricht, were still in the hands of the Dutch; and Luxemburg was in the power of the German Confederation. The truce did not extend to the Grand Duchy, as the Congress of Vienna had placed it in a peculiar political position. Nevertheless, there was a tacit armistice, for the Provisional Government of

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