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"A head-master, whose character for ability, zeal, and practical success promises to make him conspicuous on the list of Rugby head-masters; a staff of assistants who combine with skill, ability, and knowledge such a lively personal interest in the school as induces them to make habitual sacrifices for its welfare; a system of mental training which comprehends almost every subject by which the minds of boys can be enlarged and invigorated; a traditional spirit among the boys of respect and honour for intellectual work; a system of discipline which, while maintaining the noble and wholesome tradition of public schools that the abler and more industrious should command and govern the rest, still holds in reserve a maturer discretion to moderate to moderate excess, guide uncertainty, and also to support the legitimate exercise of power; a system of physical training which, while it distinguishes the strong, strengthens the studious, and spares the weak; a religious cultivation which, although active, is not overstrained, but leaves something for solemn occasions to bring out: such are some of the general conditions which have presented themselves to notice during our investigation. They go far also, we think, to explain that public confidence which the school has for many years possessed, and never since the days of Arnold in larger measure than at the present moment."

The authorities of other schools which are doing their work honestly and ably may perhaps fairly take exception to this elaborate panegyric, as savouring rather of the advocate than the judicial inquirer; but there is no reason to question the facts upon which it is founded. Yet even this apparently perfect system does its work very imperfectly. Such, at least, is the opinion of one of the ablest of its administrators, Mr Charles Evans; while the moral results of a Rugby education appear to him to be most satisfactory," he believes that "intellectually it is at once a success and a failure."

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by every year from the lower forms, and to most of them I think that our system does but scant justice. I am not speaking of the idle and the dull, but of a very large class of boys of good natural abilities and industry, who yet do not reach high positions in the school. At about sixteen years of age this type of mind appears to reach the length of its classical tether, and however much worked after that time it takes no polish. . . . They have never reached the point at which the study of classics begins to acquire its greatest value as an engine of moral discipline; and apart from the moral and social advantages, and the unconscious self-education of a large school, their last two or three years at Rugby are, I think, almost unprofitable."-Appendix, p. 314.

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Mr Evans thinks that this applies to one-half, at least," of those who leave the school. The remedy which he would propose is the adoption of the system generally known as "bifurcation" - i. e., a classification of the boys, after they have reached a certain standing in the school, into two distinct departments; in one of which the classical studies would be still continued as at present, while in the other mathematics, physical science, modern languages, and history, would, to a great extent, take their place. Such a system is actually at work, under various modifications, at Marlborough, Cheltenham, Wellington and King's Colleges, and we may have more to say of it hereafter. But Dr Temple is not in favour of introducing it at

Rugby, which he thinks would lose

very much more than it would gain by such an arrangement. He doubts better discipline, as far as mere men"whether the boys would get much tal discipline is concerned," and is considerably in real cultivation." "quite sure that they would lose very Even Mr Evans, in his examination, admits that this second department education inferior to that given at "would, after all, give a kind of present." No doubt of it; and though it would meet the cases of a few individual boys, the result in the large majority would be open to the same failure and disappoint

"A large number of boys leave Rug. ment; real application would be as

distasteful in the one class of studies as in the other, and therefore real education as exceptional as ever. For, after all, the grand question to be solved will be that which Lord Devon, in apparent despair at its being solved in any way by himself or his brother Commissioners, puts to one of the young Rugby witnesses, and gets little help from his answer

"2216. Can you suggest any mode by which a boy can be prevented from being idle?—I cannot."

NOTE.-In the previous article on the Eton Report in our June

number, it was stated that the collegers were members of "a separate football and cricket club." This statement is not literally correct; the words of the Report are "They do not play together [i. e., with the oppidans], except at fives, in some of the cricket clubs, and in the first football club." (Report, p. 68.) It was stated in the same article that "no oppidan had now gained the Newcastle scholarThis was ship for seven years." the fact as appeared in the evidence given before the Commission in 1862; but Mr Fremantle retrieved the honour of the oppidans in this respect in 1863.

ART.

Is this the stately shape I saw
In Greece a thousand years ago,
Who ruled the world by Beauty's law,
And used among the gods to go?

Who, wheresoe'er she turned her eyes,
Below her saw a reverent throng,
Whose praise was taken as a prize,
Who made immortal with a song?

Now, scant in garb, a mendicant,

She stretches forth her prayerful palms, And wealth, in pity for her want, Contemptuous tosses her its alms.

This gift is not for charity,

But love, that at thy feet I lay.

Oh, take my heart that throbs for thee! And smile as in the ancient day.

W W. S.

GIULIETTA.

Aн, how still the moonbeams lie
On the dreaming meadows!
How the fire-flies silently

Lighten through the shadows!

All the cypress avenue

Waves its tops against the blue,
As the wind slides whispering through-
He is late in coming!

There's the nightingale again!

He alone is waking ;

Is it joy or is it pain

That his heart is breaking?
Bliss intense or pain divine?
Both of them, O Love, are thine!
And this heart, this heart of mine,
With them both is thrilling.

From the deep dark orange-grove
Odorous airs are steaming,

Till my thoughts are faint with love-
Faint with blissful dreaming.
Through the slopes of dewy dells
Crickets shake their tiny bells,
And the sky's deep bosom swells
With an infinite yearning.

On my heart the silent weight
Of this beauty presses;
Midnight, like a solemn Fate,
Saddens while it blesses.

All alone I cannot bear

This still night and odorous air; Dearest, come, its bliss to share, Or I die with longing.

I have listened at the doors,
All are calmly sleeping;
I alone for hours and hours
In the dark am weeping.
Only weeping can express
The mysterious deep excess
Of my very happiness,

Therefore I am weeping.

Like a fountain running o'er
With its too great fulness,
Like a lightning-shivered shower
For the fierce noon's coolness,
Like an over-blossomed tree
That the breeze shakes tenderly,
Love's too much falls off from me
In these tears of gladness.

Ah, beloved! there you are!
I once more am near you ;
Walk not on the gravel there,
Somebody may hear you.
Step upon the noiseless grass,-
Oh! if they should hear you pass
We are lost, alas! alas!

We are lost for ever!

Hark! the laurels in the light
Seem with eyes to glisten;

All things peep and peer-and night
Holds its breath to listen.
Deeper in the shadow move,
For the moon looks out above,

I am coming to you, love,
In a moment coming.

W. W. S.

THE VOTE OF CENSURE.

THE Ministry is as good as dead, and only waits to be buried. It has lost its influence abroad, it has lost its character at home. It is an inert chrysalis, in which the soul of Lord Palmerston is expiring. It is the ghost of his reputationof a name that has been famous in Europe-which has kept the Ministry in a nominal existence. The waverers who decided the recent vote in favour of the Government shrank from terminating the career of a great minister by placing on the records of the House of Commons a formal condemnation of his policy. But the debate has virtually killed the Ministry. It has laid bare the unparalleled blindness and blundering which have marked their foreign policy. The whole story of the negotiations has been placed in full view of the public; and so strong was the case against the Government, that the independent members, who supported the Cabinet with their votes, were the most unsparing in their condemnation of its blundering and abortive policy. The House of Lords condemned the Government by a majority of nine; the House of Commons acquitted it with a verdict of Not Proven by a majority of eighteen. And so the Ministry still exists, although its reputation is extinct and its hours are numbered.

The debate which took place on the vote of censure is, we do not hesitate to say, the most remarkable that the oldest member of either House has witnessed. It is the most important debate on foreign policy that has occurred since 1815, and the speeches were characterised by a fulness of knowledge, by an ability of statement, and by a sharpness and power of rhetoric, which have not been surpassed in any similar discussion. Every side of the question-nay, every nook and cranny of it was

VOL. XCVI.NO. DLXXXVI.

fully set forth and minutely criticised. Both parties did their best, but the course of the argument has shown clearly that the Opposition had a good case, that the Ministry had none. Horsman, Cobden, Roebuck, and Bernal Osborne made elaborate speeches in condemnation of the Ministerial policy; and the fact that the three first-named gentlemen voted with the Ministry, after all, adds special weight to the anathemas with which they felt compelled to assail it. Other members of less note acted in similar fashion. They could not resist the force of the evidence against the Ministry, but they sought with eager ingenuity to devise excuses for voting with it. Mr Roebuck did so by attempting to disconnect the conduct of the Foreign Minister from that of the Cabinet. Mr Horsman, with a similar disregard alike of constitutional principles and of the facts of the case, held that Parliament, by not sooner expressing its opinion on the question, had become accomplices in the miserable policy of the Ministry. Mr Cobden openly confessed that he would vote that black was white rather than terminate the rule of the Liberal party. Mr Osborne, while pouring his withering sarcasms upon the whole Cabinet, declared that the "great Liberal party" was already defunct, yet was not disposed to help the Tories into office. Had the motion condemnatory of the foreign policy of the Government been decided upon its merits, it would have been carried by an overwhelming majority; and even as a party struggle as a vote of want of confidence-it was a sentiment of respect for the past greatness of Lord Palmerston which alone saved the Ministry from a decisive overthrow.

Seldom in its long history has the British Parliament had so grave an issue to decide, or so sad a position

R

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