Early Days at Uppingham under Edward Thring. By an Old
Boy. (Macmillan and Co. 3s. 6d. net.)—The "Old Boy's" recol- lections date back nearly to the beginning of the second half of the last century (Edward Thring went to lippingham in 1853—it was his first attempt at school-keeping—and stayed there till his death in 1887). He gives us in these pages a curious photograph of the place, its men and manners. Not a line or wrinkle is smoothed out. It was a barbarous place, but not without a certain laudable simplicity. Every now and then the remark- able figure of Thring comes across the scene, and always with effect. We have read much of the great Head-Master, to whom, indeed, the schools of England owe scarcely less than they do to Arnold; but we have never seen any more emphatic testimony to his greatness than we find here. It is a most interesting book, all the more effective on account of the absolute simplicity with which it is told. He makes us appreciate the subject far better than he would have done by using rhetoric or philosophy. How fine an illustration we have here of the Virgilian tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.
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