17 DECEMBER 1853, Page 15

THE A.BUSES OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

SIR—TOUT correspondent "Sagittarius" seems to have "supped full of horrors," and taken his uneasy dream for reality. It is impossible to con- tradict his story about the young nobleman and the " monitor" : the scene of the tragedy is not specified, and football is as common a game at public schools as deeemvirates of thirty are uncommon.

The internal evidence of the story is not strong: sixth-form boys are not in the habit of appealing to their authority in disputes which arise in the course of football matches. The tale looks like one of those strange legends of roasted and frozen fags which have floated down from a rougher age, but have long ceased to agitate the hearts of the anxious mothers of a milder generation. Public schools are by no means faultless institutions; but if there is one vice of which they have to a wonderful extent shaken them- selves free of late, it is that of gross bullying and oppression: and this great improvement is owing mainly to the happy working of that very institution against which your correspondent inveighs—that which makes the ruling body in the school one which owes its acknowledged authority, not to inches or to sinews, or to boyish truculence, but to activity of mind, industry, and good conduct. Ask any "little fellow" from Eton, Harrow, or Rugby, whether he is bullied at school : he will probably answer, " No" ; if " Yes," ask him by whom ; and he will tell you that it is by some bigger or stronger fellow in his own part of the school—one who neither is nor ever will be a member of the " decemvirate," but who annoys him because he is industrious, or won't , do Latin 'verses for his more stupid neighbour, or "gets above him" in ! form and who dare not use his 'brute strength upon him within sight or _hearing of any sixth-form fellow. But it ought to be idle to say this after all that Arnold has done and 'written, after all that hundreds have seen and read of. In reading your correspondent's letter, one is forcibly reminded of the pictures of English so- ciety which one meets or used to meet with in French feuilletons. There the English milord, Sir Peel or Lord Williams, calls for "lea gloves" when he walks abroad, and by aid of the pugilistic art knocks down the unoffend- ing hero of the tale : English country gentlemen wear top-boots and carry umbrellas at evening parties, and London is decimated by suicides beneath the impenetrable fog of a perennial November. But as myths often embody historic truths, so it is still certain that Eng- lish noblemen have been known to box, and that the London atmosphere is less brilliant than the Parisian : and so your correspondent's narrative may be but a poetic statement of three facts,—first, that a certain number of boys have large powers intrusted to them, even over the sons of noblemen and possible Guardsmen ; secondly, that this authority may be abused; thirdly, that degradation from the privileged order is the punishment for such abuse. Ii this so monstrous ?

A more serious answer would be, I think, a waste of words. If your corre- spondent has sons, let him beware above all things of sending them to any large school where the only laws recognized is the law of the master and the law of the strongest; let him look for one where there is a powerful and responsible decenwirate.