WINCHESTER SCHOOL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.']
SIR,—Herbert says, "Schoolmasters deliver us to laws " ; to a schoolboy justice is more important than kindness, he cares more for it, and it has more to do with forming his character to manliness and the power and habit of distinguishing right from wrong. But at Winchester, instead of justice he gets injustice, tempered with the assurance that the prmfect who inflicts the injustice is "good and gentle," and that the head master, who supports an exercise of power which he admits to be unjust, is overflowing with goodness and gentleness too. This indifference to justice, if only there be goodness, is, as we all know, the great defect in the clerical mind ; but a clerical schoolmaster, at least, should be able to realise the words of Scripture,—" He who ruleth over men must be just."
Our fathers thought cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and prize- fighting made us manly ; our children will send fagging and flogging after those abandoned constituents of manliness ; but meanwhile injustice on the part of a public schoolmaster will do more to sap its morality, than all the petty cruelties and tyrannies
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