LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
DR. VAUGHAN AND HARROW.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "Brzorwros."]
Sra,—After the sad event which occurred last week, I hope you can find space for one or two random reflections of an old Harrovian. You express surprise that Dr. Vaughan never took a bishopric. It may interest you to learn that his mother-in-law, Mrs. Stanley, told my father that she herself did not quite understand why he first accepted and then declined Lord Palmerston's offer. There seems to have been -an element of inscrutability in him, which he, perhaps, thought it wise to encourage. One of his Assistant Masters told me that he had heard him say (in effect) : " I find it to be an advantage that, the more angry I am with a boy, the calmer I am in appearance." Closely allied to this inscruta- bility of his was the rather inelastic softness of voice and suavity of expression—a suavity unruffled even during the application of the birch — which some of his admirers regretted. In another matter I am constrained to play the part of devil's advocate. When I run through the list of any old schoolfellows, I am surprised that more of them have not distinguished themselves. This, however, may be partly due to the fact that, in the case of so many of them, the petition of Agur has been literally fulfilled. They have "neither poverty nor riches ; " and therefore they are insensible alike to the stimulus of want and to that of ambi- tion. " Small certainties," says Johnson, " are the bane of talent." But I hasten to add that they are the best safeguard against worldliness,—against those unsocial qualities which Bacon praises with faint blame, or with no blame, in his essays on " Canning " and on "Fortune." The result is that the typical old Harrovian is not very original, but he is generally popular, and is emphatically a gentleman.
One consideration may serve to explain this dearth of originality, at least of speculative originality, among sm. At school we were sheltered against every whiff of neology. Let me give an example. I left Harrow barely three years before the publication of the " Origin of Species," yet, during all the six years that I spent there, no doubt was ever whispered to me as to the accuracy of Archbishop Ussher's Chronology. In my case, this experiment of the hothouse was unsuccessful. Too sudden and violent was the change from V.Lughan to Jowett. At Balliol blow after blow fell on my um ompered theology in such rapid succession that, at last, I might in a literal sense have exclaimed : " Hen pietas! hen prised fides !" Mark Pattison once asked me, somewhat roughly, whether I had derived any benefit at all from my schooling at Harrow, a schooling which he evidently thought might have been a good preparation for a University of Ekron ! Of course such a notion is utterly fantastic, for, in truth, whatever objections may be urged against certain details of the Harrow system, Dr. Vaughan as a teacher, and especially as a trainer, was alto- gether beyond praise. In the domain of conduct, if not in that of speculation, his pupils were trained to be reasonably self- reliant. He once told me of one or two educational wiseacres who had delivered themselves of unwholesome utterances to the effect that boys are not fit to be trusted ; he himself, on the other hand, made a point of trusting them as far as possible. Much more might of course be said in praise of the mode of treatment by which he breathed a new life into Harrow. But I can here only add that, in order to do him fall justice, we must not limit our view to what appears at the outset. The proof of a pudding is not only in the eating, but in the digesting. And thus we may say that credit is due to Dr. Vaughan for the later, as well as for the immediate, effects of the policy which he inaugurated,—for the prolonged pros- perity of the school under the two distinguished Head-Masters who have more or less followed in his wake. In fact, it is partly, as it were, by the light of his afterglow that Harrow is still fulfilling the promise of her own motto: " Multosque per annos Stat fortuna domus."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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