A VICTORIAN SCHOOLMASTER: Henry Hart of Sed- bergh. By G.
G. Coulton. (G. Bell and Sons. 10s.)
We English people read of public schools to learn about the world of youth, not to compare methods of instruction. In the life of Henry Hart now before us we get a clear picture of the public school world as it was while the waning Arnold tradition still lasted and before fierce criticism from the pens of big boys had stirred up the revolutionary ideas of to-day. He was a man of stern gravity and goodness, and he laboured one might almost say clay and night to produce a good and grave generation, men with enough scholarship to give them judgment and enough religion to make them conscientious— Arnold, Temple, Hart, and the inner ring of their disciples worked at their relaxations as they worked at their duty ; in fact to them work was life. That is perhaps why people of to-day are feeling tired of them. Nevertheless, they were typical examples of something in the English character which is unchanging and will always at short intervals come to the top. Mr. Coulton is to be congratulated upon a book which contains an interesting element of prediction as well as of history.
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