THE VOICE OF THE USHER.* Arm schoolmasters are known by
their colleagues to talk too much, but a few are admitted to talk well. So if most school- masters' books are merely two covers and some conversation, some of them may be none the worse for that. For though some subjects are best studied alone and slowly by the dim light of treatises, you may learn far more of others in an hour from an expert who talks well. Education, for ordinary men, is such a subject, and when Mr. Alington is the talker the ordinary man bears him with profit and delight. His book is just so much imprisoned human speech, and it has all the qualities of its character. It is seldom impartial, but always reasonable, personal (with an edge), but excellently humoured, witty, cheerful, fluent, and shamelessly digressive. This last is a special feature. Some of the greater irrelevances have retired to the footnotes, but whole battalions of them stand their ground in the text. An amusing misquotation intro- duces a couple of its brothers; a reference to mixed curricula is followed by an amateur poem on such things ; Dr. Gore, Mr. Benson, a dell book, and a well-known Collect, each recalls something that will raise a smile and help the argument not at all. If W. S. Gilbert (who is part of the argument) is called "the Aristophanes of the nineteenth century," Mr. Austey (who is not) must come in to be called its Menander. Mr. Kipling is in the text on business (and excellent business, too), but Lowell and Clough (with a bodyguard of quotations each) are merely there for fun. But the book is not all digressions—if one digresses one must digress from something—and for the moat part when Mr. Alington keeps to the straight road he is more interest- ing and not much less entertaining.
On the general subject of the Public Schools be will not use the conventional opening," The Public Schools are, of course, not perfect," because no schoolmaster would think such an obvious statement worth making, and no one else would think that it was sincerely made. He claims much virtue for the Public Schools, and will not have them blamed for what are the nation's faults. On this matter he is both cogent and refreshing.
On cricket a brave and grave word is said—it is "funda- mentally a selfish game"; on work a braver and a graver, though equally disputable—algebra should be dropped, not Greek. On English and the teaching of it to young boys the book is at its best. The boy's ear must first be metrically trained; be must learn much by heart —and " Ingoidaby " rather than the "Private of the Buffs"; he most do verses still, more even than before, but it must be English verses and not Latin. Schoolmasters will applaud this gladly ; but the layman may need the evidence of that Shrewsbury Lower Fifth whose poems populate a chapter and crowd an appendix before he will give assent. The chapter on morals is mostly blank paper, which is just what it should be in such a book. On the Montessori creed Mr. Alington uses the privilege of the " Greats " man to talk on what (with deep respect be it said) be does not understand, and lie talks, as " Greats " men do, extremely welL On every subject he is illuminating, and if when he discusses Church questions we wish that he would come back to boys, it is only because so many people can talk well on the Church and so very few on schools. Certainly the school part of the book is the best part. A man is not a good schoolmaster by accident, and some of the enthusiasm which set him or kept him where be is cannot but show through when he talks of his work, even if he talk dully. Mr. Alington is never dull, but when he talks of schools (or round them) there is a note in his voice that is not heard at other times, and every school. master who listens will feel at once that this is a man who has been there and who knows.
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