that be was looking well, and when Mr. Brown
accounted for this phenomenon by attributing
it to his recent stay in the country, those two
gentlemen settled, in two sentences, the vexed
question whether Westminster School ought to
remain where it is at present, or ought to be
removed to a distance from town.

That so much as five minutes' discussion
should have been bestowed upon this matter is
almost incredible. With all the prestige of an
established name, that most powerful of all
arguments in England, the school at
Westminster is languishing, and the number of the
scholars is continually decreasing. Indeed, how
should this be otherwise? What parent, with
the choice of Eton, Rugby, Winchester, or
Harrow before him, would send his boy to
Westminster? Five minutes spent in the
playing-fields at Eton, and another five minutes
passed in the court-yard at Westminster, where
the boys play at rackets, would settle the question
(if it ever arose) in the mind of any
unbiased man with an ounce of sense in his
composition. Take up a position in the Eton
playing-fields on a hot summer evening, when
the shadows of the tall elms have just begun
to lengthen, stretching themselves out from
their concealment among the leaves, where
they have curled themselves up all day. It
is always delightful to see any creature –
using the word in its largest sense – in a
position in which its peculiar characteristics and
nature have full scope for development. It
is delightful to see a skylark lifting itself
higher and higher from the earth, and recording
each inch of upward progress with new revelry
of song. It is delightful to see a herd of young
heifers scampering about a meadow. It is
delightful to see a butterfly in a flower-garden, a
horse turned loose in a field, a red-deer on a
Scotch mountain – if you can get near enough –
or a curlew wheeling overhead. But, better
than all these good things is the sight of
human creatures in the full enjoyment of life,
and youth, and health, and with every means
afforded them for developing that bodily strength
and activity which, if we fail to consider, we
cultivate the mind to little purpose. You will see,
as you linger in these Eton playing-fields, or as
you walk beside the Thames, what conveniences
the place affords, not only for cricket and all the
other games which the boys are engaged in, but
also for rowing and swimming. You will see
that those youngsters who are not in the cricket
match are hurrying off to their boats or to the
bathing-place for a swim. You will see them
return, tired, but healthily tired, and with such
an appetite for sleep at bedtime as a London
boy can scarcely hope to know.

Go from this place to Westminster. If it is
delightful to see the different creatures with
which the earth is peopled, each in the full
enjoyment of its faculties, and able to use them as
nature intended, it is equally distressing to find
these creatures in captivity, or in such a situation
that they are crippled and confined, and
deprived by the nature of their position, of the
freedom of action in which they delight. The lark is a
wretched object to contemplate when confined
in a six-inch cage in a bird-fancier's window;
and a curlew in one of the aviaries at the
Zoological Gardens is not like the bird which
cries so wildly as it poises over a mountain
glen in Scotland. Are the country boy and
the London youngster more alike? Surely not.
The transparent water which glides along so
gaily by the Eton fields, and which is so clear
that you can see the dace at the bottom, is
scarcely less like the Thames at Westminster
than the Eton boy is to the Westminster boy.
London is for the man, not for the boy. Let
his course flow up to it in time as the river's
does. Let him reach it when he is wanted
there, when he must be there, and not an hour
before.

We have just been in the playing-field at
Eton; let us now glance for a moment into the
Westminster racket-court. In the first place,
it is thoroughly inconvenient and defective as a
racket-court. It is not made for the purpose,
the extent of wall is insufficient, there are
breaks and interruptions in its surface that are
fatal to the game, and there are certain recesses
under the steps which lead up to the doors of
the houses bordering the court into which
the ball is for ever getting, and into which it
never enters without interrupting the game.
When your Eye-witness entered the racket-
court, a couple of languid young gentleman in
white neckcloths and gowns, and with highly-
dressed hair, were playing a game which it
made him wretched to look on at. These listless
racketers rarely, if ever, hit the ball twice before
it dropped. In very successful moments, one
of the players would strike the ball, and the
other would manage on its rebound to hit it
again, but this was very unusual. The ordinary
course of the game was less brilliant, and the
racketer would generally hit the ball once in
a listless manner, taking no note of where it
was going; the other would miss it, and would
feebly utter a call to some small youth who was
loitering about to " send it up." It would then
be sent up, and the same process would again
be gone through. It was not that the boys
were not able to play, but that they were taking
no pains, were not interested in their game,
and were half inclined to leave off and join
the ranks of their friends who were spending
their play-hour in lounging about doing nothing.
There were some little boys in white neckcloths,
sitting about on stone steps, plunged in such
depths of depression, that even the arrival of
the postman with letters for them directed
"esquire," failed to rouse them. As your Eye-
witness observed this scene; as he noted the
arrival of the milk-woman with the afternoon's
milk, and thought of the difference between
that milk and the country milk, between the
air he was breathing and the country air, and
between the bricks and stone which met his
eye in all directions and the green and waving
trees that border the Eton fields, he felt a
depression akin to that of the white-neckclothed