Practically, the Englishman who wishes to
educate his son has nothing before him but a
choice of evils variously mixed with good. And
even if a school be faultless for one boy, it may
be absolutely unfit for another. "What our own
very costly public schools don't do, it has taken
the recent Public School Commission four fat
volumes to tell. At nearly all there is a good
physical training, at Rugby there is a first-rate
education of the character, but a young Englishman
fresh from his public school, or a graduate
fresh from one of our universities, is probably,
so far as school and university have gone, in point
of scholarship and general information, the most
thinly educated man of his sort to be found in
Europe. Eton, with an endowment that gives it
an income of twenty thousand a year, charges
from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds
a year for incomparably worse instruction than
can be had at a first-class French public school
for six-and-thirty pounds. At the Toulouse
Lyceum, every boarder having bought an outfit of
the value of twenty pounds, board and instruction
cost in the lowest division twenty-four pounds a
year, in the second division twenty-six, in the
highest thirty-six, and this charge includes the
expense of keeping clothes in repair, washing,
medical attendance, books and writing materials.
"The meals," says Professor Arnold, who has
described this public school, " though plain are
good, aud they arc set out with a propriety,
and a regard for appearances, which, when I was
a boy, graced no school dinners that I ever
saw." Whatever other views we may take of the
question, the spur of some added international
competition may quicken the pace of school
reform at home.

      A CROON ON HENNACLIFF.

   Thus said the rushing Raven
        Unto his hungry mate:
    Ho! Gossip! for Rood-Haven!
        There be corpses—six or eight:
    Cawk! Cawk! the crew and skipper
        Are wallowing in the sea,
    So there's a savoury supper
        For my old dame and me!

    Cawk! Gaffer! Thou art dreaming,—
        The shore hath wreckers bold,
    Would rend the yelling seamen
        From the clutching billows' hold!
    Cawk! Cawk! they'd bound for booty
        Into the Dragon's Den:
    And shout for " death or duty"
        If the prey were drowning men!

    Loud laugh 'd the listening surges
        At the guess our grandame gave,—
    You might call them, Boanerges,
        From the thunder of their wave!
    And mockery follow'd, after,
        The sea-bird's jeering brood:
    That fill'd the skies with laughter
        From Lundy-Light to Rood!

    Cawk! Cawk! then said the Raven,—
        I am fourscore years and ten,
    Yet never, in Rood-Haven,
        Did I croak for rescued men:—
    They will save the captain's girdle,
        And shirt, if  shirt there be,
    But leave their blood to curdle
        For my old dame and me!

    So, said the rushing Raven
        Unto his hungry mate,
    Ho! Gossip! for Rood-Haven,
        There be corpses, six or eight!
    Cawk! Cawk! The crew and skipper
        Are wallowing in the sea,—
    0! what a savoury  supper
        For my old dame and me!

QUITE ALONE.

BOOK THE SECOND:   WOMANHOOD.
CHAPTER XLIX.    AGAIN THE SULTAN.

IT must have been at least a thousand years ago
that the countess was the ruddled and drunken
Wild Woman who used to go about the fairs, and
exhibit herself to the bumpkins at so many liards
a head. She had always been a lady of fashion—
of the very highest fashion. Of course. Yet,
for all that, when the visitors had taken their
departure, she sent out Mr. Kafooze's
hump-backed niece for a little brandy, the which that
meek young person, who was half servitor and
half governess, brought in from the adjacent
public-house, with a corner of her ink-stained
apron thrown over the bottle.

It may here be not inappropriately remarked,
that as Mr. M 'Variety was following in the wake
of his illustrious visitors, he met little Mr. Kafooze
in the passage, and that, in the most
affable manner, he immediately smote the
schoolmaster on the shoulder, and inflicted a playful
dig beneath one of his ribs. "What the dickens
brings you here, my moonraker?" was the
inquiry of the manager of Ranelagh.

"Why, I live here, Mr. M'Variety," the little
man replied, rubbing his hands together, with
somewhat of an uneasy expression of
countenance.

"Live here! Why, I thought you didn't live
anywhere, unless it was in the moon."

"There's my name on the door-plate, Mr.
M'Variety. I keep a school. I keep a little
school, to eke out a livelihood. Times are very
hard, and I don't get much of a salary at the
Gardens, as you know sir, although I've been
there these five-and-twenty years."

"These five hundred years, you mean. And
so you keep a school? What a rum 'un you are,
to be sure. Find it pay? Eh! my noble stargazer?"

"Pretty well, Mr. M' Variety; only you'll
oblige me if you won't mention it. It's really
very important that you shouldn't mention it".
It might do me harm with the parents. You
see, sir, that this is a very pious neighbourhood*
and party feeling runs dreadfully high. I might