can as ill enjoy vaulting or trap-ball, as he
can penetrate the difficulties of the Digamma,
or appreciate the forty-seventh proposition of
Euclid. But if boys are taught to emulate
each other, and to aim at excellence, even in
their amusements, the principle of industry
thus seductively implanted, will radiate and
expand itself in all directions, grasping every
subject that inclination will permit, and
illumining every difficulty by that light which
the love of study alone can shed forth.

Amid such reflections, I shook hands with
my juvenile exhibitors, mentally vowing a
handsome contribution of books to their
library; and returning through the kitchen
(which in educational establishments is always
a sight worth seeing), I joined the master of
the Model School, having first gazed in
intense admiration upon six huge urns of tea,
and some leviathan piles of bread and butter
and water-cresses, that were just starting out
to the refectory. The bread and butter were
thoroughly home-made—and I should have
guessed so, even if the matron, with a slight
air of pride on her good-natured countenance,
had not told me so.

As we walked towards the Rectory, the head
master modestly received my praises, but
warmed with honourable enthusiasm as he
spoke of some of his best boys. I could have
listened for ever to have heard how young
Downton, who had been bored with
mathematics until he had been prostrated with brain
fever, had recovered health and intelligence
at the Model School, and had become one of
the most clever landscape-painters, albeit
adequately educated upon other points. Another
equally promising musician, already officiating
as organist to a college in connection with
the present establishment, owed all his
success to having been allowed to practise on
Mrs. Springer's pianoforte: having been
universally condemned as a " slow boy," from his
inability to comprehend or remember the
intricacies of verbs in MI. Such praise came
with the greater disinterestedness from this
admirable clergyman, who was himself a
thorough scholar and profound divine, and
who, without having any time for the lighter
studies and the less recondite, but more
compulsory, business of ordinary life, knew well,
not only how to appreciate all human tastes
and talents at their own real value, but likewise
took the best means, and employed the
best agents, for their development and
perfection.

In the course of a most agreeable evening's
conversation, he unfolded to me the plan of
the institution: to the foundation and carrying
on of which he had made no small personal
sacrifices. Many of the boys were admitted
free of expense; but neither themselves nor
the rest were acquainted with the fact.
Thus a large amount of bad feeling, painful
humiliation, and vulgar vanity, was nipped in
the bud, and a sense of equality served to
bring forth and ripen nobler feelings of
independence and self-reliance. The payments
made by the rest varied according to the
means of parents or friends; and private
subscriptions and gifts from parties whose
names seldom transpired, had already placed
the "Model School" in a fair condition to last
and to increase.

As to the system of education pursued,
although in nothing omitting the standard
features of a classical routine, it embraced a
large field, and did not render classics
compulsory upon those who, when once capable
of having any tastes at all, showed decided
dislike for them. At the same time, if a boy
evinced a disposition to return to a pursuit
he had once cast off, he met with encouragement
enough to make him wonder he had
ever disliked it. To mature the germs of
natural thought, not to forcibly engraft a
conventional set of ideas upon a repulsive
stem, was the principle of the Reverend
Lucas Springer; and, on this principle, he
had filled a school with boys, few of whom
seemed likely to disappoint the friend who
had supplanted the hobgoblin dynasty of the
Busbyites.

Walking towards the railway, and dozingly
musing in the carriage on my way home, on
what I had seen, I reached London.

SENTIMENTAL JOURNALISM.

THE French live, move, and have their
being for " effect." Truth and nature are
nothing unless they can be made to produce
something astonishing. Even in their
newspapers, which should be faithful mirrors
of society, the taint of this taste for spurious
art is everywhere to be found. Compare their
police reports with ours. Except in the
" Gazette des Tribuneaux"—which being solely
devoted to judicial reports, is bound to
be scrupulous—there is no stamp of truth
upon them. Each case is a little romance.
The story is developed, the characters are
grouped, and the dialogues conducted with
artistic and exaggerated love of effect. The
dry business of a charge, and the prisoner's
account of himself, are exchanged for the
romantic style of an episode in Gil Blas.
In a case of robbery, the sinner is
described as a " fair daughter of Eve "—the
sinned against as the " tender, but imprudent,
Sieur F——." In cases of assault, it
is generally the porter, or the porter's wife,
who have been quarrelling with one of
their lodgers: or it is the wine-shop keeper,
who has been resisted in his efforts to turn
out a turbulent customer—a very possible
case, and suggestive of a germ of truth in the
report. Frequently the mere manner of telling
the story casts a doubt upon it. The
narrative—for it is delivered in the narrative
form—always commences with a sketch of
the career and personal appearance of one of
the parties. The dialogues are invariably