was in the sixth form, and so exempted from
liability to the block. His execution which
was, nevertheless, at one time talked of, for
some great offence, would have attracted a
larger concourse of spectators, than had been
gathered together on any similar occasion
since Dr. Keate flogged the whole of the lower
division. I remember his thrashing a
refractory cad in the town one day, when Mr.
Z., fresh from Cambridge, and appointed
one of the junior masters only a few days
before, at the age of three and twenty,
happened to come past. A comical expression
of uncertainty, flitted across little Z.'s features,
as he witnessed the scene; he hesitated,
with natural timidity, to walk up to the
great grenadier. It certainly was hard upon
him; it was as though a newly ermined
puisne judge were required, the very day of
his elevation, to put down the Attorney-
General. Z. compromised the matter, by
pretending to have seen nothing, and turned aside
into a neighbouring shop. A. left Eton,
I believe, with more leaving books, or
testimonials of regard, than had ever before been
given to a boy. He carried away a library
of some hundred volumes. It must have
been a melancholy moment for him when
he last set eyes on the distant spires and
antique towers of our foundation. Manhood
could hardly have in store for him any
such triumphs as those he had left behind.
He is now, I think, a highly respected clergyman
in the West of England, and, perhaps,
has one of his former fags for a rural
dean.

He was succeeded by R., who certainly was
not the best oar in the school, and furnished
one of the few instances of great admirals
in our republic who have owed their rise to
favouritism. His deficiency was so generally
acknowledged that he became a kind of king
fainéant- a mayor of the palace, promptly
revealing himself in the person of his
lieutenant, T., the captain of the Victory. "Boys
are so like men!" and British boys are, of
course, exactly like British men. No one will
be surprised to hear, therefore, that although
the real power had fallen into the hands of
T., yet it did not permit him to wrest
from his superior either the title of captain,
or the place at the stroke oar. The feeling of
the community would not have tolerated such
an usurpation. R. had been regularly chosen
and consecrated at the Upper Sixes of the
preceding year. To dispute the eligibility of
the choice now, might be to bring down the
whole fabric of our aquatic greatness with a
crash. It had always been the custom, too,
that the captain should row at the stroke oar,
and, although by persisting in this arrangement,
in the present case, it was admitted
that the college lost one very important match,
we should not have been easily brought to
suffer an innovation. It will be seen that
routine and red-tapeism are not confined to
cabinets, where, indeed, those great Anglo-
Saxon institutions only receive their highest
developments, and attract attention by
operating in a wider field.

What might have happened, even with our
well-ordered and conservative spirit, if R.
had stayed on another year, it is impossible
to conjecture. Our constitution, laws, and
customs, whereof the memory of boy ran not
to the contrary, would have come to a dead
lock, similar to that of 'eighty-eight, or of the
period of the Reform Bill. A tempest in
some form or other would assuredly have
swept over our little slop basin, and the Great
Admiral would have stood a great chance of
going down in his cockboat. He would have
been morally tonsured and put into a convent,
like the Merovingians of old. Happily, the
case did not arise, and T. started the following
March, on the river, as de jure and de
facto captain, with one of the finest eights
that ever upheld the honour of Eton. He
regained our laurels, lost under the reign of
his feeble predecessor, and vanquished every
opponent. Nor were his exploits confined to
the watery element; he and his crew thrashed
—or, were popularly supposed to have
thrashed, which was the same thing—an equal
number of life-guardsmen. Training was in
his day carried to a height undreamt of before,
and enforced by the strictest edicts of
what has since become known as a beneficent
despotism. The fasts of the church are not
more religiously observed by the Trappist,
than was the diet of stale bread, raw meat,
bottled porter, and hard-boiled eggs, by the
athletes who rowed under the motto of
Floreat Etona. The effect of this system upon
lads of eighteen certainly was to produce
the demise of two of them within a few years,
and the permanent enfeeblement of several
others; but the chronicler whose business is
only with the public deeds of his heroes, must
decline to follow them into the seclusion of
their private lives, and referring to the example
of Achilles, must content himself with
remarking that their career, if not long, was
glorious, and will be handed down to remote
Anglo-Saxondom in the columns of Bell's
Life.

On Thursday, the twentieth instant (Almanac-day), will
be published, in Twenty-eight pages, stitched,
PRICE FOURPENCE,
THE
HOUSEHOLD WORDS ALMANAC,
FOR THE YEAR 1857.
Household Words Office, No. 16, Wellington Street
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