THE CHARTERHOUSE.

IT has passed into a commonplace to say that our public schools must be distinguished by the type which they produce. The ambition even of reaching a high intellectual standard, for the majority of boys, has now been abandoned before the dead weight of the English home. There have not been wanting able and high-minded masters, nor, again, intelligent pupils, but the teaching and example of school is powerless against the atmosphere of the ordinary English middle-class home. Here learning is never an end; sometimes a luxury; more often a necessary evil, like corporal punishment or the measles. Stick to it, my boy,' says Rawdon Crawley to young hopeful, 'there's nothing like a good classical education-nothing.' Precluded

therefore by the conditions of English life from success as a teacher, the modern schoolmaster has turned his attention to the formation of character—

in other words, to work which should be done in the family. It was one secret of Arnold's success that he boldly avowed this to be the end and aim of school education, rather than (to quote the usual formula) to pay attention to the intellect alone: indeed, people often talk as if manliness and truthfulness were unknown in English boys before Arnold's time. It is the novelty of such a theory of education which excites here and there the astonishment and even the admiration of the learned foreigner, just as to another class of observers the fly in amber presents irresistible attractions. That the system is crushing to individuality can hardly be denied, nor, again, that it often brings a strong reaction in its train. It may be that it has been rendered necessary by the sudden rise to wealth of our middle class, and a consciousness on their part that they are incapable of training their own families. For it raised a load from the mind of paterfamilias to feel that for a certain money payment he could shift his responsibilities as a parent on to the shoulders of a schoolmaster. And this is the real meaning of the common expression, 'I send my son to school to be made a gentleman of.' The conception of a gentleman may vary, but the

principle is the same in all cases. This principle the schoolmaster has endorsed. It is the parent of the boarding-house system, in which responsibility is set off against high charges. But it may be remarked here, in passing, that consistency does not prevent the same paterfamilias from exclaiming loudly against the moral enormity of a State-paid education for the poor. A further reason for the existing system of public schools undoubtedly is that the country life, so popular here, is unfavourable to the growth of large day-schools. For these presuppose that a majority of the upper and middle classes live in towns. But, be this as it may, it seems to be agreed that character should be formed at school, and hence each public school now aims at producing its own type of character. The type is determined by the local and historical associations of each several school, and will be marked and individual (so to say) in proportion as are these conditions modified by the influence of successive head-masters. Further, it is clear that the number of possible types is limited-far more so than that of schools; and hence that a new school must tend to follow a type established under conditions similar to its own.

The position of Charterhouse is in many ways peculiar. No school, it may safely be said, has ever gone through such a sundering of ties and associations. The moving of the school in 1872 was acknowledged by all to be the opening of a new chapter in its history. It was in reality far more. For it was a surrender, more or less deliberate, of the type which had prevailed there for two centuries and a half. And an interesting question arose. Since the type of a school depends mainly upon local and historical associations, what is the result of breaking with the former? Has the history of a school a life and vigour of its own apart from its site? Has the school a personal existence and character which impresses itself on all who are members of it so deeply as to be effaced by no special circumstance in after-life? Can it, for instance, neutralise class distinctions-(as Thackeray puts it: Is a boy a snob at school or not?)—or is its character dependent on that of the class from which the majority of the boys come ? Such questions, as it would seem, should find an answer in the recent history of Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse-the more so inasmuch as the school had no real connection with its old site. There

How

was nothing to prevent its being founded where it now stands indeed at one time it was settled to build it in Essex. Further, all the original surroundings of the old buildings have long since passed away. And first as to the history and site of the old school-the 'Slaughter House' and 'Greyfriars' of Thackeray's works, hard by Smithfield. The history of its foundation is well known. Thomas Sutton, merchant of London, bought of the Earl of Suffolk Howard House, once a Carthusian monastery-how he founded there a hospital containing an asylum for decayed gentlefolks, and a school-how he named in his will governors who were to hold his large estate in trust to carry out his work-how he was buried under a costly pile of alabaster and gilding-and how from his day to our own the school has lived on, now with 450 boys, now with less than 100, but maintaining its identity and its corporate life throughout-all this is written and may be read by the curious. Two points call for special mention the provision in Sutton's Act of

As for instance in Hearne's 'Domus Carthusiana'; Bearcroft's 'Historical account of Thomas Sutton, Esq.'; 'Life of Sutton : or, Memorials of Charterhouse by a Carthusian.' For the ordinary reader other accounts of Charterhouse have been superseded by a work, Charterhouse, Past and Present,' by the Rev. Dr. William Haig Brown, now head-master.