regards methods. They, therefore, have for years taken on the average, age for age, a far higher place on entering the Junior School than boys prepared in other schools. This superiority is equally true of the Junior boy entering the Upper School. Moreover, of the forms which are parallel in any two departments the general experience is that in every examination the better work is done by the junior of the two.

Thus the Junior School third forms will always beat on the same papers the parallel third forms in the Upper School. This is partly no doubt due to the fact that the upper- forms in the Junior School represent to some extent the survival of the fittest, while the parallel forms in the Upper School may partly represent the survival of of the unfittest, inasmuch as the dull Junior boys may be drafted into the Upper School before reaching a third form. But after making all due allowance for this, it is still undoubtedly true that both Preparatory and Junior boys on entering a higher department more than hold their own against boys entering from outside.

As regards the honours which are won on leaving school, it is less easy to estimate how great a share should fall to those who have passed through the Junior School; but after careful calculation it may safely be said that the Junior School boys at least hold their own. It appears, therefore, to be abundantly clear that as far as work is concerned the average boy gains considerably by entering in the Junior School, while in the case of clever or brilliant boys honours are divided, and those from good outside Preparatory Schools hold their own.

Excellence in games is a comparatively minor point, but as games are compulsory and it is obviously important that boys should learn that whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, the Junior School is entitled to credit for the fact that its old members contribute far more than their proportional numerical share to the school representatives in cricket, football, and gymnastics.

If one turns to the other side of the account there are, it must at once be admitted, certain obvious objections to the Clifton system.

It is undoubtedly true that in some cases if a boy is to remain at school till he is nineteen, nine or ten years at one school is too much. Some boys will be distinctly the better for a change about the middle of their school life, and will gain by coming among new companions, with a different set of associations. This is especially the case with boys who from any reason have not made the best of the earlier years of their school life. A complete change of companions and associations may help them more than anything else to make a new start in life. Moreover, to a large extent, they may be said on entering a Public School to begin with a clean sheet. Characters are, of course, sent with them, but on the whole but few of either masters or boys know anything of their previous peccadilloes or scrapes, and honest efforts to make the best of their new life will not be discounted

by a knowledge of former idleness or wrong doing. This is of undoubted importance, as the knowledge to a boy that his character is already considered unsatisfactory may be a great hindrance to reform.

At Clifton this is fully recognised, and masters are aware of the importance of not unnecessarily talking to each other of the failings of their pupils.

In the case of deliberately bad boys who do not wish to work or to make the best of their school life, the more that is known of them the better. And the Clifton system has this advantage that if such boys do come into the Junior School, they are either sent away before entering the Upper School, or if they are allowed to enter, their chances of doing harm to others by bad example are greatly reduced.

Another objection may fairly be urged against the Clifton system. The departments may be kept quite apart and yet the younger boys, it may be said, will tend to copy the manners and ways of their olders, and what in older boys may be reasonable and natural with the small boys may become affectation and swagger.

This appears to be an objection of which the force must depend entirely on the tone and the manner prevalent in any particular school. If, as may be hoped, the prevailing attitude of the older boys is that of thoroughness and manliness and modesty, this tone will be found to prevail among the juniors, and they will show the same qualities in their work and games. That the young are essentially imitative is obviously true, and the contiguity of older boys will, therefore, be a gain or a hindrance according to the character of the school.

There is another undoubted danger in the Clifton system. Junior schoolboys who become prominent in games get known by reputation, and possibly by sight, among the older boys, and when they leave the Junior School, they certainly run some risk of being spoiled by too much notice being taken of them.

Where this danger is known and realised it can to a large extent be guarded against, but if precautions were neglected, evil might easily ensue.

It is not, perhaps, easy to make any very accurate comparison between the general life at an ordinary Preparatory School and at the Junior Department of a school like Clifton, but of late years so much capital has been put into the Preparatory School profession that such schools will probably quite hold their own in general equipment and the accessories of school life, so that they will all alike have their swimming baths, fives' courts, cricket grounds, and sanatoria.

If anything there will be slightly less luxury in the life of the boy at the Public School, but there will be more abundant provision of the more expensive apparatus of education, and Junior School boys will reap some of the advantages of museums, laboratories, facilities for music and drawing that are primarily intended, and organised on a scale suitable for a large school of four or five hundred boys.

Further, it is not unimportant that boys should at an early age become acquainted with a correct standard of excellence in all the occupations of their life.

Under the Clifton system a boy is perhaps less likely to form an exaggerated idea of his own proficiency than he might be at an ordinary Preparatory School. On the other hand, as has already been pointed out, the really good boy, unless precautions are taken, will run at the Public School a greater chance of receiving undue attention or adulation from his schoolfellows.

There is, however, one very definite advantage that the Clifton system presents to those who value education in the true sense of the word. Nearly all Preparatory Schools suffer from having to prepare boys for examination at far too early an age. Such schools are judged by their successes at Scholarship and Entrance Examinations, and in many cases the education of other boys suffers in consequence. At Clifton the Junior and Preparatory Schools are hampered by no such requirements, and the whole routine and scheme of work is laid out simply with a view to prepare each boy according to his ability to take his place in the department above. No public examination disturbs the teaching of the term, and the success or failure of boys and teachers alike is tested not by any particular examination in the school so much as by the general average of success attained by all the Junior boys during the whole of their career at Clifton.

A. T. MARTIN.

THE PREPARATORY DEPARTMENT AT A PUBLIC SCHOOL.

In January, 1885, at the request of the headmaster of a wellknown Public School in the suburbs of London, I undertook to organise a Preparatory School in connection with it.

This school was one in which the day-boy element was so far in excess of the boarding one that it might for all practical purposes be called a day-school, and it was, therefore, virtually certain that the Preparatory department would resemble its foster parent in the same respect. This turned out to be the

case.

In founding a Preparatory School my headmaster had in view the better preparation of boys entering the parent school, and, if possible, the establishment of a higher standard in the lower forms of that school. He had felt that the standard of work aimed at by the majority of the numerous Preparatory Schools in the neighbourhood was not high enough, and that in consequence too much of the elementary work which should have been done in them had to be done in the lower forms of the big school itself.

The history of this Preparatory School has so far been one of quiet and unbroken success. Beginning humbly as it did with a small class of seven boys it rose in numbers slowly but surely, and there were over 60 members at the end of two years, when my connection with it ceased. After a lapse of 15 years it now numbers over 200, and has at any rate fulfilled one of the objects of its foundation, seeing that few of its members fail to reach at least the third form in the larger school, and nearly all the junior scholarships in that school are won by boys prepared at it.

It cannot be claimed for the Preparatory School that it has raised the standard of the lower forms in the larger school, but it does act as a valuable feeder to that school, seeing that 90 per cent. of its members proceed there and that very few of them are to be found in its three lowest forms.

The management of the Preparatory department is left entirely to the discretion of its headmaster, who, though appointed by, and of course directly responsible to, the headmaster of Dulwich, has a free hand in all matters relating to the staff, the work taught, and the general discipline of the department. The only practical supervision exercised takes the form of a yearly examination, in which the papers are set and looked over by masters of the College itself. The headmaster also reserves to himself the right of being present at lessons and of testing a class personally at any time-a right rarely, if ever, exercised,