warrior Marlborough. We have given an engraving of the school as built by Colet. The present building was erected in the years 1823-1824. The principal other old metropolitan schools were established in the following order-the Mercers' own free-grammar school, in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII.; the Merchant Tailors' in 1567; St. Saviour's, 1562; St. Olave's, 1570; and Westminster, 1590. The Mercers' School originally, as we have seen, formed a part of the Hospital of St. Thomas-of-Acon's, a religious establishment of such great wealth and rank that its master, at the time of the dissolution, was a mitred abbot, and the revenues truly princely. Henry VIII. sold the buildings and a part of its land to the Mercers' Company, stipulating for once that the school should be maintained. But the merit of this precaution seems to belong to Sir Thomas Gresham, who, Strype says, was instrumental in the making of the arrangement. From this period the school became a regular free-school. In 1804 the Company wisely departed from the strictly classical system previously pursued, by including the other branches of a sound general education; and in 1809 increased the numbers of its scholars from 25 to 35, and since then again to 70: a circumstance highly creditable to the Company, and the more necessary to be mentioned inasmuch as we have alluded to the different mode in which they have dealt with the foundation of Dean Colet, at St. Paul's. There are no restrictions as to age or place of residence of scholars, but a certain amount of proficiency is deemed indispensable. The instruction is perfectly gratuitous; and there is attached to the school the farther advantage of two University exhibitions of 50l. per annum each, for five years, to reward occasionally the most meritorious students. Of this school Colet was a member, also Sir Thomas Gresham, Sir Lionel, afterwards Lord, Cranfield, and Bishop Wren. The masters are four in number. The school, like that of St. Paul's, is constantly full. The school of the Merchant Tailors is an honourable instance of the application of surplus funds by a City company, assisting, as it does, to a considerable extent, in the education of no less than 250 pupils. It was founded in 1561 for children of all nations and countries indifferently, which in 1731 was interpreted to mean that Jews were to be excepted, or else the Company had grown in the interim less tolerant in its views. Notwithstanding the Company's assistance, the education is still expensive, averaging, on the whole, not less than ten pounds yearly. Attached to the school are thirty-seven fellowships at St. John's College, Oxford, founded by Sir Thomas White for its scholars in consequence, several of the best are yearly sent to the University. A long list of eminent names graces the pages of the school-records of Merchant Tailors' we read there Lancelot Andrews, Juxon, Charles I.'s spiritual companion on the scaffold, William Lowth the elder, and who is said to have been a profounder scholar even than his better known son, the translator of Isaiah, Sandys, the traveller, Dr. Schomberg, Sir James, and Bulstrode Whitelock, Robert, the first Lord Clive, with archbishops, bishops, &c., too numerous to mention. The education here is strictly classical and mathematical; and conducted by four masters. The school of St. Saviour deserves respectful mention, were it only for the admirable practical rules drawn up by its founders. According to one of these, the Master is to be a man of a wise, sociable, and loving disposition, not hasty or furious, nor of any ill example; he shall be wise and of good experience, to discern the nature of every several child; to work upon the disposition for the greatest advantage, benefit, and comfort of the child; to learn with the love of his book: unfortunately, it was necessary then as now to add, “if such a one may be got." The sports of the scholars, by the same rules, were directed to be shooting with the long-bow, chess, running, wrestling, and leaping. Scholars pay, according to Carlisle,* 17. entrance-money, and 21. per annum; the present expense, we are informed by authority, is about the same. This agrees but ill with one part of the intentions of the founders in 1526, that the school should be for children, as well of the poor as of the rich. The founders of St. Olave's, in 1570, seem to have had these words in view when they formed their establishment for children and younglings as well of rich as the poor," being inhabitants of the parish. Elizabeth consented, it seems, to become the patron, and it was, consequently, called her school; but her name and a legal status seem to have been all she gave to it. An excellent general education was provided, which was to be so truly free that not even books were to be paid for, and the masters were not to receive any fee or reward, directly or indirectly, on any pretence whatever. The age of admittance is six or seven, and the boys remain generally till fourteen, when those of humbler condition are apprenticed; others, who are studying for the learned professions, may remain an almost unlimited time. Two exhibitions of 801. each at the Universities are connected with the school. St. Olave's is now one of the most valuable of metropolitan schools. The funds have been so greatly increased in progress of time, that they amount at present to about 3000l. a-year. With the enlargement of the means the ends have been pursued, of late years at least, in a correspondingly liberal spirit. The school is exclusively for the parish, or rather the two parishes, into which the old St. Olave's has been divided, and is only the more efficient from that very exclusiveness: since the number of children taught (limited only by the capacity of the buildings) is so large, nearly six hundred, that undue preferences, whether of persons or of classes, become alike unnecessary and impracticable to any important extent: the parish therefore is and must be done justice to. The establishment is divided into two schools-the classical, forming, with the head master's house, the chief portions of the exceedingly elegant and appropriate Endowed Grammar Schools. architectural pile shown in our engraving, and the English, or branch, situated at a little distance in the neighbourhood. The tuition in the two schools merely differs in this, that whilst all the ordinary branches of English education, with the classics, are taught in the one, in the other the classics are omitted. This difference points to the practical difference that exists between the classes of society to which the children of the schools respectively belong, the classical school receiving generally those of the middle, the English those of the poorer inhabitants of the parish. The number of boys in the first is now about 320, in the second about 250; taught, in each case, by three masters. The last, best known, and historically the most important, of all the old schools of London remains yet to be noticed. Who has not heard of the Westminster boys, of their plays and disputations, of their illustrious roll of great men who have been educated within the Old Abbey precincts, and of the Masters who have made the world ring again with the fame of their learning, almost as much as they have made the school walls reverberate with the sounds of the lash and the cries of the lashed? Personify all the awful visions that ever shook the nerves of the youthful dreamers of punishment yet to be received for hours of unlicensed absence, or tasks too late taken in hand, and whose but Dr. Busby's terrible shadow rises to the view? It is said that much of the traditional character of this exemplar of pedagogues is exaggerated; we hardly think it. When the great quarrel took place between Dr. Busby and his second master, Bagshawe, which ended in the latter's dismissal, the severity of the former's discipline was one of the chief points urged by Bagshawe against him. He has "often complained to me," observes the latter, " and seems to take it ill, that I did not use the rod enough." In the Life of some Schoolmaster in 'Nicholl's Literary Anecdotes,' it is observed that he would chastise pretty severely; but it is still pointed out to his credit that he never did what it is stated was a common habit with Busby-send boys home with a piece of buckram appended to a particular part of their apparel, as a necessary temporary substitute for the part that had been flogged away by the master's zeal for his young friend's intellectual welfare. But to do the Doctor justice, we have no doubt whipping with him was a piece of honest enthusiasm, and not by any means a mere ebullition of impatience or ill temper. Pointing to a scholar, he said one day, "I see great talents in that sulky boy, and I shall endeavour to bring them out." Dr. South was the result of the discipline that followed. How could the physician help having faith thenceforward in his medicine? Some boys, to be sure, could not perhaps pass through the ordeal, and these he frankly acknowledged had no business at Westminster. He said his rod was his sieve, according to Dr. Johnson, and whoever could not pass through that was no boy for him. Busby, it appears, had his "white boys," or favourites. Witty in himself, it is creditable to him that he is said to have liked wit in others, even though they were his own scholars, and the joke was at his own expense. It must have been a terrible piece of business though for a boy to have committed himself to a bad joke in such experiments. The only trustworthy anecdote of Busby that has been received in reference to the wit of which we spoke, seems to be this. Sitting once in company between Mrs. South and Mrs. Sherlock, the conversation turned on wives; Dr. Busby said that he "believed wives in general were good, though, to be sure, there might be a bad one here and a bad one there." For fifty-five years did Dr. Busby rule the destinies of the school; and during that time so many able scholars passed through his "sieve," that he was able at one time to boast that sixteen out of the whole Bench of Bishops had been educated by him. The "rod" must have been in glorious occupation after these recollections. Of the Masters prior to Busby, the most worthy of notice is Camden, who was made Under-Master in 1571, and whilst in that position composed his great work, the Britannia.' In 1592 he received the appointment of Head-Master. Ben Jonson was one of his scholars. As to the Masters since Dr. Busby, the first was the brother of the eminent Physician, of whom we have had occasion, in the College of Physicians,* to relate an interesting anecdote referring to his confinement in the Tower: the following verses were published in consequence of this appointment: Ye sons of Westminster, who still retain This Dr. Freind caused much speculation in the school on the occasion of his brother's arrest, by giving for a theme, Frater ne desere Fratrem. To give any adequate idea of the number of the scholars who, by their subsequent career, have shed a glory over the school that educated them, is all but hopeless. Embarrassed apparently by too much wealth, the historian of the school does not attempt to mention any but those who have been distinguished by their election to the Universities. Among these we find Dryden, in 1650, who signalised himself at the school by translating the Third Satire of Perseus,' for a Thursday night's exercise, as he has informed us in a prefatory advertisement to the published Satire. Next comes Locke, who was elected to Oxford in 1652. Then a batch of poets, Smith, Prior, Rowe, and Dryden's rival, Elkanah Settle. Smith's election was marked by a very unusual compliment. His performances as a candidate were so remarkable, that a contest ensued between the electors of the two Universities as to which should have him; those of Cambridge had that year the preference, and they elected him; but the Oxford people, no less determined, did what they could; they offered the young scholar a studentship in one of the colleges, and he accepted it. Bishop Newton follows, and then two more poets, the friends Churchill and Lloyd. The last was for a short time an usher in the school. As to Churchill, when he applied for matriculation at Oxford, on leaving the school, he was, according to some, rejected on account of his deficiency, whilst others relate the matter in a very different manner, saying that he was so hurt at the trifling questions put to him by the Examiner, that he answered with a contempt which was mistaken for ignorance. He was subsequently admitted at Cambridge. Warren Hastings, and a host of more recent men, continue the list of distinguished Westminster scholars. There are some curious points in the management of this school. The mode of election of boys. upon the foundation is one of these. We must premise that the present school forms a constituent part of the establishment of the Cathedral, and dates therefore from the final settlement of the latter in 1560, when it was determined, as * See the College of Physicians, No. XXVII. p. 28. regards the school, that there should be two Masters, and forty King's or Queen's scholars. These are distinguished by a peculiar garb, an academicallooking cap and gown; and enjoy peculiar and highly estimated advantages. Owing to the high patronage under which such a school necessarily existed, admission into it has always been greatly desired by parents of the highest rank for their children. Hence the necessity for a less restricted admission. "Town boys" are therefore received as well as Queen's scholars, and from the first the second are elected. No one who has once witnessed the mode of election will ever forget it. At the commencement of Lent, a certain number of boys, generally from twenty to thirty, announce themselves to the Master as candidates for college. An arduous training is passed through by each boy before the day of contest arrives, under the care of one who has already passed the ordeal, and a most interesting feature of the business is the zeal of these assistants for their "men," as they call them. Morning, noon, and eve they are constantly by their side, teaching them all the tactics of the intellectual carte and tierce for which they are preparing. The great event commences at last. The candidates are arranged according to their forms in the school, and their places in the forms. The "helps" are at hand to give all possible assistance. A lesson, some Greek epigrams, perhaps, is set, and the two lowest boys, figuratively speaking, enter the arena. The lowest of these is the challenger, and now calls upon his adversary to translate one of the epigrams, to parse any particular number of words in it, and to answer any grammatical questions connected with the subject. Demand after demand is made and correctly replied to. Baffled, but still determined, the challenger pursues, and at last some unlucky mistake is made; the head master, who sits as judge, triumphantly appealed to,-"It was a mistake" is the decision ; the challenger and the challenged change places on the form, and then the latter, with a fierce eagerness, repeats the process by putting his questions. This continues till one of them is exhausted, feels he is beaten, and resigns the contest. The conqueror, flushed with victory, now turns to the boy above him, and supposing him to be one of those heroes who occasionally "flash amazement" on all around, will pass step by step upwards, taking ten, fifteen, aye, twenty places in succession, before he too is stopped and quails under a greater spirit. The result is, that from seven to ten of the boys are elected into the college, according to their precedence on the list of the most successful competitors, to take the places of those sent to the Universities. There are four studentships at Christ Church, Oxford, and three or four scholarships at Trinity, Cambridge: election to the former involves the important privilege of a living on quitting the University, to all who choose to accept it. The selection of Queen's scholars to fill the University vacancies is made yearly, after an examination by the heads of the two Colleges. In looking at the character of the foregoing examination, we are so strongly reminded of the meetings on the bank boarded about at St. Bartholomew's that the question naturally occurs, whether the one custom is not a remnant of the other? and on referring to Stow's notice to see what schools shared in those ancient disputations, we find the boys of "St. Peter's, Westminster," expressly mentioned with those of St. Paul's, the Mercers' (or St. Thomas-of-Acon's), and St. Anthony's. The plays of Terence, annually performed in the large dormitory erected in the time of Atterbury's deanship, from a design by |