Victorious Rome then took the part

Of Greece enslaved and captured;
And offered freedom for the art
By which she was enraptured.

But art's a stale commodity

By Genius when forsaken;

And freedom is a liberty

Not given-only taken.

When Christian Faith threw off the sham

Docetical and gnostic,'

Then sank Rome's lay to anagram,

And even to acrostic.

Then fled the pagan muse in fright
And terror from scholastics,
Who hated verse, and took delight
In logical gymnastics;

And sought that outcast muse a place
Of rest with monk and mystic!
They exorcised her witching grace
With Bull and Ban papistic!

Abjuring then, while yet 'twas time,
Her scandalosa vita,

She took the veil at Gandersheim,
And signed herself "Hroswita," 2

To tragedies whose fiery scenes,
Of love's exchange and barter,
Were played by christened heroines,
Each married to a martyr.

But Grecian fire and faith withstood
A pressure elephantine,

And in her last decrepitude

Greece ruled the Realm Byzanti

Docetes and Gnostics, sects in the early rise of Latin Christianity and the decline of 2 Hroswita, nun of Gandersheim, tragedies after Terence in text and mo

"A

JOHN BRIGHT'S SCHOOL.

THOUSAND pounds would make me a happy man,"

remarked Dr. Knight, then librarian at the British Museum, who had lost all his money through speculation. "Sayest thou so, friend? Then I will have the pleasure of making thee happy," replied Dr. Fothergill, the benevolent Quaker physician, who thereupon wrote out a cheque for a thousand guineas, which he put into his friend's hand, telling him to go home and set his heart at rest.

This generous man was the founder of the leading school of the Quakers, situated at Ackworth, near Pontefract, and opened in 1779 for the purpose of securing "a pious, guarded, careful education to the children of Friends not in affluence." It was here that John Bright received some portion of his education, and the school register contains the names of William Howitt, the author; of James Wilson, who became a Right Honourable, and financial secretary for India ; of Henry Ashworth, foremost in the anti-corn law agitation; Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen, the translator of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered," and the author of the "Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell"; Benjamin B. Wiffen, author of the "History of the Early Spanish Protestant Reformers"; Dr. Miller, F.R.S., author of the "Elements of Chemistry"; John Gilbert Baker, F.R.S., the well-known botanist; and Mrs. Ellis, author of the "Women of England."

The Ackworth School estate was originally the property of the London Foundling Hospital. The site, which contained eighty-four acres, and the buildings, were bought for £6,800, or one-half their cost. In 1847 considerable additions were made to the buildings, and adjoining land has since been bought. The property now consists of 250 acres, 130 of which are let, and the remainder is farmed by the institution. Howitt gives the following graphic description of the school as it appeared in his day :

A vast wide house, with long stone passages, large number a severe discipline, cold hard beds at night, cold rising in the d no hats allowed in the playground in the winter-and wint sharp-no approach to the fire on holiday afternoons till after

rainy days, our play place an immense open shed, supported in front by Tuscan pillars, where, thrusting our hands into our bosoms, we used to huddle together by scores to keep one another warm, and happy was he that got deepest into the throng. Could anything be more comfortless?

The school was open to all poor children of parents who were members of the Society of Friends. It attracted children from America, and even from Russia. The terms were only £8. 8s. a year, which included board, lodging, education, and clothing. Small as these charges seem, there were at that time several boarding schools where the terms were even lower. They were too high, however, for some of the parents, who were unable to pay the cost of conveying their children to the school. This drawback was anticipated by the committee, who offered 2d. for every mile exceeding fifty which the children travelled, and the same on the return journey. As a large proportion of the scholars came long distances, the value of this arrangement will be obvious. The first two inmates of the school came from Dorset, some 300 miles. How they came, the historian of the school (Mr. Henry Thompson) does not say; but there were then no public coaches from some towns, the roads were bad, "nor could a timid mother always forget the graver perils of the attacks of armed highwaymen."

A coach was occasionally chartered which picked up children at various places on the road. In the regular coaches they were not welcome passengers, because their appearance was homely and their purse light. "Quite full," growled the driver to a gentleman who wanted an inside place, " and a queer lot too, a regular rag, tag, and bobtail."

The driver did not suppose that his speech was heard by the inside passengers, and at the end of his stage came obsequiously to the door as usual. The lady in charge of the children took her revenge. Laying three sixpences in his hand one by one, she said, without a smile and unconscious of sarcasm, "that is from 'Rag,' that is from 'Tag,' and that is from ' 'Bobtail' !

" 1

"Wanted, a schoolmaster." When Ackworth School was ready for opening, the committee sought far and wide for a schoolmaster. Dr. Fothergill at last found a young man who he hoped might

The phrase was in common use two hundred years ago. Pepys thus refers to it: “After that I went to see Mrs. Jem, at whose chamber door I found a couple of ladies, but she not being there, we hunted her out, and found that she and another had hid themselves behind the door. Well, they all went down into the dining-room, where it was full of tag, rag, and bobtail, dancing, singing, and drinking, of which I was ashamed, and after I had staid a dance or two I went away."-Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys. Edited by Bright, 1875.

answer. But the good man wished the dominie could be a fortnight under the hands of a drill serjeant to teach him how to walk. "Schoolmasters," the doctor added, "often strut sufficiently, but they should learn sometimes to do it with a good grace, for the sake of example; but we must take him as he is."

This teacher's name was Joseph Donobavand, and his salary £20 a year; after seven years' service it was increased to £35! When he married, the committee agreed to give him £50, a house rent free, and coal. Joseph was the senior writing master, and William Howitt describes him as a tall, slender man, with a long, thin countenance, and dark hair combed backwards. "Who," asks Howitt, "does not remember his snuff-box, opened with its three systematic raps, and the peculiar jerk of his elbow when he felt himself bound to refuse some petition ?" He was a most perfect master of penmanship and of swimming. The latter art, he said, he had been taught by a frog, having one end of a string tied to its leg, and holding the other in his mouth, and then pursuing it and imitating its movements. It was his favourite humour to do a kind act with an air of severity.

"Get away with thee," he exclaimed with an emphatic elbowjerk, to a very little boy sent to him to be caned, "thee be caned, why, thou art a coward; thou art afraid to go into the bath. Get away with thee."

The Quaker schoolmasters and officials were, indeed, comical fellows, judging from the graphic pictures of them drawn by one. of their scholars. "There was," remarks Howitt, "William Sowerby, an old preacher, a man in a long homespun coat, buttoned to the chin, a man of whom Crabbe might have said—

And never mortal left this world of sin

More like the being that he entered in.

a creature as tender and innocent as a lamb, who wandered about the house and schools, from place to place, met us at coming out, dropped a word of advice to us, preached to us at the meetinghouse of 'onions and garlic in the flesh-pots of Egypt,' and worked with us in the fields."

A little stiff man, with a round well-fed face, and a very dry and sibilant voice, is the description given of Thomas Bradshaw, the senior reading-master. "His hat was always three-cocked; his clothes always dark brown; his gaiters black. We looked upon him with awe, for he had been a naval captain, and had heard the roar of battle, as one of his legs testified, having had the calf blown away by a cannon shot. Worthy old man-in our anger we called him

Tommy Codger, and forgot the Pomfret cakes which he always carried in his waistcoat pocket, to bestow if he heard a cough-and sure enough he heard many a one as he went his evening rounds through the bedchambers."

Hard were the rules under which Ackworth School was governed. They were quite as severe as those of a monastery. Everything, in fact, was determined by rule. There was a rule as to where the boys should leap. For sixty years the following regulation was read in public once a month :

"The boys are desired not to leap anywhere within the bounds, except on the ground below the pump or in the shed court, and there to avoid the pebbles, flags, and channel stones."

Along with this needless rule another was abolished against "peeping through the dining-room door, which shows bad manners; to look in with a view of knowing what victuals are for the next meal, betrays too much attention to what they eat."

The interference with the children's recreations by the masters went so far as to prohibit kite-flying, because a horse had taken fright at a paper kite. It was also contended that kites occasion "considerable expense of money" which may be employed more usefully, that the "diversion endangers the children's taking cold by standing, and prevents their taking exercise which is necessary for their health," and that "it is a temptation to children to go out of bounds," that is, out of the school grounds.

Different methods of punishing the boys were in force. In some cases they forfeited one week's spice; in others, their hands were tied behind them at dinner-time. But the teachers were not allowed to inflict corporal punishment at will. The consent of all the masters had to be obtained at their weekly "courts." A modification of this regulation was, however, made, which provided that in cases of disobedience to a master's orders, or contempt of his authority, the master might at once call in two of his fellow-teachers, who, with himself, might jointly decide on the amount of correction adequate to the offence, and inflict it with the rod with due caution, not exceeding three strokes, to be done by one of the masters not offended. These methods, though cumbrous, were at any rate better than punishments inflicted in the heat of passion.

Another method of punishment was to compel offenders to sit at a table having no cloth upon it; a third, that of solitary confinement, sometimes for nights and days, with a diet of bread and water. This treatment, though bad, was better than that in force at about the same time at Christ's Hospital, in the square Bedlam cells of