the results of democracy in America are such as we and others have attempted to indicate, is it not unreasonable to ask us to conceal them? And if the evils of the Union, under its later aspect, are really such as we ascribe to it, may we not contemplate its dissolution calmly, and yet entertain the best feelings for the American people? Will those who object to our criticisms fairly reply to them? Will they say and prove that those evils do not exist? Will they say that they have not themselves formerly lamented them? Do they consider themselves bound to uphold their Presidents and Ministers as legitimate and happy results of the free choice of a people? Will they show

that they have reason to expect us to sympathise warmly with them, and to share their hostility to the South? When they do this temperately, we will give their arguments what they have never given to ours, a fair hearing. Meanwhile we will only repeat what we have often said, and what all who write on the subject say, that whatever we think of the system, we wish nothing but good to the people; that we should be glad to see their better qualities developed under circumstances more favourable than those of the Union; and that we can descry no true advantage to any section of the inhabitants of the continent in the subjugation of the South.

"RUG-BY!"-With a prolonged intonation of the last syllable, such as railway porters affect for the sake of additional indistinctness, we are warned of our arrival as the train pulls up. But middle-aged gentlemen, to whom that "pile of questionable Gothic"-not visible from the station-was well known in their school-days, might as well be landed at Melbourne or New York, for any knowledge of the localities which can serve them in finding their way now to the school-gates. Not Laurence Sheriff himself, the founder, if he could come down again from London on that "grey ambling nag" of his, riding along the old London road, and look at

* "The Dream of Life.'

VOL. XCI.-NO. DLIX.

the approach to his native town, could feel more hopelessly bewildered. The last five-and-twenty years have changed this aspect of Rugby almost as much as the two previous centuries. It still remains, indeed, as its own poet has described it in his younger days, "as insignificant a market-town as well may be; but “architectural craft," though it has not much adorned it, has added to it very considerably. That the Newbold road, which we get a glimpse of from the omnibus? The driver insists upon the fact, and is probably right. Let us ask no more questions. Already, when we have merely to answer one of the simplest kind, we find ourselves regarded as

By John Moultrie.

20

some species of pre-Adamite. For, as we rumble into the old High Street, and catch at last a glance at something which reminds us of old days, he asks where he shall set us down. "The Eagle," we reply, joyfully recognising the old familiar sign-"the Eagle, of course." And lo! the Eagle has become a temperance eating-house! Baffled and humiliated as we feel, we are not reduced to that point yet; so we allow ourselves to be driven to the George-formerly despised as the resort of mere "commercials ;" and there, over a solitary chop, we meditate on the fortunes of Rugby.

Not all the curious research of an antiquarian friend, who hospitably takes compassion there upon our loneliness, and opens his stores of local and historical knowledge for our entertainment, can rake up very much that is interesting as to the old town itself. For an old town it is -Rocheberie of Domesday Book; which name might imply that it was founded on a rock, if there had been any possible rock to build it on. A prettier name was Rokeby, which it had afterwards; but the Lords "De Rokeby," whose manor it was, have left little mark behind them for good or evil. We listen reverently to our friend's ingenious theories as to what might have been in those earlier days; but, zealous as he is for the traditional honour of his native town, he feels that the pious fraud which would localise anything heroic there, antecedent to the invention of football, would be too transparent. Our obdurate Tory feelings are unmoved by the remembrance that Lieut.-General Cromwell was quartered here before the battle of Naseby with fifteen hundred horse; or that the Dutch King William, passing through the town on his way to Ireland, and taking a local guide, one Gill Morris, to conduct him over the marshes of Dunsmore, was left in the lurch by that worthy Rugbeian (no doubt a stanch loyalist), whom he therefore cursed lustily in his native gutturals. One great and good name, however, is linked with the little town-Mar

garet Beaufort, Countess of Richmond-the munificent "Lady Margaret," whom Oxford and Cambridge both gratefully acknowledge

"is said to have held this manor in dower, as widow of Sir Henry Stafford, knight, from 1482 to 1484. For the rest, the fame of Rugby must be content to rest on the undoubted fact which Dr Arnold satirically claims for it-it has fourteen cattle-fairs.

But it was the school, not the town, we came to see. Here also, early history and even tradition is somewhat curt and scanty. Rugby, it is well known, can boast no royal foundation, or even subsequent benefaction. No wonder that there has always been a jealousy against admitting it into the sacred band of public schools. It had originally no claim whatever to the title. It was a mere local charity, the bequest of a grateful citizen to his native town; of one who wished to impart to the future boys of Rugby something of that liberal training to which he perhaps consciously owed his own rise in life. It has benefited the town, if not exactly in the way which the founder wished or expected, yet not less directly or decidedly. The class of children of Rugby and Brownsover, for which he intended to provide education- especially those of the latter place - derive little benefit from his pious bequest. Here and there one, of especial promise, may have been enabled to rise from the ranks by its aid; but it has become almost impossible, within present memory, for a "foundationer" of humble parentage and narrow means to maintain his place, without a superhuman indifference or endurance of humiliation, in what has become a school for the sons of "gentlemen." In this respect at least we have made no advance upon the wisdom or liberality of our ancestors, that in modern times the "poor scholar" has become a class almost extinct. Even Christ's Hospital is crowded with scholars who protest against wearing the peculiar dress the rules enjoin; and with some justice, since

it is the badge of a charity to which they have no legitimate claim. But the disgrace lies not in the dress, but in its appropriation. Such mal versations of founders' bequests are among the sins for which, if there be any limbo for bodies corporate, our schools and universities have a heavy account to render. Still, Rugby does offer a gratuitous education to the sons of Laurence Sheriff's townsmen; but a higher education, and therefore to a higher class, than he could have contemplated. It is too curious a speculation, and not very profitable, to conjecture whether, if he could have foreseen that the third part of his "Conduit Close," which he made over to his trustees for his educational project, and whose cost price was but £106, 13s. 4d., would produce a rental in 1860 of £4500 per annum, he would rejoice to find it employed in maintaining one of those great Public Schools which are the pride of England, or be vexed at having alienated so valuable an inheritance from his own family. Of the early life and education of this Laurence Sheriff simply nothing is known beyond the fact that he was a native of the town, and that the somewhat superior rank of his parents is proved to some extent by their burial within the parish church. In 1551-during the short reign of Edward VI.- -we find him settled in London as a citizen and grocer (the French epicier would perhaps better express his line of trade), living somewhere near Newgate Market, and connected (probably only as a privileged tradesman) with the household of the Princess Elizabeth; supplying her with spices to a considerable amount. That he was a stanch and loyal servant to his royal patroness, is apparent from an anecdote recorded of him in Foxe's Martyrs.' As Sheriff, after all, was no martyr, the story is perhaps more to be depended upon in its details than some which are to be found in that not very scrupulous chronicle. He had a friend named Robert Farrer, a haberdasher, who, "being on a cer

tain morning at the Rose Tavern (from whence he was seldom absent), and falling to his common drink," did, in the hearing of Sheriff, call the princess by an uncivil name, and accuse her of complicity in Wyatt's late rebellion. For which disloyal words, "the aforesaid Laurence Sheriffe, grocer, being then servant to the Lady Elizabeth, and sworne unto her Grace," delated him forthwith to the Royal Commissioners, then sitting "at Bonner the Bishop of London's house beside Paul's," and of whom that terrible prelate was the chief. It was "not to be suffered," said the loyal grocer, in his complaint against Farrer, "that such a varlet as he is should call so honourable a princess by the name of a Jill," or should "wish them to hop headless that shall wish her Grace to enjoy the possession of the crown when God shall send it to her." But Bonner contented himself with a pious hope that such a dispensation of Providence might not be looked for just at present-for he and his fellow-commissioners had little more affection for the Protestant princess than the haberdasher had—and Sheriff's complaint was civilly poohpoohed. In due time, however, the Lady Elizabeth came to the throne, and Sheriff arrived at the dignity of an esquire, and obtained a grant of arms; but he always seems to have retained an honest pride in his status of citizen and grocer, for by that title he prefers to describe himself in his last will and intent. He still continued his connection with the Court; for in 1562 his name is recorded amongst those who, after the fashion of the day, made presents to the Queen upon New-Year's Day; "a suger-loaf, a box of ginger, a box of nutmegs, and a pound of cynomon," were his offering; still a grocer, and, a few years afterwards, Second Warden of that honourable company.

So much is known of him historically; what follows is gathered from his will and its codicil, and from a document called his "Intent." He had, he says, "intended, by

God's grace, to erect and build" a grammar-school in his native town during his lifetime; but sickness and death came upon him, perhaps somewhat suddenly. In July 1567 he made his will, bequeathing to two trustees-George Harrison of London, gent., and Barnard Field of London, grocer-£50 for the building of a school and certain almshouses, the glebe and parsonage of Brownsover (lately purchased by him on the suppression of the Abbey of St Mary at Leicester) for their endowment, and a further sum of £100 to be laid out by his trustees in lands for the same purpose. He also left his family "messuage" or mansion-house as a residence for his schoolmaster. The school was to be "chiefly for the children of Rugby and Brownsover aforesaid, and next for such as be of other places thereunto adjoining." It was to be taught, if it might "conveniently be," by a Master of Arts, and to be "called for ever the Free School of Laurence Sheriffe of London, grocer."

But as the pith of a letter is said to lie so often in the postscript, so in this case the existence of Rugby School in its present form depended entirely not on the will, but on a codicil. Sheriff, having probably recovered from immediate danger, paid a visit to Rugby; perhaps he saw that his bequest, as it stood, was in danger of proving insufficient for its purpose; for some reason or other, he revoked, by a codicil dated at his native town about a month later, the £100 left for the purchase of lands, and substituted one-third of his property in Middlesex, then known as the "Conduit Close twenty-four acres (in the whole) of open pasture-land, lying about half a mile outside the city of London, and at that time little likely to be built upon, since a royal order had been issued prohibiting all persons from erecting new houses within three miles of the city gates. The third part vested in the trustees of the school was at that time let for £8 per annum; it now includes

Lamb's Conduit Street, Milman, New and Great Ormond Streets, and produces, as has been said, a rental of about £4500. Sheriff died some two months afterwards; and though his wish was to have been buried at Rugby, his remains probably lie in the quadrangle of Christ's Hospital in London, formerly the burial-garth of the Grey Friars.

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were noW

For some time the founder's bequest seems to have been quietly ignored. The property was probably enjoyed by the relatives; one trustee died soon after Sheriff, and the other was either dishonest or careless. It may be doubted whether there was any school at all actually in operation much before 1600, more than thirty years after the founder's death. A decree of Chancery (44th Eliz., 1602) gives the first intimation of its existence. Twelve gentlemen of the county of Warwick-including one of Rugby and one of Brownsover, to represent those interests appointed trustees; thus setting aside, and no doubt for good and sufficient reasons, the succession to that office which the founder's will had vested in the heirs of Harrison and Field. The vacancies in the trust have been from time to time filled up by noblemen and gentlemen of Warwickshire and the adjoining counties, and the number remains the same. The first Master of whom there is any record whatever is one Richard Seele, who appears to have been in possession, though not legally appointed, in the year 1600. For, two years after that date, we find certain "articles objected before the Lords of her Majesty's Privy Council" against Edward Boughton Esquire of Caw ston, in the county of Warwick-a person who had some influence with Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and possibly presumed upon it-in which, amongst other charges, he is accused of being " a favourer of notorious Papists, and namely with one Bernard Field"-the survivor of Laurence Sheriff's two trustees; and that, aided by Field and others, he,