EXTRADITION OF THE LONDON SCHOOLS.

A CONTROVERSY has been going on for some time, respecting cer- tain public schools of London : it was begun by the Tames ; other journals have joined, and among a host of correspondents each has contributed his mite. Many parts thrown in at random do not make up one whole, and the discussion has yet to be formu- lated; unless we assume that the Times is giving the first ven- tilation to some foregone conclusion, and will prove to be right in the end. This is very probable. The question was first raised with reference to the Bluecoat School, a foundation originally traced to some kind of monastic origin ; and for a long period supposed to receive principally the children of poor clergymen in one department, while sons of humbler life entered another ; but the pupils have been boarded and lodged, as well as educated, gra- tuitously. The school-boys are bound to wear a peculiar cos- tume, not unlike that identified with some much humbler schools, and nothing but the excellent character of the education, espe- cially during the childhood of some of our most eminent literary men, has preserved the pupils in the school from a sense of hu- miliation. Another school is that of St. Paul's' established by Dean Colet, and placed in trust of the Mercer's Company, with landed endowments for the tuition of 153 scholars—being the number of fishes in the miraculous draught. This is one of the most richly endowed schools in the country. Any boy who enters it at ten years of age, and rises to the higher honours of the school, is entitled to an exhibition at the University varying ie value from fifty to one hundred pounds ; as the Grecians " at the Blueeoat School are sent to the University at the school's ex- pense, with the understanding that they should be educated for the Church. Another school Is the Merchant Taylor?, a fourth the Charterhouse ; the one in Suffolk Lane, the other in Charter- house Square. All these schools are in disagreeable parts of the City of London. The argument of the Times, compressed into little, is this. The atmosphere of the metropolis is not of the healthiest. School training does not derive all its value from the work done at the desk, or in class, but much of it from the moral association of the boys' and the manly exercises which they share, and which are best carried on in the country. The Blueeoat School has a play- yround somewhat spacious, and to a certain extent railed off from th'eeentaminatin' g kfluences of the metropolis ; so has the Charter-

house, though the atmosphere of the neighbourhood is gloomy. St.

Paul's School has no play-ground, and it is a wonder how the children, immured during their lessons at the eastern end of St.

Paul's Churchyard, can preserve their health. This, however, is only a day-school, and it affords, of course, no opportunity for the school associations which are so valuable a part of manly training.

Now the want of space in the city which is injurious to the chil- dren, gives a proportionate value to the land. Take the schools

away from their present confined position, throw them somewhere into the country, and the value of the land thus recovered would more than pay for the cost, the boys would be emancipated, the

atmosphere would better their intellects as well as their bodies and limbs, and everybody would be the gainer. Such is the ar- gument of the Times.

There are at once objections. Mr. Seargill, the son of an old Bluecoat boy,—who was, we believe, a dissenting minister, but

was better known for exceedingly clever novels, of which Pene- lope is the chief,—objects to the removal, mainly on the ground that the scholars in the establishment are allowed certain stated

half-holidays, and certain holidays given occasionally in reward for good conduct, which they turn to profit in visiting their friends about the metropolis. It is assumed that this advantage would be abolished if the school were placed in the country. J. J. G., who was educated at Merchant Taylors' School depre- cates the removal of that or St. Paul's, with their University opportunities, from the reach of the middle class,—those pro- fessional or commercial men living in the city who seek a good

educational establishment near at hand. And as to the associa- tion of boys, says "A Pauline's Parent," it cannot be managed in

a school peopled from the most mixed classes of society, and thus differing from Eton, Harrow and Rugby, where, in the main, the boys "are all the sons of gentlemen."

These objections are specious' but untenable. As to the last, it is that which will be most impressive amongst a certain

class of "professional persons," particularly those who dread " vulgar" associations. Now there is perhaps no school which was peopled from a more mixed class that that of Christ's Hospi- tal, but, as we see from the writings of Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and others, none also in which the school-fellows formed stronger associations amongst themselves, or retained alive- her attachment to their school in after years. Through one of its

most eminent editors, Thomas Barnes, the history of the Times itself is connected with the Bluecoat School ; yet it is a boast

that the school is still open to the lowly. One of its scholars has mentioned the case of two boys, friends, who returned to their home during the holidays,—one, entering the parlour of his fa- ther, the master of the house ; and the other, descending into the

servant's-hall, to ha's father, the coachman or butler. The im- provements which have taken place in the Bluecoat School,—and

very decided improvements they have been,—have still more fused the several classes. They have enabled the pupils in the grammar school to learn writing, and those in the writing school to acquire some knowledge of the classics ; but since that greater fusion of the school the presentations, instead of declining in value, have been an object of increasing competition with the better classes of society. The objection of J. J. G., that the professional man wants a school close at hand, and cannot afford to send his son to a dis- tance, is met by the explanation of a very ordinary commercial transaction, which we have already mentioned. Sell the school, the house and grounds, and the money will furnish a fund amply sufficient to endow an establishment in the country on such terms as would render to the middle class or professional man more than the advantage which he now obtains. We have heard it calculated that the playground alone of Westminster School must be worth 80,000/., in a neighbourhood far less valuable at present than the site of any of the City schools. The value of the Char- terhouse and its local property has been estimated at 900,000/. The question of enlarging St. Paul's School has already been dis- cussed. The corner of ground still unoccupied to the south-east of St. Paul's Cathedral is said to be worth seventy or eighty thou- sand pounds ; and if so, the site of St. Paul's School must be of a value similar to that of Westminster playground. Here are means, then, for conveying the school out of town, rebuilding it, and endowing it so that even the mere day-school could board its scholars and give them a first-rate education, with some surplus probably, to facilitate the transit of the children from town tAi school and back again. But it is a mistake to assume that the children necessarily live in London or belong to parents that do so. "An Old Pauline" states that St. Paul's School "assumes every year a less metropo- litan character." The Charterhouse we know has been peopled by boys from all parts of the country, Ireland included. Of the well-known students of the Bluecoat School, a larger proportion appear to have been of country origin. If school discipline per- mitted, an appeal might be made to the boys themselves ; a Napo- leon would probably take it by universal-suffrage ballot, "yes or no," and we can have little doubt as to the answer, for we have some evidence on the point in our literature. If Lamb cultivated torn associations almost exclusively, an overwhelming majority of Other eminent London scholars will be found repeatedly appealing t° Country associations. Caleridge's works teem with evidence that the Bluecoat School, with all its social attachments, trains up those that love the country. In fact, many of our most emi-

nent poets were town bred—Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Gray, Keats ; but all have luxuriated in country life, all have confirmed the generic description of the Roman, and "fled the town" whenever they could escape. Amongst the Charterhouse boys was Addison, who was there with Steele ; and in the Taller, No. 218, in one of Addison's beautifully finished, little essays on the absurdities of the tulip mania, will be found testimony to his rural instincts.

"I look upon the whole country in spring time," says Addison, "as a spa- cious garden, and make as many visits to a spot of daisies or a bank of violets, as a florist does to his borders and parterres. There is not a bush in blossom within a mile of me which I am not acquainted with, nor scarce a daffodil or cowslip that withers away in my neighbourhood without my missing it."

And he ends with a reflection on "the bounty of providence which has made the most pleasing and most beautiful objects the most ordinary and most common."

" Scriptorum chorus omnis amat nemus et fugit urbce."

Such is the motto which the refined Addison selects for his essay, taking it from the town-bred and country-loving Horace. And in the course of his essay he quotes other testimony from a stu- dent of St. Paul's School, Milton, writing as if in anticipation of the recent " movement " to purify the Thames and the Metro- polis.

"As one who long in populous cities pent, Where houses thick, and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe Among the pleasant villages, and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight ; The smell of grain, or tedded grass or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each mild sound."

It is remarkable that the attendance at the higher London schools, particularly at the Charterhouse, has been rather dimi- nishing of late years • apparently because the classes that gene- rally send their children to that school prefer the establishments which are in the country. It is believed by " Carthusianus " that the Charterhouse, which possesses estates in Cambridge, and pro- bably in Essex, might, by transferring itself to the Eastern Counties, bestow a great chartered educational foundation upon a part of the country that cannot now boast of such a thing ; and while giving to East Anglia its Eton or Harrow, the school might recruit its own numbers from the children of those rising dis- tricts. Even in Dean Colet's days the value of country residence was felt, for he provided residences at Stepney, then in the country, for the teachers in the St. Paul's School ; Stepney in 1509 was as far from London as Richmond, or Harrow, or Eton is now. With the extension of the metropolis, and the increased density of population that creates the worst incidents of town living, the facilities of transit have increased ; so that while the evil of living in London is greater than it was, the means of avoiding it are multiplied. As to the professional and commercial men who live around Cornhill, they too have been steadily diminishing. In that concentration of shops and warehouses, the City" is is present only during business hours ; it resides in the suburbs or beyond them. And as to the mere question of transit for the boys in their holidays, it is a thing that could be settled with the utmost ease under some general arrangement, in which unques- tionably the railway companies would go heartily along with both Houses of Parliament. It is hardly too much too expect that a Bluecoat boy's uniform might be almost a free-pass on the rail- way, since the companies have not shown themselves illiberal, and every process which tends to carry London out of town in- creases the value and business of the railway, so that policy en- dorses the dictate of liberality and public spirit.