ards of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to
fifteen were to be found there, who expended such part of their energies
as was devoted to Latin and Greek upon a book of Livy, the "Bucolics"
of Virgil, and the "Hecuba" of Euripides, which were ground out in small
daily portions. The driving of this unlucky lower-fourth must have been
grievous work to the unfortunate master, for it was the most unhappily
constituted of any in the school. Here stuck the great stupid boys,
who, for the life of them, could never master the accidence--the objects
alternately of mirth and terror to the youngsters, who were daily taking
them up and laughing at them in lesson, and getting kicked by them for
so doing in play-hours. There were no less than three unhappy fellows in
tail coats, with incipient down on their chins, whom the Doctor and
the master of the form were always endeavouring to hoist into the upper
school, but whose parsing and construing resisted the most well-meant
shoves. Then came the mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the
most mischievous and reckless age of British youth, of whom East and Tom
Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, and of excuses
as Irishwomen, making fun of their master, one another, and their
lessons, Argus himself would have been puzzled to keep an eye on them;
and as for making them steady or serious for half an hour together,
it was simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of young
prodigies of nine and ten, who were going up the school at the rate of
a form a half-year, all boys' hands and wits being against them in their
progress. It would have been one man's work to see that the precocious
youngsters had fair play; and as the master had a good deal besides
to do, they hadn't, and were for ever being shoved down three or four
places, their verses stolen, their books inked, their jackets whitened,
and their lives otherwise made a burden to them.

The lower-fourth, and all the forms below it, were heard in the great
school, and were not trusted to prepare their lessons before coming in,
but were whipped into school three-quarters of an hour before the lesson
began by their respective masters, and there, scattered about on the
benches, with dictionary and grammar, hammered out their twenty lines
of Virgil and Euripides in the midst of babel. The masters of the
lower school walked up and down the great school together during this
three-quarters of an