portion of its plant. Without
discussing the adequacy of the definition, we will begin with these. We
were not ill provided; with an exception or two, the rooms appropriated
for class-rooms answered the purpose well. Some of them were spacious;
the rest were large enough for the wants of the classes, limited to an
average of twenty. Nor would a Government Inspector have justly measured
this adequacy by the "cubic capacity," if he failed to take into account
the exhilarating five minutes' breathing time upon the beach, at eleven
o'clock. There was a rare pleasure in those moments of escape from Greek
verbs to the sparkle of the tide and the scent of the sea breeze.

What Germans call the "real" subjects, were also provided for. The
modern languages were taught mostly in the class-rooms of the classical
masters. Music took up her quarters in several scattered dwellings.
Wales is the home of song, and our musicians were very welcome to make
the cottage walls resound to violin or key-board. We remember well the
affectionate reverence with which one aged custodian spoke of the
"pianass" she was proud to house; she cherished them as if they had been
tame elephants. Several concerts were given during our stay--but in the
Assembly Rooms of Aberystwith; our wooden school-room was found, on the
first experiment, unfit for the purpose, from the want of resonance. The
makeshift gymnasium and carpentery, in the stables and coach-house, have
been mentioned before. If among "real studies" we may include the
cricket, this was, as we saw, well cared for; while the instructor in
swimming had nothing to complain of, with four miles of good beach, and
the Irish Channel before him.

If the accommodation during school hours was adequate, it was less easy
to find elbow-room for the boys at other times. It was well enough from
May to August under the ample roof of blue summer weather; but in the
rainy season (and at Borth, as elsewhere, that winter was a wet one) we
should have been sorely cramped but for relief afforded by the "studies"
noticed in a previous chapter. It is time we should describe them.
Studies they were not, in the sense in which the word is understood at
Uppingham, where a school law declares that "a boy's study is his
castle," and confers upon him what Aristotle calls the "unspeakable"
delight of the "sense of private property." At Borth this could not be.
In very rare cases was a room the one and indivisible