ovember, 1859, though only twenty-six years old; and, with a view
to the pastoral oversight of Harrow School, he was ordained priest,
again by Bishop Lonsdale, at Advent, 1859.

In January, 1860, Montagu Butler entered on his new duties at Harrow,
and there he spent five-and-twenty years of happy, strenuous, and
serviceable life. He found 469 boys in the School; under his rule
the numbers increased till they reached 600.

Butler's own culture was essentially classical, for he had been
fashioned by Vaughan, who "thought in Greek," and he himself might
almost have been said to think and feel in Latin elegiacs. But his
scholarship was redeemed from pedantry by his wide reading, and
by his genuine enthusiasm for all that is graceful in literature,
modern as well as ancient. Under his rule the "grand, old, fortifying,
classical curriculum," which Matthew Arnold satirized, fought hard
and long for its monopoly; but gradually it had to yield. Butler's
first concession was to relax the absurd rule which had made Latin
versification obligatory on every boy in the School, whatever his
gifts or tastes. At the same time he introduced the regular teaching
of Natural Science, and in 1869 he created a "Modern Side." An even
more important feature of his rule was the official encouragement
given to the study of music, which, from an illicit indulgence practised
in holes and corners, became, under the energetic management of Mr.
John Farmer, a prime element in the life of the School.

In January, 1868, Butler admitted me to Harrow School. My father had
introduced me to him in the previous September, and I had fallen at
once under his charm. He was curiously unlike what one had imagined
a Head Master to be--not old and pompous and austere, but young and
gracious, friendly in manner, and very light in hand. His leading
characteristic was gracefulness. He was graceful in appearance, tall and
as yet slender; graceful in movement and gesture; graceful in writing,
and pre-eminently graceful in speech. He was young--thirty-four--and
looked younger, although (availing himself of the opportunity afforded
by an illness in the summer of 1867) he had just grown a beard.
He had a keen sense of humour, and was not afraid to display it
before boys, although he was a little pampered by a sense of the
solemn reverence due not only to what was sacred, but to everything
that was established and official. To breakfast with a Head Master
is usually rathe