'clock at home, great promotion already), than the Squire
and his wife and Tom Brown at the end of his first half-year at Rugby.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

"They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think:
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three."
LOWELL, _Stanzas on Freedom._

THE lower-fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning of
the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school, and
numbered upwards 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 Irish women, 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
d