how feeble are their blows,
how slowly they bowl. You can measure in that way
their capacity.

"Tom Brown and his eleven were bold enough playing
against an eleven of about their own calibre; but
I suspect they would have been in a precious funk
if they had played against eleven giants, whose
bowling bore the same proportion to theirs that
theirs does to the small children's above.

"To return to the _tossing_. I must say I think
some means might be devised to enable school-boys
to go to bed in quietness and peace--and that some
means ought to be devised and enforced. No good,
moral or physical, to those who bully or those who
are bullied, can ensue from such scenes as take
place in the dormitories of schools. I suspect
that British wisdom and ingenuity are sufficient
to discover a remedy for this evil, if directed in
the right direction.

"The fact is, that the condition of a small boy at
a large school is one of peculiar hardship and
suffering. He is entirely at the mercy of
proverbially the roughest things in the
universe--great school-boys; and he is deprived of
the protection which the weak have in civilized
society; for he may not complain; if he does, he
is an outlaw--he has no protector but public
opinion, and that a public opinion of the very
lowest grade, the opinion of rude and ignorant
boys.

"What do school-boys know of those deep questions
of moral and physical philosophy, of the anatomy
of mind and body, by which the treatment of a
child should be regulated?

"Why should the laws of civilization be suspended
for schools? Why should boys be left to herd
together with no law but that of force or cunning?
What would become of society if it were
constituted on the same principles? It would be
plunged into anarchy in a week.

"One of our judges, not long ago, refused to
extend the protection of the law to a child who
had been ill-treated at school. If a party of
navvies had given _him_ a licking, and he had
brought the case before a magistrate, what would