The monitors were furnished with small canes, which they were permitted to use with moderation, but nothing like the horrible process of “tunding,” as at Winchester, was known.  The theory of entrusting this power to monitors is, that if you do not give certain boys the right to punish, might will be right, whilst the monitors, being duly made to feel their responsibility, will only punish where punishment is properly due, and will serve as a protection to the weak.

There was a half-holiday every Wednesday and Saturday.  Every Saturday upper boys who had friends might go out from Saturday till Sunday night, and lower boys were allowed to do the same every other Saturday.  These events were of course greatly looked forward to from week to week.  Not the least agreeable feature was the probable addition to pocket-money, for in England it is the custom to “tip” school-boys, and we have ourselves come back joyous on a Sunday evening with six sovereigns chinking in our pockets.  Alas, no one tips us now!  Then there was the delight of comparing notes of the doings during the delightful preceding twenty-four hours.  Thus, whilst Brown detailed the delights of the pantomime to which Uncle John had taken him on Saturday night, Robinson descanted on the marvels of the Zoological Gardens, with special reference to the free-and-easy life of monkeydom, and Smith never wearied of enlarging on the terrors and glories of the Tower of London.  Altogether, there were fourteen weeks’ holiday in the year—­six weeks in August, five at Christmas and three at Whitsuntide, with two days at Easter.

There were several beds in each bedroom, and there was a very strict rule that the most perfect order should prevail—­in fact, lower boys were forbidden to talk; but talk they always did, and long stories, often protracted for nights, were told; and for our part, we must confess that we have never enjoyed any fictions more than those.

Evening prayers took place in the several houses at nine, after which the lower boys went to bed.  A junior master—­there was one to each house—­always attended at prayers, which were read by a monitor.  Before prayers names were called over and every boy accounted for.

Although in the midst of brick and mortar, two large spaces, containing several acres, were available for cricket, whilst foot-ball—­and very fierce games of it, too—­was usually played in the curious old cloisters of the Chartreuse monks which opened on “Upper Green.”  The grass-plot of Upper Green was kept sacred from the feet of under boys except in “cricket quarter,” as the summer quarter was termed.  It was rolled, watered and attended to with an assiduity such as befalls few spots of ground in the world.  The roof of the cloisters was a terrace flagged with stone, and on the occasion of cricket-matches a gay bevy of ladies assembled here to look at the exploits of the young Rawdon Crawleys and Pendennises of the day.  Immediately