efforts that are being made in some quarters will a public school tone ever be possible in Australia, so long as the majority of the boys attending are day-boarders.  In all day-schools the authority of the head-master is necessarily impaired by that of the father, and the discipline of the school by that of the home; but here this is more than usually the case.  The parents even go so far as to trench upon the schoolmaster’s domain, reserving to themselves the right of deliberately breaking the school rules, whenever it is convenient to them to do so.  ‘Some parents,’ writes the head-master of what is probably the nearest approach to a public school in Australia, ’keep their boys from school for insufficient reasons, and without leave previously obtained, to carry a parcel, or to drive a horse, to have hair cut, or to cash a cheque, or simply for a holiday.’  Being an old English public-school boy and master, and fresh to colonial ways, he writes thus in his report for 1875; but in the report for 1880 he has to acknowledge that he cannot maintain the rule he had introduced, that no boy should be absent from school except on account of ill-health or stress of weather or after obtaining the leave of the head-master,’because I have not received adequate support.’  ’The school cannot, single-handed,’ he continues, ’press the point, if parents do not like it.  The strain upon me, individually, is too great, if I have to remonstrate with a parent, or to punish a boy, on an average about twice a week.’  The boys cannot be got to come back to the school on a certain day, or prevented from leaving before the term is over, many parents being of opinion that little is done the first week, and that therefore they may as well keep their sons at home.

How hard this is for the schoolmaster who has his heart in his work, it is easy to see; and I was quoting an instance where a man of great resolution and perseverance had made an attempt under circumstances perhaps more favourable than could be obtained in any other school in Australia; for the school was certainly the best in the colonies from a social standpoint, and very nearly so intellectually at the time he took it.  He himself, too, was summoned from England with the avowed purpose of introducing the public-school system.  In no other Australian school would a five-years struggle of this kind be possible.  Nor would this be a solitary instance, for though naturally one cannot gather it from published reports, the whole existence of a schoolmaster in Australia, who wishes to do his duty, and understands what that duty is, must be, on many important points of discipline and sometimes even of teaching, one continual struggle with the parents.  In too many schools the parent not only uphold their boys in direct disobedience to their masters, but even encourage them in it out of personal dislike to them.  In a small community, the master who dares kick against the parental goads soon finds the town too hot to hold him.  He has but one choice, either to sail with the parental wind, or to lower his canvas altogether; and though a man of tact may make some progress by trawling and tacking, at the best he must feel disappointed at heart and his interest in his work half gone.