That there should be a disposition here to look coldly upon the old-fashioned classical education is not wonderful.  You are beginning to have your doubts about its superiority even in England.  Here the majority of parents would just as soon bury the past, and everyone who becomes a bona fide Australian must feel that the history of his country is yet only in embryo.  Besides this, the tendency of a new country is towards practical knowledge—­small profits, and quick returns; and in classics the outlay of time is considerable, the returns slow, and the profit not always very perceptible.  Science receives daily increasing attention, as at home.  Geography is better realized by colonial children, and, I should fancy, better taught.  In fact, all English subjects, as they are called, get their fair share.  Mathematics, even in those lower branches which come within the scope of a school, are not a favourite subject, although about the same number of school-hours are devoted to them as at home.

The school-hours generally begin about nine a.m.; but school lasts till twelve.  Second school begins at two, and lasts till four, when the day-boys go home.  Half-holidays, ordinary or extraordinary, are rare; but Saturday is always a whole holiday.  The main bulk of holidays are at Christmas, when some seven weeks are usually given.  The midwinter vacation rarely lasts a month, and short breaks are allowed at Easter and Michaelmas, after the fashion of all schools comprising any large number of day-boys.  As in England, the Easter term is the laziest; but here it is so for a good and sufficient reason—­the heat during that period being often intolerable.

Nearly every Australian school has a stable attached, in which boys who ride to school put up their horses during school-hours.  It is most amusing to watch half a dozen ‘fellows’ galloping their ponies up the avenue, not to be late for first school, just as we used to scurry across quad to chapel of a morning!  The ordinary sleeping and living arrangements for boarders are much the same as at home.  At the Sydney State Grammar School, which is in reality purely and simply a day-school, several of the masters take boarders, in imitation of public-school boarding-houses.  At the Melbourne Grammar School the second-master has a house, the property of the school; but, so far, there are not more boarders than will fill the school-house.

The bill of fare of public schools has, I believe—­thanks to scarlet fever and doctors—­improved considerably since my day; but I do not suppose it has yet reached the luxury of unlimited meat and jam three times a day, with frequent bountiful supplies of fresh fruit.  It is as necessary to the credit of an Australian school to keep a liberal table, as it is for an Atlantic steamship company.  Where several schools are pretty well on an equality, the table often turns the scale.