and resource! what a soul of good nature and kindness governing the whole!  Such is the admirable work which I am now going to call in evidence.  Intimately, indeed, did Dickens know the Middle Class; he was bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh.  Intimately he knew its bringing-up.  With the hand of a master he has drawn for us a type of the teachers and trainers of its youth, a type of its places of education.  Mr. Creakle and Salem House are immortal.  The type itself, it is to be hoped, will perish; but the drawing of it which Dickens has given cannot die.  Mr. Creakle, the stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an armchair, with the fiery face and the thick veins in his forehead; Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with the cane, and a newspaper, and the buttered toast before him, will sit on, like Theseus, for ever.  For ever will last the recollection of Salem House, and of the ‘daily strife and struggle’ there; the recollection ’of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread and butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all.’  By the Middle Class I understand those who are brought up at establishments more or less like Salem House, and by educators more or less like Mr. Creakle.  And the great mass of the Middle part of our community, the part which comes between those who labour with their hands, on the one side, and people of fortune on the other, is brought up at establishments of this kind, although there is a certain portion broken off at the top which is educated at better.  But the great mass are both badly taught, and are also brought up on a lower plane than is right, brought up ignobly.  And this deteriorates their standard of life, their civilization.”

It surely must have been Salem House, or an institution very like it, that produced the delicious letter quoted by Arnold in his General Report for 1867.  Even Mr. Anstey Guthrie never excelled it in the letter dictated by Dr. Grimstone to his pupils at Crichton House.

“MY DEAR PARENTS.—­The anticipation of our Christmas vacation abounds in peculiar delights.  Not only that its ‘festivities,’ its social gatherings and its lively amusements crown the old year with happiness and mirth, but that I come a guest commended to your hospitable love by the performance of all you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and flowers.  And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and endearments their temporary loss