The Press.
London, England, 1854-02-18 00:00:00

FEBRUARY 18, 1854.

before Yucatan was again troubled; this time
by a land expedition, three thousand strong,
under the command of the conqueror himself.
From Mexico their road was long; danger and
uncertainty impended over the fate of the
enterprise ; food fell short; enemies abounded ;
allies proved treacherous or cowardly ; the
whole line of country was unexplored ; rivers
had to be crossed without bridges, and roads
cut through dense, matted jungles. History
has few records of a march more bold or pain.
ful; but Cortes was not to be stopped, and in
little more than six months he had reached
the frontier town of Nito, having traversed the
peninsula of Yucatan in all its breadth, and
received at least the nominal submission of its
tribes. The full conquest of this territory,
however, was reserved for later warriors.
From 1524 to 1547 we read of perpetual expe-
ditions, marches, battles, skirmishes, and all
the incidents of a fierce struggle for supremacy,
where numbers counterbalanced skill, and
love of liberty contended with thirst of con-
quest. In 1542 the decisive blow was struck,
and Merida established as the seat of govern-
ment. From that time to this European laws
have prevailed in Yucatan ; but to the present
day there are tracts of country which no white
man's foot has trodden, and tribes which re-
fuse to acknowledge any government save that
of their own chiefs. It is singular that our
knowledge should become more imperfect as
we draw nearer to modern times. Up to 1700
there are graphic, and even minute, records of
Spanish proceedings ; but at that date history
fails, and we can only look for information to
recent travellers :

What further incidents consequently befel in completing
the pacification of the interior of Yucatan must remain
matter for speculation. That the country of the Itzttex was
never completely subjugated may be safely inferred from
the fact that the Indians who occupy the Great Peten, to
which they have given the name of Flores, though nomi-
nally subject to Guatemala, are still, in reality, an inde•
pendent race. Their warlike propensities, however, have
yielded to the desire of commercial intercourse with their
neighbours, and a small trade is carried on by them, on
one side with Tabasco. by way of the river San Pedro, and
on the other with the settlement of British Honduras.
But, with respect to their actual condition, our present
information falls short of what was known by the Spaniards
at the close of the seventeenth century.

We have looked vainly for an extract which
may give a favourable sample of Col. Fan-
court's style. Ho writes simply and well; and,
though his work contains few striking pas-
sages, no reasonable reader will call it dull.

Reminiscences of a Huntsman. By the Hon.
Grantley F. Berkeley. London : Longman
and Co.

Wz have been much amused and not a little
pleased with Mr. Grantley Berkeley's sporting
autobiography. It is written with no incon
siderable degree of cleverness, and a manly
spirit pervades it from first to last. It is full
of pictures from nature, and interspersed with
humorous anecdotes and lively sketches of
character, in which there is nothing offensive.
He tells us of the days when, with the late
Earl Berkeley's staghounds, he hunted the
Uxbridge and Harrow country, and his
records of the suburban encroachments of
London upon his old preserves are very
singular. Compelled to give way before the
progress of the great city, he then took up
the Oakley hounds in Bedfordshire, on their
resignation by the present Duke of Bedford,
and his account of the various difficulties that
he met with is well worthy of perusal. Several
of the phases of aristocratic life in the country
are cleverly painted, and it would seem that
the difficulty of pleasing all parties is as great
in hunting as in politics. Some of the anec-
dotes of fashionable notorieties are very droll.
Of the late Lord Alvanley the author says
No man went harder than the late Lord Alvanley, and
no man ever caught more falls. Not a good horseman, I
have seen him, when his horse refused a fence, roll over
his head into it, which a good horseman ought never to do.
One day he had been hunting with me and we ran over an
unfortunate line of country, the stag leaving the legitimate
scene of our sports, and setting his head for Hounslow,
Isleworth, Twickenham, and Brentford. Lord Alvanley
left us before I had taken the deer, in good time to join
his friends in the bay window at White's. They asked
him, " What sport ?" and he replied, " Devilish good run ;
but the beds went awfully heavy, and the glass
only

161

Allowing the distance walked at two miles and a half
per hour, according to the noble journalist's account, he
would have covered a distance of .16,200 miles, or very
nearly once and a half of the circumference of the globe ;
and during that time he was never confined to his bed one
day by sickness or accident.—firing away about 750 pounds'
weight of powder, and four tons of shot.

We have cited enough to show the various
nature of this lively and agreeable volume.
The crowded state of our columns prevents
our dwelling on some of Mr. Berkeley's
curious contributions to natural history. The
work cannot fail to fascinate all lovers of
sport, while its vivacity and personal records
will amuse the general reader.

A Letter to the Viscount Palmerston, M.P., on
the Monitorial System of Harrow School. By
Charles John Vaughan, D.D. London :
Murray.
Remarks Addressed to the Rev. Dr. Vaughan,
Head Master of Harrow School, in Reply to
his Recent Letter to Viscount Palmerston.
By Anti-Monitor. London : Ridgway.
Da. VAUGHAN, head master of Harrow, is a
disciple of Arnold; and, under his manage•
ment, that school illustrates the working of
the Arnoldean system even better, perhaps,
than the Rugby of the present day. Like all
who studied under that remarkable person, he is
deeply impressed with the merits of his teach-
er's theories, and vindicates them against all
assailants with a zeal which savours of per-
sonal aflection. There can be no surer testi-
mony to the vast power wielded by Arnold
than the constant deference paid to his opinion
by every one who came within the sphere of
his influence—a deference which the lapse of
twelve years since his death has scarcely
diminished.
The point discussed in this pamplet is the
existence and extent of monitorial power—
that is, of power directly exercised by the
higher and older boys of a school over the lower,
and formally delegated to them by the master.
This system almost inevitably involves the
permitted infliction, under strict regulations,
of corporal punishment by caning; which is
quite enough to make it objectionable in the
eyes of modern reformers. Dr. Vaughan's de-
fence is this. He argues that if " priepostors,"
or " sixth-form boys," are to have any autho-
rity allowed them, it must be supported by
the right to punish ; and as impositions, or
extra tasks, to be performed out of school
hours, interfere with the ordinary discipline of
a school, such punishment can only be of a
corporal nature. This, however, he treats as
an accidental and not very important result of
the system ; the real question being, "By
" whom, and in what manner, shall the police
" of a public school be carried on? "
Three modes of doing this present them-
selves. You may adopt the private-school
system, by which a constant supervision is
exercised over the boys by under-masters,
whose express office it is to observe them in
their hours of play. By this means an effectual
police is established, but established at the
cost of personal freedom and by means which
prevent the development of a healthy public
opinion among the boys themselves—to create
which ought to be almost the first object of a
schoolmaster.
The second and third methods are merely
different developments of the monitorial sys-
tem, well defined by Dr. Vaughan:—
Ten, or twenty, or thirty, of those boys who are (gene-
rally speaking the elder, at all events the abler, the more
diligent, the more meritorious—selected by no favour, ex-
empted from none of the rules and restraints of school,
but yet brought by their position into a more intimate in-
terconrse with their master, and largely influenced (if he
be what a muter ought to be) by his principles of judg-
ment and discipline—are empowered to exercise over their
juniors a legalised and carefully regulated authority, while
at the same time they are left to mix with them on terms of
perfect freedom at times and in places to which no master's
inspection could by possibility extend.
But this system may be administered in two
ways : either the monitors may be the master's
deputies, charged to report to him, and exer
cising no office except that of espionage ; or
they may be invested with a derived, yet inde-
pendent, authority in minor matters—an au-
thority doubtless capable of being abused, yet
limited , power
appeal last

but the asparagus beds went awfully heavy, and tne glass
all through was up to one's hocks ; the only thing wanting missed -
the last
•
was a landing net, for the deer got into the Thames, and Days out limited by the power of appeal in
"

162

resort to the master, and on the whole likely
to be beneficial.
The former of these two alternatives is justly
and severely stigmatised by Dr.Vaughau :
Now, it appears to me that a monitorial system of this
nature is either nugatory( r worse. If the monitors thus corn •
missioned have the ordinary feelings of the sons of gentlemen,
they will virtually repudiate such an office. They will say I
was not sent here to be an usher—a master's spy, a mas-
ter's informer. They have too much self respect, too nice
a sense of honour, to live amongst their schoolfellows on
terms of unguarded equality, and then use the knowledge
thus gained as a means of drawing down upon them the
arm of authority and of punishment. The result will be,
as it always has been wherever such a view has been taken
of monitorial duty, that the monitors will not act for the
purposes for which they were commissioned, but only for
the maintenance of a selfish dignity which looks for its
support to other mans than those recognised by the sys-
tem.
It astonishes me that those who regard. submission to a
corporal punishment as a degradation inconsistent with
honour and self respect should look with toleration upon
that antagonist system under which their sons might be
c Iliad upon, as the reward of ability and diligence, to as-
sume the office of a delegated spy.
Them is accordingly no option left except
to grant a certain discretionary authority,
restrained by a right of appeal, first from the
individual monitors to the body collectively ;
and next, though only in more serious matters,
to the constituted magisterial authorities.
Under such checks Dr. Vaughan argues justly
that little or no danger need be apprehended.
It is not a question whether boys should exer-
cise power over one another—that they will do
at any rate—the question is, whether this
power shall be a mere tyranny of brute force,
or whether it shall be so controlled to support
instead of subverting discipline. No man
knew boys better than Dr. Arnold. The per-
sonal devotion which he inspired even among
those of his pupils who were rarely brought
into actual contact with him cannot well be
described without suspicion of exaggeration ;
and it was to Arnold that this plan of moni-
torial police owes its present shape and effi-
cacy.
The reply of "Anti-Monitor" scarcely merits
that name, since it does, in fact, admit the prin-
cipal points in dispute. The writer neither
objects to monitorial authority nor advises the
disuse of corporal punishment, but merely
complains that the amount of the latter at
Harrow is excessive, and that certain other
abuses prevail. These are questions of evi-
dence and fact, on which we do not pretend to
decide.

Annotated Edition of the British Poets. Edited
by Robert Bell. The Poetical Works of
Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, and Thomas
Sackville Lord Buckhurst. London : J. W.
Parker and Son.
Tins edition of the "British Poets" is very
likely to meet with great success. In excel-
lence of typography, and in convenience of size
for the pocket, it will please those who require
good print and who like to ramble through the
fields with their favourite authors. Nor are
we disposed to give attention to the ill-natured
cavillings which cynical criticism has offered
upon the judiciously-compiled life of Surrey
prefixed to this volume by Mr. Bell. Though
it is very possible that our early poets like
Surrey and Bnckhurst are not the subjects on
which the special aptitude of Mr. Bell finds
its most congenial exercise, his varied know-
ledge and versatile talents will secure such
comments as will sustain the credit of the
" Annotated Edition." Amongst other petty
fault-finding that we have read we were
amused with Mr. Bell being gravely taken to
task for " his echo of the old mistake that the
" ancestor of the Howards was a Sir William
" Howard, a Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas." Mr. Bell had the authority of Dug-
dale and other genealogists for the statement,
and the "old mistake" is a very popular one,
supported by many writers. If we were in-
clined to look for faults we should be rather
disposed to caution Mr. Bell against too im-
plicitly relying on the dicta of Mr. Hallam in
what relates to poetical criticism. The mind of
that eminent scholar is too cold, and many of
his decisions (as Mr. Macaulay has hinted)
partake of the ruthless severity of a literary
iconoclast. Thus his assertion that " the
" taste of Surrey is more striking than his
" genius " is open to some questioning. To