The Press.
London, England, 1854-09-23 00:00:00

THE CAMP AT BOULOGNE.

BOULOGNE, SEPT. 21.—The Emperor is expected
back to-day, but his movements depend so entirely
upon himself that there is no absolute certainty of
his return. In the same way, the postponed ma-
noeuvres at Escomilles, it is now confidently stated,
will take place on the 25th, but whether they do or
not, has, probably, not yet been finally determined.
It excites some surprise in the army that, being under
the personal command of the Emperor, who has
come to Boulogne for the purpose, nearly a month
should have passed away without more than one
grand tieldday having occurred. Even then only a
portion of the troops were out, and the inspections
and parade views which have taken place are not of
a character to count for much with so large a body
of men regularly encamped for training and exercise.
At Chobham our troops were much more knocked
about, and, though to set the French army of the North
in motion is a very different thing from turning out
upon an English common some 8,(X)0 or 0,000
soldiers, still it may fairly seem strange that more
has not been done. But perhaps the Emperor
is intent upon other objects with this magnificent
army. One cannot go into a large café militaire
without hearing the words Cronstadt, Sebas-
topol, or Bomarsund constantly repeated. In-
deed, when the Prince was over here these words
were the only common vocabulary between the Life
Guardsmen he brought with him and the French
soldiers who hastened to show them hospitality. In
every other respect they were completely unintel-
ligible to each other, but when they quaffed bumpers
of punch to the name of one of the Russian fortresses
there was no misunderstanding as to what was meant.
Some, indeed, confidently believe that this army of
the North is in reality destined for the Rhine. It is
not surprising that the policy of Prussia should sug-
gest such views, but time alone can develop with
certainty the true character of the work which the
Emperor has manifestly cut out for his troops.
Whatever may be in contemplation for it, the French
army of the North is in excellent campaigning trim, and
will,when tried, give abundant proofs of its efficiency.
In some important respects it scarcely attains to our
standard of what is requisite for the training and
equipment of soldiers; in others we are certainly
surpassed by it ; but, those sources of comparison
apart, it is a splendid force, capable of doing any.
thing and going anywhere—except, of course, to
invade England.
Yesterday General Morin inspected four batteries
of field artillery about three miles from Boulogne on
the Paris road. They defiled past him at the close
of the inspection with admirable precision, and
appeared to be in excellent working order. There
seems to be only one ammunition-waggon attached
to each gun, whereas we have, besides that, two
extra to each battery, and it is well understood, as an
important point in practice, that our artillery carries
a considerably larger supply of ammunition than
any other in the field. As to horses, ours have a
great advantage in size and strength, but are probably
not so hardy or steady in service. In campaigning
the f3rage of horses is frequently attended with
immense difficulties, and it is then that the powers of
endurance which those of the French cavalry and
artillery appear to possess would be most advan-
tageously brought out. Some of them are too old
and ought to be got rid of.

THERE is a touching instance of filial devotion in
an extract quoted by Saint Marc Girardin in the
Journal des Debats, while recording the death of a
Paris celebrity, Madame la Contesse de Ste. Aulaire,
at the age of 100 years. That illustrious lady during
the revolutionary terrors supported her father by
debarring herself of almost the necessities of life,
during his residence at a Maison de Sante, to whioh
he had been permitted with others to retire, paying
heavily for a prolongation of the day of doom. This
arrangement, it appears, was publicly accepted by
the authorities for all classes of " suspects " who had
the means. The ordinary amusements of the day
were permitted, and every grade of society, from an
actress up to a duchess, was to be found within
the walls of the hospital.
THE announcement of the expected return of the
Empress of Austria to Vienna for her Reconcilement
is confirmed : the emperor's satisfaction is so de-
cidedly expressed, that it is believed a further poli-
tical amnesty will be granted to the Italian refugees.
Tho popularity of the Empress from her gentle and
simple manners is naturally increased by this account
of her health.

littraturt.

School Experiences of d Fag at a Private and a
Public School. By George Melly. London :
Smith, Elder, and Co.
WHATEVER any of us may have suffered in our
school-days, we suppose that few can look back
to life's early morn and cherish other than
pleasing memories of the time when, if our
griefs were frequent, they Were transient and
unattended by the corroding cares of more
advanced years. Beautifully has it been or
dained that, at a period of physical and mental
weakness, Hope should ever soar with such
airy wings, and Fanny gild even the most
lowering clouds. Miserable, indeed, must
have been the school-days which, at the dis-
tance of thirty years, do not call up smiles
and awaken recollections of many hours of
joy. The strange variety of characters then
brought before us on our leaving home, the
fascinations of the first and most-enduring
frietdships Of our lives, the field of emulation
suddenly opened to our view, would of them-
Selves cohapensate for separatiot .from the
mother whose every 'Recent was in the tone of
loVp,aiid frein the gentle little Playmates that
had parted froin us with tearful eyes. Then
let the delights of juvenile faction be consi-
dered, with its small but noisy passions,
and its lively contests on trifles, heralding,
perchance, the serious rivalries of after life in
the Senate or the Court. And who could ever
forget the stolen sweetness of those delightfiil
hours when we read our first novel under the
Waving willow tree on some secluded bank,
while we began to feel the first thrilling of the
most irrepressible and of hitnan
passions? The pleasare .of hearing front
home; the hamper of good things to be shared
only amongst our devoted adherents ; the
rural walk when, out of the hated usher's
hearing, we poured our sorrows into the ears
of a confidant; the conspiracies to dethrone
eoine swaggering bully of four feet six in
stature; the first practice in schemes of finance
for obtaining credit froth pastryednks ; surely
the pleasures incident to those liing-Vatished
days flfr exceed any pitiffil terrors of a peda-
gogue with a birchen broom, caricatioing the
part of Rhadamanthas, as he heard of our
terrible raid, a la Russe, upon the principality
of a neighbouring orchard, or, of our great
pitched battle when we left the defeated young
villagers ivith abundant black eyes and a su-
perfluity of bloody, fioseS.
Seen through the vista Of advaitieing 3 ears,
such times have cheering recolleotiOns for all
of us who, retain any sunshine of the heart.
Nor is it their distance that lends " enchant-
ment to the view." Contrast with the hard
reality and unromantic strife of the actual
world of ivhich we ottly dreatted in those days
Wee theft additional merits on a retrespeet.
Drib of Theinas Hood's Sentitnefital pieces
pathetically utters the affectitin fOr school
niemoiriee
04 when l, was a tiny boy..
My days 4nul nights were full.of joy,
My mates were blithe and kind.
No wonder that I sometimes
And dash the teardrop front my eye,
To cast a look behind!
A less-known. but not less-brilliant, writer of
verse, the late Mackworth Pruett, has touched
on the same chord in some of his fugitive
stanzas :
Where are my friends ? lam
No playmate shares my beaker;
Some lie beneath the churchyard stone,
And some before the Speaker.
And some compose a trac,edy,
. And some compose a rondo.; ,
And some draw swords for liberty
And some dritw pleas for John Doe.
The poetry of boy-nature lias, perhaps„ never
been adequately described. Boys, truly, are
rough subjects for resthetical fictionists to take
in hand. Adult human beings can be ex-
amined and analysed
.with compaNive ease,
but it is only given to persons with ahigh
order of imagination and peculiar perception
of the real to appreciate thoroughly the bound-
ing life and (in Shakspeare's words) " the
extravagant and erring iipifit " of masculine
hiltnataitY in teens. Several practised novelists
hay,: utterly failed in their boys. Admitting

THE PRESS.

- -
the excellence of Miss Edgeworth's works as
educational primers, in which the didactic is
okilfully diversified, still her " Frank" and
" any'H no more resemble average, or even
" extraordinary," boys than her " Rosamond "
and " Lucy" are like any of the long rows of
sly little misses with demure faces that troop
out of boarding-schools in an afternoon around
Highgate or Clapham-cominon. The boys of
Mr. Dickens are " high-fantastical " creations,
little cherubs just breeched, with brains be-
yond their years ; and we only wonder how such
creatures could have been drawn as realities
by Boz. They are about as like the robust and
buoyant little Englishmen of this Anglo-Saxon
land as the Chinese ladies on porcelain saucers
are to the fair equestrians at Rotten-row. In
" Conino•sby " the scenes at Eton are very
naturally described, and the " talk" of the
boys is most faithfully reported • their vivacity
never degenerates into vulgarity ;_ but the
passages of youthful life there briefly painted
are Merely episodical. Some of the boys of
Mr. Tliackeray are very good, and are iiistinct
with life and nature, but generally they belong
to one family—that of the juvenile swaggerers,
who talk big as if they were men ; and they
are' too suggestive of the .master-hand that
drew Lilliput. What a terrible satire on man-
, hood would have been a boy-novel from the
ten Of Swift!
We have premised these remarks to explain
the causes of our diSappointroent with the
very prosateal and Matter• of-fliet volume before
us. We expected something in the nature of
S lively,. autobiography of. an English school-
boy, and We find only a collection of retrospec-
tive views, written in the style, of an essayist.
The volume, though full of detail, wants the
colour and liveliness of the kind of life that
it attempts to describe. Grown folk have not
Much to learn from its discussion of trite
topics, and schoolboys would yawn over its
tages., In short, it is a good stibject heavily
reated. It is entirely deficient in heartyfun ;
there is, not a real good booing-match in its
pages ; ita floggings, thouo fregiiplat,
scarcely frighten a bold infant ; the iisherd,
those crorgons to schoolboys, *ant the pecu-
liar cast of malignity common to their detested
kind ; and the practical jokes are suffi-
ciently dull for the mess of a certain nameless
regiment.
Taking a syllable from Harrow aiid Rugby,
the author names his public school as " Harby, '
and allots its locality at Henley-on-Thames,
thud suggesting that he had three great public
schools in his eye when he composed his
veluine. He first describes a private school,
Whe're he was bullied Mercilessly by the big
boys, and where fagging was very severe.
Nothing more dreary can well be iniagined
than his account of the persecutions he there
endured ; but we fear that a critical schoolboy
Would be apt to ask, "Why was the author so
slow in learning the use of his fists ?" In
trnth, he seems to have been of d. very sensi-
tive disposition. We actually find hitn retiring
to his room to cry at merely seelq at flogging
itdininikered by the inonitbis to three WO
for the mean oltelite Of thieving. He re-
cords
Ob, how relieved I was to rush into my Study, throw
myself on a chair, and btirst into an unrestrained fit of
team. It Was the first tithe I had eyer Been any polish-
merit so Solbtinly iudicial; it was so coldly and &tinily
adinitiisteted that it had the repulsive air of the execution
of a Penal sentence. To my heated brain it Seemed
Lynch law in a chronic state ; and 1 was almost afraid to
be alone, lest any one should come in and maker long
speech prior to nearly killing me. I was roused by w
knock at the door, and an older boy, whom, ,I was very
food of, entered and threw himself full length upon the
sofa.
Well, what do you think of a hall-Hating? Is it not a
glorious institution?"
"1 never sitw anything so horrid before."
"Hut I am sore they deserved it handsomely. What
could be lower and more ungentlemanly than what they
were licked for ?"
" I think they ought to have been flogged."
" Well, you see, the monitors did.not like the responsi-
bility of that., for the boys,would have been in such a bad
position if the doctor had flogged them for stealing; the
whole school would have cut them. Ilegides, I know the
duJor himself thought this was best."
,
So sensitive a being was scarcelx fit for any
boyish treats; and we can imagine what ter-
rors he would have felt if he had been invited
by old Busby to partake of his frequent
"rump-and-dozens." The most lively bit in the
*Winne is the record of the first flogging he

SATURDAY

received. While he was a fag he injured some
of his master's handsomely-bound books, and
he thus relates the consequences :
whet could have possessed a man to put six valuable
gilt-edged books ender a sofa it was impossible to guess.
Such a state they were in l covered with green speckles of
mildew ' • the gold backs white, and the white sides yellow.
I felt thoroughly ashamed of my carelessness, and:
forgetting the fag Id the gentleman, said I would at once
write to London and replace them, and expressed myself
extremely sorry to have spoiled such valuable books. In
my distress the licking, the bet, and the club, were all
forgotten. But, he of course, would listen to no reason, so
putting up the damaged volumes, and clearing away the
tables and chairs, he made immediate preparations fur the
punishment.
It then suddenly occurred to me that I had white
trousers on, and that they were of the thinnest possible
material. It was clearly impossible to be licked at that
moment; and perhaps I had a chance, by an typeal, of
getting off altogether. But no: the whole literary feeling
of the house—all the admiration for white vellum and gilt
edges—would be brought to beat upon me. What was I
to do? I made a rapid calculation : as three cuts in white
trousers are to six cute in thick woollen ditto, so must be
my decision. And then, with much the same feelings as
those by which dentists lose half their patients, who, on
hearing their teeth ought to come out, promise to call
again, I decided to appeal. The prwpostor advised me
not, as the house Would be sure to confirm his judgment,
and I should only be worse licked in the all. But I was
i fixed more firmly n my idea of putting off the evil hour as
long as possible ; so the house was appealed t 3. But
nothing I could say would influence it, and accordingly I
was licked, with great eclat, by the monitor, and received
six cuts in the thickest woollen bags which my wardrobe
Torded. I may add that the pain was atrocious, and that
ad the felicity of showing six well-defined marks to my
friends, and spending half an hour in arranging the look-
ing-glasses of my room so as to see them myself; when,
after having distinctly seen that there was something to cry
fur, I incontinently burst into tears ; a weakness wherein
I resembled my little sister, who never used to cry because
she had hurt herself until she had been shown the bleeding
Cut or the inflamed blimp.
Sit cuts in thick Woollen bagS were not such
very " atrociOus" things to waste tears upon.
If he had been horsed upon the whipping-
block at Eton, afterwards burnt by the Mar-
quis of —,.he would have had good reason
for putting his ocular waterworks into full
play. But thus it is in the volume. Shrink-
ing and sensitive, the story-narrating " fag"
would have been equally miserable on ship-
boatd or iii association with any larger number
of hattly boys, whether at school or in the
Playground.
On a proper occasion, and *ith a fitting text
Waite us, we should he happy to diSciiss our
public-school system. To calumniate it is
easy; arid to correct it is, in sonic respects,
difficult. Like every other long-existing sys-
tem, it has some peculiar abuses of its own ;
but, though we are conscious and cognisant of
its Milts, *e agree rather with the generous
tiewit taken of it by George Canning than with
those of Crtibbe and Cowper, *hose severe
censures We see profusely quoted in the
volurrie before us: On such a subject we must
decline to take the evidence of the nervous
and melanchblY Cowpet, or to accept witlioat
large qualifications the rather morose Motility
of the author of the " Borough," whoie stern
genius was only too addicted to the more
repulsive side of things. The greater part of
the. gentlemen of England have had their
blittractets and manners formed at our public
schools; and the prieelesti merits of manly self-
reliance, truthfulness, and contempt for all
siieakin#, Paltry Practices—in short, most of
the animating qualities of the Anglish gentle-
man, frank, generodS, and bold—have been
often acquired, and almotit always fostered, in
our great public schools.
But we must decline, with this unsatisfac-
tory volume, to go into the whole question.
The antlioi; In his preface„ fears that he has
giVen " too bright a. picture " of a public
school ! tel him be Undbi no kiprehension
on that head, as lie has left out of view nearly
all its ruu, and much of its invaluable advan-
tages, id hlending together boys of various
classes. In short, we are sorry to say that,
upon a good subject, we have been disap-
pointed. Even where it would have been easy
to have been graphic or amusing he writes
with tatri'etiesa. The follbwing sketch of the
Irlarbean Debating Sotiety is on of the best
passages ih the volume :
Aker " ealling.over," l wandered abing the cloisters til
I came to an Open door, iihenee proceeded a tremendous
row, which recalled the idea of Derhosthenes talking to a
calm sea with his Moab full of pebbles. With the charac-
teristic impudence of a new boy walked in, took the first
seat I could find, and surveyed thb scene. It was the