The Express.
London, England, 1858-12-25 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

The Foster Foster Brothers, being a History of the School
and College Life of Two Young Men. Loudon,
1888: Hall, Virtue, and Co.

The controversy about the merits and demerits,
positive and relative, of our public schools, is not
dying oat, though it changes its forms. We thought
we had heard within the last five years almost
everything that could be said for or against every
public school in England, and about the effects of
the system on British character; but here is a book,
as fresh as the morning, which shows us that math
remained to be said. First we had, five years ago, a
series of exposures of bad practices and evil tem-
pers in several of our chief public schools ; and then
the natural consequence, a pretty fall ventilation of
the subject in the newspapers. Next appeared Dr.
Wieee's "German I.atters on English Education,"
issued in translation in the interest of Rugby, but doing
menharm than good in that direction by the mistakes
of fact and the follies of enthusiasm into which a
Prussian observer of English boy-freedom was likely
to fall. Since that we have witnessed the pheno-
menon of " Tom Brown's " popularity. It is under-
stood that that book is still spreading, having more
nearly pervaded the genuine middle-class of our na-
tion than any work at all resembling it ever did be-
fore. A book so popular, both by its subject and its
merits as a delineation, was sore to call forth a prac-
tical antagonism, over and above the widely expressed
disgust at its picture of the liabilities of English
boyhood—at the representation of sensualism, para-
mount and gratified, in connexion with the unna-
tural egotism (or natural egotism run to seed) which
pervades Rugby sentiment, from the lowest form
of " brag " to the highest of spiritualism. Clever
as the book is, and possible as it may be to bring
out a manly and healthy member of society from
such a training as it describes, it must have struck
dismay to the hearts of a multitude of parents. The
challenge which it holds out to parents to defy
heaven and earth by sending little boys into such a
scene of life as is presented in " Tom Brown's School-
days " must have broken the rest and altered the
plans of many households ; and in this way the
book may have greatly stimulated the existing in-
quiries into the merits of proprietary and private
schools. It has operated also in bringing into the
field both imitators and antagonists of the book, and
the impressions it conveys. In Mr. Farrar's "Tale
of Roslyn School " (" Eric ") we have an intended
antidote to the moral mischiefs of " Tom Brown,"
and in the Foster Brothers we have—not an
express answer, and certainly nothing like an imita-
tion—but a narrative of school and college life which
looks remarkably like an equally true story. It is
I a shocking disclosure on the whole. There is nothing
morbid about the tone of the book. It is anything
bat sentisientaL It abounds in fun and in relish of
the activities, competitions, and sports of boyish and
adolescent life; but the exhibition of sordid cor-
ruption, selfishness, and heartlessness in the elder
personages, and of cruelty, malice, and all the vices
which are bred of pain iu the juniors, is appalling ;
and the more so, from the subdued tone of feeling
io which it is presented. The work is not, like
"Tom Brown " and others, a description of the in-
fluences of one particular school. The Foster Brothers
per through a series of them : a public school,
Winton (Eton); a preparatory school of the mediaeval
type, which high churchmen are at present eager to
rehabilitate, in order to bring back toe great founda-
tions into a retrograde condition; again, a preparatory
school with no such special aim • further on, a cram-
ming school, introductory to the military colleges;
then one of those military colleges, Sandwich (Wool-
wich) ; and finally the university, " Camford," of
whicu we have a full and intimate view, with
some of its illastriove and some of its popular men
admirably sketched, " Oxbridge " appearing only in
the distance. As soon as the nature of the con-i
of this volume becomes known, it will be i
read with the eagerness which at present at-
tends upon the subject of school and college
experience. For its merits the work certainly de-
INITTOI such popularity as it may probably obtain.
Though somewhat crude in structure and manage-
ment, it manifests ability of a high order, and various
quality. Though it parades no name. no reader will
suppose it the work of a novice. There ere many
traces of the poet in it, and yet more of the satirist;
while the espy flow of the style, and the fan without
mannerism (so difficult to obtain nowadays) indicate
a familiarity with authorship. Every reader will
use that this. °moot be the writer's first work, and
will hope that it may not be the last.
The early chapters of the volume are so good as to
be misleading. They min expeetatioes which we
not fulfilled, though the interest and admiration the
again towards the close, when the reader finds