medieval building. Looked at in this light, many of what otherwise seem blemishes appear, if not virtues, yet very excusable faults. The inaccurate drawing of legs and arms, which everyone has by heart, may be explained thus, though it is perhaps an excess of medievalism which we could gladly have dispensed with it is rather a case of the " : case of the "exemplar vitiis imitabile." A more reasonable instance of this imitation is to be seen in the almost total absence of expression in the faces and figures, the dead calm which pervades most of the pictures, as for example the "Maries at the Tomb," "The Sodom," the "Three Children." Again the starved backgrounds are in keeping with the severe simplicity of that style, a simplicity which was, however, due in a great measure to the undeveloped state of the practical side of the art: the same is to be said of the solidity of the angels and other heavenly appearances. Lastly our artist had to be careful to avoid anything which would stand out too prominently from the monotony of the wall-painting. Pictures which were individually better might not have had as good an effect. In spite of much which displeases us, we have good reason to be satisfied with the series as a whole, and may respect our artist for the self-denial which he has exercised in adhering strictly to the medieval type. LONG AFTER. While without the night wind's moaning, By the ruddy firelight musing Filled again? Ah nevermore ! Comrades laid him to his rest, Face of Allan, gay and bright, W.V.B. Whom the treacherous sea took from me In a rough November night; Saving others perished Allan, And the surge closed o'er his head. Ne'er shall I behold my darling Till the sea gives up her dead. One by one come forth my dear ones, Youngest, sweetest of them all. PUBLIC SCHOOL NOTES. B. The Uppingham School Magazine has, like other papers, an account of the battle of Ulundi, which throws a little more light on that much-narrated victory. The rest of the paper is occupied by a long account of the cricket season of the Uppingham Rovers, who appear to have had a successful tour. The Sedberghian is a new paper, which we are glad to welcome; and it contains some good literary matter. It also contains a review of the past cricket season; the best batting average was 13, the best bowling average "one wicket in every three overs, at the cost of 2 runs per wicket." The Cheltonian contains a review of the past cricket season; their cricket was satisfactory, and the weather had to answer for their defeats. A. W. Kemble has obtained the highest batting average (20-6); A. J. Forrest the highest bowling average, 7-6 runs per wicket. The Old Cheltonians' Club has begun the season well by winning three matches; the School hope to be as successful. There is a proposal to revive the Debating Society, which is there looked on as a tedious bore. St. Andrew's College Magazine, like everything else at the Cape, is extremely martial. In a hotly contested match they defeated the town by one try. The Wellingtonian opens with Mr. Gladstone's address to them, which must awaken associations of his visit here. H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught and Sir Samuel Browne, the late General in Afghanistan, have visited Wellington, and have met with an en thusiastic reception. The rest is chiefly occupied with school news. The Sydneian contains an account of a Football match with another Australian School, where their opponents were unused to the game of Football. After the game the novices expressed a determination never to play at a "free fight" again. Their Debating Society, by way of discussion, indulges in songs and recitations. The Wykehamist opens with a defence against the charge made against it of writing satire. It contains an ambitious attempt at a verse translation of Virgil. In the Debating Society, Women's Suffrage bas fared no better than here. The Eton College Chronicle contains two accounts of the Races in verse. One is in the style of Chaucer, which the author forgets in the middle of his poem. The Rifle Corps had the honour of being brigaded with regular troops for a field day, under the command of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught. IN the 'Varsity four-oared races last week, G. D. Rowe, and C. E. Blackett-Ord, stroked University and Corpus respectively. J. A. L. Fellowes, of Exeter College, Oxford, has won four important events during the last week, Lincoln, Magdalen, and B.N.C. strangers' races, and one of the 'Varsity handicaps in the Freshmen's Sports. J. H. A. Law, of Trinity College, Cambridge, won the quarter, hundred, and the long jump in the Freshmen's Sports. C. Buston (Emmanuel, Cambridge,) has taken a mastership at Bengeo school, Hertford. C. S. Rashdall, R. M. Yetts, and C. P. Wilson have been playing for Cambridge University at football (Rugby Union). APPOINTMENT. Rev. W. Gildea, Vicar of West Lulworth; Vicar of Netherbury. Occasional Notes. ALL who have been connected with Marlborough will be sorry to learn that Dr. Fergus has been ill. He is expected, however, to resume his duties in a few days. THE cold during the past week reached its climax on Friday night, when the thermometer actually fell to 11.8. On Saturday there were some intrepid people who skated. Association football was the order of the day in the afternoon, in consequence of the hardness of the ground. THANKS to the energetic efforts made last term, the brass band is now in full vigour. There are at present fifteen members, and all the instruments, except one bombardon, are in use. Full practices are held weekly; and we may expect to hear some result of their labours at concert. ON Monday, Nov. 17th, we were favoured with a visit from Professor Lewis Felméri, of the University of Klausenburg, who is making a tour for the purpose of seeing something of English education, on behalf of the Hungarian government. The professor allowed himself very little time for his visit, but contrived to see a good deal of Marlborough life, and ended by listening to the Sixth translating Demosthenes in Tuesday morning school. THE Mayor's half-holiday (asked for by the retiring Mayor, Mr. Cooper,) was given on Friday, Nov. 14th. THE examination for the "Colbeck" prizes will be held on Saturday Nov. 22nd, and Tuesday, Nov. 25th. WE are glad to hear that Alfred Robinson, Esq., to whom we mainly owe our pavilion, has come to stay here for the rest of the term. WE beg to acknowledge, with thanks, the receipt. of the following:-Trumpeter, Cinque Port, Uppingham School Magazine, Sedberghian, Ulula, Fettesian, Eastbourne Cliftonian, Cheltonian, St. Andrew's College Magazine, Sydneian, Wellingtonian, Wykehamist, Magdalen College School Journal, Eton College Chronicle, Harrovian, Carthusian, Meteor, Undergraduates' Journal. Correspondence. To the Editor of the Marlburian. DEAR SIR,-Some time ago the lower branches of the trees in court were cut so as to offer less resistance to the caps of fellows running for Chapel. But the trees will grow, and the lower branches have now grown down to such an extent that they are quite as bad as they were before. Cannot the trees be kept clipped? It was argued in the last letter to the effect that the measure would materially lessen the number of late chapels, but I don't know if the statistics have proved this to be the case. I am, Sir, yours truly, HIGH-FLYER. To the Editor of the Marlburian. DSAR SIR,-In the interests of Marlborough Football, I beg to suggest a slight but I believe beneficial change. I propose, at any rate in house-matches, the adoption of a system of scoring similar to that in vogue at Cheltenham a year or two ago. In this system, instead of counting by tries and goals, a certain number of points are scored for each advantage gained, say one for a touch-down, four for a try, sixteen for a goal; and I should be in favour of giving one or two points more for a dropped than for a placed goal. In answer to inevitable objections, I offer the following remarks. 1. This method of scoring would shew more accurately the relative strength of the sides. Every one must have seen in house-match, the ball driven over the line time after time and nothing scored because one half-back by sheer luck gets his hand on the ball half a second before the other. 2.-It would save time now lost in frequent dropping out, because if a point were lost by a touch-down, no one would touch down unless absolutely compelled. 3. It would encourage dropping at goal, because (in addition to the difference which might be made between dropped and placed goals) there would be a chance of scoring a touchdown even if the goal were missed. Offering this proposal for discussion if you think it worth consideration, To the Editor of the Marlburian. DEAR SIR,-To come to the point at once, would it not be better if an Amen were sung after every hymn, as in Hymns Ancient & Modern, instead of only after some, as at present. As it is now, there is always an awkward pause after the hymn when no Amen is sung, which would be avoided, if my proposal were adopted. The same remarks apply to the Amen sung after the sermon: some Sundays we have one, and some Sundays none; and to an outsider who is not used to our ways it must seem very strange to hear an Amen played when half the congregation are already kneeling, or to hear none played when the other half are waiting for it. Hoping this state of things will be improved, DEAR SIR,-May I be allowed to suggest that before the next foreign match some alteration be made about the number of fellows allowed on the top of the ground. Last year, if I remember aright, only LX Caps were allowed on the top, and only XL caps were allowed within the ropes at the bottom. Now we see swarms of fellows obstructing the view of the Masters and Ladies at the top, and we also see threes and fours of LX caps strolling up and down within the ropes at the bottom. Before ending, I wish to call attention to another matter, and that is the way in which fellows walk over the line dur. ing house-matches, until it seems almost as though a crowd were in the middle of the ground. Surely something might be done to prevent this. I have seen the captain making strenuous efforts to keep back the mob, and once also I saw two XL caps doing something to keep fellows back. But it is useless for one or two fellows to try singly; the crowd forms up again most persistently. What it really wants is a combined effort of all the caps to keep fellows back. I am, Sir, yours truly, GUTE ORDNUNG. To the Editor of the Marlburian. DEAR SIR,-There are two reforms which I should like to see carried out. 1.-Could not the Deus Misereatur be sung on Tuesday evening instead of the Magnificat? If this change was made, each of the four evening Canticles would be sung once a week. 2.-Why should the Lower School be allowed to have the best seats at the entertainments in the Upper School? Of cours, there will be many 80 called Conservatives" (especially in the Lower School) to oppose this, but I have not heard a single sensible argument for the retention of the custom. Surely the Lower School, though no doubt highly intellectual, are not able to appreciate the music, &c. better than the Upper and Middle Fifths. Hoping to see these alterations soon made, Believe me, yours, T.E. I am, etc. γαμμα. To the Editor of the Marlburian. DEAR SIR,-My eye was naturally caught by the title of the article which headed your last impression. I began to read it, and was at once surprised by the tone by which it was characterised. But as I read on my surprise deepened into indignation, and I had scarcely com to the end, before I resolved to go to the length of recording in a letter my protest against both the subject of the article and the manner in which it was handled. This may seem an extreme measure, and my language throughout this letter may be slightly intemperate, but I hope to prove to those who take the pains to read what I have to say that I have a fair excuse for trangressing the limits of courtesy, in the exceptional nature of the case. Now in the first place, as to the choice of subject, under certain circumstances nothing could be more harmless. An agreeable and amusing article might be written about nicknames, supposing they were not familiar to most of your readers and had belonged to a former generation of Marlbarians. Now I don't for an instant deny that the article was amus. ing. I would bet heavily that it was read by far more of your subscribers that anything else in the same number. But, as we know to our cost now-a-days, a la ge circulation is not an infallible criterion of the respectability of a publication, and then the condition I mentioned above was very far from being fulfilled in this case. The author was not discoursing on the soubriquets of a bygone age, but of the immediately preceding Marlburians; nicknames whose original possessors have only jast left, and who are perfectly well known to a large proportion of your readers. Such a proceeding I cannot help stigmatising as extremely bad taste. But unfortunately this is not all. The anonymous author has not merely damaged his reputation but contrived to annoy a great many persons besides. For I am perfectly sure that such holding up to public laughter must be extremely distasteful to sensitive persons, especially when they have been dubbed-for no fault of their own-with some vulgar nick name derived from some physical peculiarity. Let me state at once, Sir, that the heat with which I speak is not due to my having been thus personally pilloried,-for the facet ous author has been good enough to spare me;—it is the heat that arises from the sight of such objectionable rubbish in the columns of a paper of hitherto irreproachable character like the Marlburian. Why, Sir, I think the author must have been dreaming when he posted his contribution to the Marlburian, and by a slip of the pen addressed it to you instead of some of the Society Journals whose aim is to rake up any kind or sort of personalities they can possibly pick out of the gutter. I deeply regret, for the author's sake, the collapse of one of these periodicals owing to a recent famous libel case, for I am certain it would have afforded him admirable scope for his literary talents in the future, judging from this specimen. But I have this hope for the race of present Marlburians. A few of the nicknames mentioned extend a little too far back for present members of the School to have been familiar with them, and I therefore conclude with a tolerable amount of certainty that this objectionable effusion is not likely to have emanated from the brain of any boy who is still at Marlborough. But I have hitherto indulged in general objections to the article, at the risk of becoming somewhat lengthy. Let me descend to some more specific charges. Presuming for the reason already assigned that the author is an O M., and therefore one who has attained to what are called (perversely in his case) years of discretion, I charge him, in discussing one class of nicknames-there is no need for me to be more explicit, for every one can see what I allude to-with being guilty of treating an objectionable subject under the guise of its being harmless, which only makes it doubly objectionable. In the second place, I must confess that I opened my eyes very wide indeed to read in your eminently respectable columns nicknames which, thinly disguised under some eccentricity of spelling, are to say the least of it, vulgar and offensive in their origin. But the offensiveness of the writer is only equalled by his imperturbable audacity. Of all persons in the world, the members of the Common Room might have been supposed to be shielded by their official position from an attack in a school paper. But no, such scruples have never entered into the head of the writer, and these gentlemen suffer with the rest. And what can this list of nicknames do to those who don't recognise the owners, except set their curiosity on the alert to ferret out who the originals were? otherwise there is no point in the whole thing; it is like knowing the answer of a riddle without the question. And thus an objectionable craving for personalities is stimulated, and old, half-forgotten, and annoying nicknames are again revived and brought into public notice. I can not, Sir, with certainty expect you to do my letter the honour you have paid the article in question, I mean by publishing it. I hope and trust you may, so that both sides of the question may be represented. At any rate I expect that you will have the patience to read my remonstrance, and to consider what is the literal fact, that it expresses, not merely my own, but the resentment of a large number of O.M.'s at Oxford, at what I unhesitatingly denounce as the most unwarrantable breach of good taste that has ever sullied the pages of the Marlburian. I am, Sir, yours truly, AN OXFORD O.M. AND EX-EDITOR. [NOTE.—It has usually been customary for the Editors of the "Marlburian," as well as merely renouncing responsibility for the opinions of their correspondents, to refrain from taking, officially, a share in any controversy that may arise in their columns; in the case, however, of the above letter of "Ex-Editor," they feel bound to transgress this custom; seeing that the writer of it has virtually attacked the Editors for the insertion of the article of which he dis approves, as well as the author of that article for its composition. Solely from a wish for the freest and most liberal discussion, and from the regard presumably due to an exeditor, has this letter been inserted; but the present Editors cannot forbear from expressing, as a body, their strong disapprobation of that letter and their protest against it, considering it to be even more offensively intemperate in expression than it is weak in logic; and from stating the grounds of their conviction. Before refuting "Ex-Editor's" charges seriatim, the general criticism presents itself that he has entirely mistaken the expressed and attained object of the article he reviles. "Longbow" distinctly states that its sole intention is "to afford a basis for someone else to theorise on; " certainly not to instigate malignant curiosity or to "stimulate an objectionable craving for personalities," but to treat of a most curious and little handled subject, and to chronicle the extraordinary and happy ingenuities of the school-boy mind. Such was the object that "Longbow's " article has aimed at and attained; and it must be a most morbid sensitiveness or a most captious spirit of criticism that could induce "Ex-Editor" to write with such needless bitterness, and "to trangress," as he allows, "the limits of courtesy." The first specific charge that he brings is that the owners of most of the recorded nicknames have only recently left, and are “perfectly well known to many of your readers;" this, he says, is extremely bad taste. First, this is not a fact; out of ninety nicknames in the paper, all but about twenty have left for more than a year; the remaining seventy can hardly be called "immediately preceding Marlburians." Again, even in the minority, the fact of their being more recent than the rest, rather makes the record of their nicknames more harmless. Why, if a fellow has been constantly called by his nickname for four or five years, and has had all possible changes rung on it, can it possibly hurt his feelings to see it in print ? or his friends' feelings either, who are the only people likely to recognise it? Precisely the same reasoning applies to "Ex-Editor's" next charge, that the feelings are hurt of those whose nickname represents a physical peculiarity; during their school career they must have become pretty callous to chaff on the subject, and to see it in print only raises one harmless laugh more. Such is a specimen of "Ex-Editor's" logic; a word now on his intemperate expression of his views. He is good enough, having been on the editorial staff, to concede that the "Marlburian" has hitherto been irreproachable; but then, after calling the article "objectionable rubbish," he abuses the author in such unmeasured terms, as caused the Editors for a long time to hesitate whether, from respect to himself and to the " 'Marlburian," they would not decline to insert his letter. For one gentleman to compare another gentleman to those penny-a-liners that rake up shreds of old scandal and embody them in scurrilous lampoons is such strong language as is not for the future to be admitted into these columns. He then becomes more definite; he charges the article with treating of one objectionable class of nicknames, and declines to be more explicit. It must be the exceeding denseness of the Editors that has failed to ferret out this objectionable subject; from no other quarter have they heard a word of disapproval, either from members of the school or masters. Next, he proceeds to charge Longbow" with attacking and holding up to ridicule-whom but the Common Room itself? But there is an obvious answer; many of the nicknames of masters coincide with those of boys; it is the latter that are exclusively treated, the article being particularly and properly confined to them. The last point to be noticed is the charge that the tendency of the article is to induce the readers to ferret out the names of the owners of the nicknames; and thus "an objectionable craving for personalities" is stimulated: this has been sufficiently answered above; for the reader of the article is far more struck by the ingenuity and amused by the mere quaintness of the nicknames than stimulated to find out to whom they were applied; if he knows them already, it cannot stimulate him to see them in print: and if not, he does not care for the trouble of trying to ferret out the owners. In conclusion, the Editors beg to express their regret that it has been necessary to enter so strong a protest against the views of a correspondent: but for the credit of this periodical and themselves they cannot allow to pass unnoticed such gross and unfounded charges as these contained in the above letter.] |
