sible seeing everything, taking his part wherever he was. His smile, his ready joke, the kindness that seemed to ray out from him like an atmosphere, pervaded the whole school. Old Hale, Badger Hale! The merry nickname, in itself almost always a sign of kindness, always evoked an answering glow of pleasure and kindness in old boys and new boys alike, amid all the wonderful subdivisions of that youthful crowd. There were many masters of whom the boys stood in more awe. There were many whose attainments were greater in the strait limits of professional life there was none who was more, scarcely any who was so much, a man in the midst of those overwhelming influences of youth. Through all these he preserved always the large and natural proportions of manhood, unexaggerated, unspecialised. He loved London and his club, and the murmur of all that was going on: it troubled him if there was a new book talked of which he had not at least dipped into: he even read the serials as they ran, and kept himself going with half-a-dozen stories. And he knew everybody about a world which was always cheerful in his eyes, of which he always hoped and thought the

best.

From Bond Street or the Park to the familiar High Street of Eton he could not walk a dozen steps without encountering a friend; at every railway station, whenever he took a journey, he met somebody he knew. He was everybody's trustee, adviser, helper, the guardian of the poor, both formally-for he held that office in his parish-and unofficially, to every one who called upon his aid. He was one of the local political leaders on Mr Gladstone's side, until that statesman entered upon the erratic

career which ended his political life, when Mr Hale became a steady and useful Liberal Unionist. With all these charges, and many more, upon his head, his fall was like that of a great tower in the little place where he had been a shadow from the storm to many for forty years. There is a new opening of sky behind every such great removal, but the light is chill and terrible to mortal eyes.

Mr Hale's sphere in the School was that of science, which he loved. For a long time he had been chiefly concerned with the Army Class, which was specially congenial to him, for he came of a race of soldiers and sailors, and all his traditions were of that strenuous and militant life, while at the same time the association with those young men, about to be scattered to every corner of the globe in the service of their country, added to the breadth of his sympathies with every spot of ground on which Englishmen lived and died. He had one of the largest houses in Eton, always overflowing with boys, always well to the front on field and river, and warmly attached to the genial, humorous house-master, the twinkle in whose eye made many a small heart rise with a consciousness of punishment averted. name of Badger Hale, by which he was everywhere known, arose from the fact that he was very grey, almost white, quite early in life, and presented the curious sight of an almost white head and black beard. The nickname remained when the beard had also become grey. An impudent little person in his division asked him once, while the form listened with tremulous delight, "Is it true, sir, that badgers flourish in- we do not remember what degree of cold or warmth.

The

"Come to me at one, my boy, and we'll talk it over," said with a twinkle the genial master. Coming at one means many dreadful things to Eton ears: it meant nothing in this but a tug at the boy's ear, and a word of humorous advice. In India, in Australia, _n Africa, in every corner of the world, men meeting in all manner of wild or dangerous places will have told stories to each other within the last three months, with a smile on the lip but water in the eyes, of Badger Hale.

We have said he had been a Christian Socialist in his early days, and a volunteer in the Working Men's Colleges and nightschools which that movement brought forth. He had also a place in the very different circle surrounding the poet - painter Rossetti, and was among those who read in MS. the poems which were buried in the grave of the poet's wife, although they came to ight again in after-years. Thus his acquaintance embraced the innermost walks of literature as well as the more thickly trodden paths of life, and it did not fail mong later writers, with whom he had many friendships. The last public place in which he appeared was Lord's cricket-ground, at the Eton and Harrow match, which, as everybody will remember, was played, and drawn, in the most infavourable weather. He had probably not missed that function for all his forty years at Eton bove once or twice. It had been lamp and dreary, and it was remembered that he was not so lively s usual on the way home. It was ppropriate that this should have been the very last scene in which he was seen of men: for the charm of that meeting is that it brings together old Etonians from all

quarters to compare the feats of the old with the youthful prowess of the new. Mr Hale never rose again from the bed to which he went tired on the damp evening of that disappointing day. For a time nothing was feared, though he had in previous years experienced several serious attacks of similar illness, and his doctors knew there was a weak spot in him.

All seemed to go well, however, for several days, and his recovery was confidently expected, when suddenly this weak point was touched, and no further hope remained. He lived for some thirty-six hours after, in great self-possession and peace, receiving the holy communion with his family, and leaving with them every tender word and farewell that could soften their lot. One of his last acts was to put together the hands of an affianced pair, over whom a few days later he was to have pronounced the marriage blessing: by no ritual, with no nuptial pomp, could that blessing have been more solemnly or touchingly bestowed. The great boys' house, with all its commotion of young life, will soon change hands, and another and younger man step into the vacant place. It is one of the special pangs of such a position that the home of many years must necessarily be closed upon the wife who has ruled it, and who now sits there alone, in a noble serenity and patience, waiting for the moment when the ever-open hospitable doors must be shut upon her, and upon the children born within them.

The loss of such men, however, let us remember, can never be made up for by any sharpening of mere teaching, by any quickening of modern lessons, or devices of the School Board, polished_up for the use of a higher class. We

cannot make schoolmasters like Mr Hale; but he would not probably have satisfied the School Board. It ought at least to be fully acknowledged, and especially among the class themselves, that the breadth and manly naturalness of his kind do more for a future generation than all the improved machinery of teaching. The young ones push out the elder men, by nature in many cases, but sometimes with the vehemence of a principle, which thinks of nothing but the additional keenness as an implement of the recently sharpened and polished weapon. It is a great mistake in many ways, in none more than in the world of education. The experience, the composure even, if we may so call it, the comparative indifference of

age, is a great addition, and one that can least of all be dispensed with in a public school. The matured mind, which is beyond the starts of panic, and knows by experience how much more to be trusted is the even tenor of the general than the occasional disturbances of boyish extravagance, or the bad moments that sometimes occur in the management of a surging, seething world of humanity, even in childhood—is an almost fatal loss to any kind of government. A public school, above all, wants that steadying element. No young man could have held the place which Mr Hale did in Eton: nothing but a great tree, nourished by many snows and summers, can give such strong support or cast such grateful shade.

MALTHUS says, that to prevent men roaming about like savages in search of food they must have a home. Had he been a prophet, we might have concluded he was alluding to the rise of tramps, whose numbers are largely aug. mented by recruits from the ranks of those who start in life without attachment to any kind of property. Such is the case of the unskilled labourer. At eighteen or nineteen his career begins as a lodger for a time at home, and then very soon at a private lodging-house. He receives, if lucky, twenty shillings a-week, and, being thoroughly uncomfortable while paying highly, presently gets married as the best means he knows of bettering his lot. Thus he mortgages the future. Too often from hopelessness, he afterwards runs on a path of drink to the workhouse. The custom among the working classes of entering early into marriage, lies at the bottom of our social problems. Without taking it fully into consideration, it is useless to present schemes of improvement, as every plan would be upset sooner or later by the growth of population. This is one of the chief reasons which produces the contempt of well-informed minds for socialistic remedies that neglect the kernel of the subject, while offering the absurd nonsense of flabby sentimentalism as an offset to the want of actual experience. There is full sympathy with the wage-earner. There is every desire to do whatever may be right. The hardship is to arrive at the right. Of course, there can only be steady opposition to the "cranks" who cheerfully favour a general bouleversement

for party purposes, who lightly ignore the gradual evolution of the principles of Political Economy.

From Adam Smith to our own period, early marriage and its concomitant, population, have been discussed by economists. Ricardo, for example, rightly insists that the wellbeing of the poor cannot be secured without some effort on their part, or on the part of the legislature, to render less frequent early marriages. Prudence in marriage, says Malthus, is the only means by which workmen can acquire a greater share of production. Mr Henry Sidgwick, in his Elements of Politics,' foresees a time when Governments must face the question of population, unless people do it for themselves. There are naturally prudent men in the unskilled grade as in every grade of society. We are not, however, treating of them, or of persons who reach the workhouse through misfortune. Our remarks are solely confined to those whose characters set up the "social question.' To skilled workers what we have to write hardly applies, because British artisans are capable fellows. They belong to a club, perchance to a union, subscribe to a friendly society, and are anxious about their future. Therefore we are not here concerned with their troubles, which are produced by the false system of economics governing the world. They can take care of themselves. If they marry too young, as unfortunately is the case, they have, at all events, good and to some extent progressive wages. The solution of the social difficulty is thus connected, so far as material pros