WESTMINSTER.

WESTMINSTER retains a place among the great Public Schools of England by reason of its timehallowed associations and its large endowments. But a brilliant past and great capacities for future success only increase by force of contrast the obscurity into which the Westminster of the present day has sunk. Stat magni nominis umbra. It has been surpassed by its ancient rivals, and outstripped by younger competitors which have neither the prestige of its venerable name nor a tithe of its pecuniary advantages.

Few schools can claim so ancient and honourable a descent; none possess a history so full of general interest, or can produce a list of more distinguished scholars. Its existence was coeval with the monastic establishment of Westminster, since the master and his novices formed the nucleus of a school in which were taught the ordinary rudi

ments of a mediæval education. The present royal foundation cannot, however, boast a direct descent of such immemorial antiquity. After the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII. established, out of the confiscated revenues, the College of Westminster, with forty scholars, and an upper and under master, and made it closely dependent on the capitular body of the Church of Saint Peter. The Dean and Chapter-for Henry's bishopric of Westminster only lasted two years-took the same position towards the new school which the abbot and the monks had occupied towards the old. The second head master was Alexander Nowell, subsequently Dean of St. Paul's. To him the school owes the foundation of the Terentian play, the peculiar pride of Westminster; and to him the reformed church was indebted for catechisms which were accepted as authoritative expositions of the Anglican creed. During the troublous interlude of Mary's reign Nowell fled the country; the whole reformed establishment of Dean, Chapter, and College was swept away; the Convent of Westminster, almost alone among monastic bodies, was revived; and Feckenham, the last English mitred abbot, became the abbot of the restored Abbey.

The restored establishment was not long-lived; its existence terminated with the death of the sovereign on whom it depended. Elizabeth, in 1560, re-established Henry VIII.'s foundation, and gave the college those statutes which are the basis of its present constitution. Forty scholars, called Queen's Scholars, were placed on the foundation, and provision was also made for eighty boys called 'pensionarii,' 'oppidani,' and 'peregrini.' The 'pensionarii' were lodged with some of the Abbey and college authorities. Thus the Dean was allowed to take six of these boarders, and each of the prebendaries two. The candidates for the scholarships were to be examined by the Deans of Westminster and Christ Church, and the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. They were assisted by the head master, and a Master of Arts from each of the two colleges, who were called 'posers' or 'electioners.' After four years' residence in the school a certain number of the boys on the foundation were to be annually elected to studentships at Christ Church, or scholarships at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was provided that three boys should be sent to each, if there was a sufficiency of vacancies and of eligible candidates.

In the early years of the foundation the connection between the deanery and the school was close and intimate. The Dean, as has been said, was permitted to take boarders, presided at the annual examinations, and by the statutes was required to act quasi mens in corpore. He dined at the high table in the college hall, and occupied the position of the head of the College, while the masters corresponded to the tutors or lecturers. Dean Goodman-'Goodman,' Fuller observes, 'was his name and goodness was his nature' -was assiduous in his care for the Queen's scholars. He it was who first collected the boys in that portion of the old monastic dormitory which was not already occupied by the capitular library, and converted it into a schoolroom. To his generosity also the school was indebted for the 'pesthouse,' or sanatorium, at Chiswick, to which Busby and his scholars removed during the Plague. The Dean often virtually superseded the functions of the head master.

Hacket, the biographer and secretary of Archbishop Williams, records the zeal of Dean Andrewes for the promotion of the welfare of the

school while he was himself a scholar of West

minster. Andrewes took care that none but the best classical authors were read in the school, examined the prose and verse compositions of the boys, and even supplied the place both of the head schoolmaster and usher for the space of a whole week together.' Whenever he walked to Chiswick for his recreation, he was accompanied by 'a brace of this young fry, and in that wayfaring leisure had a singular dexterity to fill those narrow vessels with a funnel.' Even the busy Williams, the last Churchman who held the great seal, and was at once Archbishop of York and Dean of Westminster, found time to show the same paternal interest in the school which his predecessors had manifested. He added four scholars, distinguished from the rest by their violet gowns, to the original number of forty, and intended to provide for their maintenance at school and at the University. But the funds which he left for their support at Westminster and at St. John's College, Cambridge, proved so inadequate, that the Bishop's boys, after leading a hybrid existence between scholars and boarders, were finally suppressed within the last few years. The close connection between the ecclesiastical and academical estab