ts in a wider direction, and a boy could not stay there five years
without learning something: which is more than can be said of all
schools! He learned at least to use his eyes and his ears and his limbs;
order, cleanliness, exercise, grew into habits; and the school pleased
the ladies and satisfied the gentlemen,--in a word, it thrived; and Dr.
Herman, at the time I speak of, numbered more than one hundred pupils.
Now, when the worthy man first commenced the task of tuition, he had
proclaimed the humanest abhorrence to the barbarous system of corporal
punishment. But alas! as his school increased in numbers, he had
proportionately recanted these honorable and anti-birchen ideas.
He had--reluctantly, perhaps, honestly, no doubt; but with full
determination--come to the conclusion that there are secret springs
which can only be detected by the twigs of the divining-rod; and having
discovered with what comparative ease the whole mechanism of his little
government could be carried on by the admission of the birch-regulator,
so, as he grew richer and lazier and fatter, the Philhellenic Institute
spun along as glibly as a top kept in vivacious movement by the
perpetual application of the lash.

I believe that the school did not suffer in reputation from this sad
apostasy on the part of the head-master; on the contrary, it seemed more
natural and English,--less outlandish and heretical. And it was at
the zenith of its renown when, one bright morning, with all my clothes
nicely mended, and a large plum-cake in my box, I was deposited at its
hospitable gates.

Amongst Dr. Herman's various whimsicalities there was one to which he
had adhered with more fidelity than to the anti-corporal punishment
articles of his creed; and, in fact, it was upon this that he had
caused those imposing words, "Philhellenic Institute," to blaze in gilt
capitals in front of his academy. He belonged to that illustrious class
of scholars who are now waging war on our popular mythologies, and
upsetting all the associations which the Etonians and Harrovians connect
with the household names of ancient history. In a word, he sought
to restore to scholastic purity the mutilated orthography of Greek
appellatives. He was extremely indignant that little boys should be
brought up to confound Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis
with Diana,--the Greek deities with the Roman; and so rigidly did he
inculcate the doctrine that these two sets of personages w