he performance of all
you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and
flowers. And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing
step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and
endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and
more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as
easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my conduct and
the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly illustrate. It is
with confidence I promise that the close of every year shall find
me advancing in your regard by constantly observing the precepts of
my excellent tutors and the example of my excellent parents.

"We break up on Thursday, the 11th of December instant, and my
impatience of the short delay will assure my dear parents of the
filial sentiments of

"Theirs very sincerely,

"N.

"P.S. We shall reassemble on the 19th of January. Mr. and Mrs. P.
present their respectful compliments."

The present writer lately asked a close observer of educational matters
if Arnold had produced any practical effect on Secondary Education, and
the answer was--"He pulled down the strongholds of such as Mr. Creakle."
If he did that, he did much; and it is a eulogy which he would have
greatly appreciated. Let us see how far it was deserved. Let us admit
at the outset that Mr. Squeers is dead; but then he was dead before
Arnold took in hand to reform our system of Education. Mr. Creakle, it
is to be feared, still exists, though his former assistant, the more
benign Mr. Mell, has to some extent supplanted him. Dr. Blimber is,
perhaps, a little superannuated, but still holds his own. Dr. Grimstone
is going strong and well. In a word, the Private School for bigger
boys--(we are not thinking of Preparatory Schools for little
boys)--still exists and even flourishes. Now, if Arnold could have had
his way, the Private School for bigger boys would long since have
disappeared. "Mr. Creakle's stronghold" would have been pulled down, and
Salem House and Crichton House and Lycurgus House Academy would have
crumbled into ruins.

And what would he have raised in their place? He wrote so often and so
variously about Education--now in official reports, now in popular
essays, now again in private letters, that it is not difficult to detect
some inconsistencies, some contradictions, some changes of view. I