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Eton, then, was the school where ignorance was bUss, but the Miss was very dear while it lasted, and it would have been dearer still if we had more fully reaUzed the nature of the change that was to follow— the difference between University and School. As the end of the last summer term drew near, we felt more and more the pang of the parting that was to come; and when it was time to write our Vale —that last copy of the weekly verses, in which we were allowed, for once, to substitute EngHsh for Latin—we naturally hkened ourselves to some prophetic dreamer of sad dreams, or to some despairing convict who sees his approaching fate.

That was our idea of Fraternity. Was it Waterloo that was won in the Eton Playing Fields ? I have sometimes thought it must have been Peterloo. But let me turn from the recollection of childish deeds done by those who were but " scugs," or " lower boys," to that of the immense self-importance of which we were conscious when we had reached the eminence of sixth form. Surely nowhere on earth is there such a tremendous personage as a sixth-form Eton boy ; he acts continually with that " full sense of responsi-bihty " so dear to the occupants of the Parhamentary front-bench.

Surely, in an age when many wild tribes have been the subject of learned discourse and of missionary enterprise, it is desirable that a race which has carried into the twentieth century the primitive customs which I have described should be critically and exhaustively studied. If such should indeed be the result of this book, I shall be more than compensated for whatever pain I may have felt in the writing of these strange but faithfully recorded experiences. n WHERE IGNORANCE WAS BLISS Thought would destroy their paradise !