But our great public schools exhibit another offence; the system of fagging alike foolish and mischievous. It only teaches the elder boys to be tyrants, and the younger to be liars and slaves. In practice, it promises to correct itself, by destroying the great schools. The proprietary schools, and other institutions for the education of the people, have uniformly discountenanced this abominable nuisance; and we know none whose abolition would do more credit to the heads of the church, or, if they should remain indolent on the subject, to the heads of the legislature. William Scott, in 1761, was sent to Oxford as a candidate for a Durham scholarship, which he obtained, but which was perilled by a blunder of the head of Corpus Christi college. This worthy person delivered his opinion in this style:--"I think, gentlemen, there can be no doubt that young Scott is by far the best scholar of them. But he has told us that his father is a fiddler, and I do not quite like to take the son of a fiddler into the college." The doctor was an ass for his dictum; and it is only to be regretted that he did not live to express this impudent opinion in our day. England is certainly growing more rational, whatever colleges may be. Language of that sort, used in a country which boasts that no artificial impediment can be suffered to exist in the career of genius and virtue, would quickly meet the reception merited by its arrogant absurdity. The "fiddler" was a blunder of the doctor for "fitter," the local name of the coal trade. William, in his twentieth year, became a tutor; John was intended for a coal-merchant, but his brother desired that he should be sent to Oxford. "Send Jack up to me," were the words; "I can do better for him here." He was then under fifteen. A striking anecdote marks his first starting in life. "When I left school to go to Oxford," said Lord Eldon, "I came up from Newcastle to London in a coach, then denominated, on account of its _quick_ travelling, 'a Fly,' being three or four days and nights on the road. On the panels were the words, _Sat cito, si sat bene_, (Fast enough, if well enough,) which made a most lasting impression on my mind, and have had their influence on my conduct in all subsequent life." He then exhibits a specimen of that sly humour which characterized him to the last. "A Quaker fellow-traveller stopped the coach at the inn at Tuxford to give the chambermaid a sixpence, telling her that he had forgotten it when he slept there two years before. I was a very saucy boy, and I said to him, 'Friend, have you seen the motto on the coach?' 'No.' 'Then look at it, for I think giving her only sixpence _now_ is neither _sat cito_ nor _sat bene_."