"College," I think, may be said to comprehend "the school-yard," the
suburbs, and "the playing fields."
"The school-yard" is a spacious and respectable quadrangle; the upper
school, the church, the cloisters, and long chamber, each respectively
forming a side of it. In the centre is placed the statue of the
founder, Henry VI.
"The upper school" is placed over an arched cloister, and an
ominous-looking region, in which, I suspect, is the magazine of birch.
The school is nothing more than an extensive room, with its floor
lined with fixed forms, and the wainscot with sculptured names
innumerable. One is guilty of a sad omission should he quit Eton
without giving a crown to Cartland to perpetuate his name on the
immortal oak. Perhaps the loss of few olden records would be more
deplored than its destruction, for here are registered many of Eton's
worthiest sons; C.I. FOX, as in after life, is here pre-eminent.
Adjoining the upper end is another room, called "the library," in
which there is not a book, but there is "the block," which speaks
volumes; and as a library may, by a little forcing, be defined to be a
chamber set apart for the acquirement of learning, this room is not,
perhaps, misnamed.
This block is a very simple machine--merely a couple of steps. The
victim places his knees on the lower, and his elbows on the upper
step; but if the reader will thus place himself in his imagination,
he will enter more immediately into the spirit of the thing.
In front of him he sees a couple of little collegers, to hold aside
the skirts of his coat. On his left is Keate, like Jupiter about to
hurl his thunderbolt; on his right "the birch cupboard;" and though he
can see nothing, he has little doubt of what is in his rear, the
instant he is operated on. "Neither intemperance nor old age hae, in
gout or rheumatic, an agony to compare wi' a weel-laid-on whack of the
tawse, on a part that for manners shall be nameless."
The church, though not very remarkable for its dimensions, may be
styled a handsome and venerable Gothic edifice; simple and regular,
with its sides supported by deep and lofty buttresses, the recesses of
which form the boys' "fives-walls."
The cloisters form another small quadrangle. Over them are built the
comfortable dwellings of the "College fellows," and "the College
library," which is somewhat more appropriately furnished than that
just described.
The Fellows have each been boys on the foundation, having been
elected, according to seniority, to King's College, Cambridge, from
whence they have been re-elected Fellows of Eton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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