Archdeacon Butler, that Farmer was a man of such singular indolence as to neglect sending in the young men's accounts, and is supposed to have burnt large sums of money by putting into the fire unopened letters, which contained remittances. In 1791, when in his twenty-fifth year, Parr became a candidate for the head-mastership of Harrow, though he was beaten by Dr. B. Heath. A rebellion ensued among the boys, many of whom took Parr's part; and he threw up his situation of assistant, and withdrew to Stanmore. Here he was followed by forty of the young rebels, and with this stock-in-trade he proceeded to set up a school on his own account. This is thought to have been the crisis of Parr's life. The die had turned against him, and the disappointment, with its immediate consequences, gave a complexion to his future fortunes, character, and comfort. He had already mounted a full-bottomed wig when he stood for Harrow, anxious as it should seem to give his face a still further chance of keeping its start. He now began to ride on a black saddle, and bore in his hand a long wand with an ivory head, like a crosier, in high prelatical pomp. His neighbours, who wondered what it could all mean, had scarcely time to identify him with his pontificals before they saw him stalking along the street in a dirty striped dressing-gown. A wife was all that was now wanted to complete the establishment at Stanmore, and accordingly, Miss Jane Marsingale, a lady of an ancient Yorkshire family was provided for him; Parr, like Hooker, appearing to have courted by proxy, and with about the same success. Thus Stanmore was set agoing as the rival of Harrow. These were fearful odds, and it came to pass that, in spite of "Attic Symposia," and grooves of Academus, and the enacting of a Greek play, and the perpetual recitation of the fragment in praise of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the establishment at Stanmore declined; and at the end of five years, Parr was not sorry to accept the mentorship of an endowed school at Colchester.