If Boys gain their Removes with honour, we have a good custom of rewarding each with a _Shilling_ (if higher in the school, 2/6d.), which is given them by the Dames and placed to the Father’s account. This custom, though in 1879 it had fallen into complete abeyance, was still more or less extant twenty years earlier; for Mr. Brinsley Richards, in his most interesting recollections of his Eton days, mentions that, having gained promotion in Third Form by handing in three consecutive copies of nonsense verses, in which there was no mistake, the Captain of Lower School claimed an old privilege, and asked that the Lower School might have a “play at four,” the question also arising whether the writer of the verses was not entitled to receive 2s. 6d., which he eventually got. As a matter of fact, had the precedents been strictly followed, one shilling would have been the reward. In the late eighteenth century, the holidays consisted of a month at Christmas, a fortnight at Easter, and the month of August. Then, as now, the Eton boys enjoyed more half-holidays than were granted at other schools. In 1776, however, the usual curriculum was interrupted by a day of “fasting and penitence” on account of British disasters in America, the colony beyond the seas, which, grown into a great country, has since sent many of her sons to be educated at the old school. The last Headmaster of the eighteenth century was Dr. Heath. During the early part of his reign he raised the school to 489, but in the last year the numbers had sunk to 357. It was a very lax time, and the boys were allowed to do, and did do, many things which could hardly have been to the taste of a fond parent. [SN: SCHOOL MAGAZINES] In 1786 seems to have been started the first school magazine--the _Microcosm_, the successors of which have been the _Miniature_ (1804), the _Linger_ (edited by G. B. Maturin and W. G. Cookesley, for collegers only, 1818), the _College Magazine_ (John Moultrie, 1818), the _Etonian_ (Praed, 1820), the _Salt Bearer_ (1820), the _Eton Miscellany_ (1827), the _Oppidan_ (1828), the _Eton College Magazine_ (1832), the _Kaleidoscope_ (1833), the _Eton Bureau_ (1842), the _Eton School Magazine_ (1848), the _Porticus Etonensis_ (1859), the _Eton Observer_ (1860), the _Phœnix_ (1861), and the still flourishing _Eton College Chronicle_ (1863).