When he was twelve years old, I placed him at Stoneyhurst college in Lancashire. This society of English Jesuits, the dreadful Jesuits of St. Omers, of the Popish plot, had, within half a century, suffered three removes or _déménagemens_, which both the French and English proverb says are worse than a fire. They had been expelled from St. Omers by the French government, had been obliged by Joseph II. to quit Bruges, and had been driven from Liege by the approach of the French armies. They had now been established for some years in a country-seat of the family of Lulworth castle. Mr. Weld had given them a beneficial lease of the house and domain of Stoneyhurst, for which they expressed much gratitude. It is good to be grateful: gratitude is a Christian virtue, and well-becoming those who by their missions, their literary labours, and their institutions for education, have acquired so much glory to themselves, and rendered such signal services to the Christian world. Let them always be grateful. An account of their plan of education may not be unacceptable, and may furnish some hints to the heads of our great schools. I am inclined to think that the Jesuits, though as much spoken against, are very little more known in England than at the time when I left it. The whole number of boys, about two hundred and fifty, is divided into six schools or classes, to each of which a master is appointed, who, in the course of six years, conducts his set of boys, from the elements of grammar in the French, Latin, and Greek languages, to rhetoric, or the reading of the best classical authors. The fifth year, or that before rhetoric, is set apart for the study of the poets only. After this course of six years, lectures are given by the professors of moral and natural philosophy. The masters have no intercourse with their scholars except during the holding the class or saying the lesson: prefects are appointed to superintend them at all other times. They study in a large room destined to this use only: a prefect, in a lofty tribune, enforces application: a prefect attends them while at play to prevent violence, quarrelling, or indecorous language: a prefect sleeps in a little room with a glass door at the end of the dormitory. The play-ground is divided into two equal portions, one of which is allotted to the boys of the three higher, the other to the boys of the three lower schools, and no one is allowed to cross the bisecting line. Thus the tyranny of the great boys over the little ones, and the requisition of petty, irregular, or mischievous services is prevented: thus also the years and strength of those who play together are generally more equal.