On the wood-work of the rooms you will find the names of the boys who have studied here. On this post you can read H. Wesley, which, Etonians will tell you, is the way Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, used to write his name. Pitt carved his name twice, in modest little italics. Charles James Fox sprawled his in bold capitals across a high rail of the panelled wainscot. And here is Shelley. Each letter is quite plainly, even boldly formed; and yet they all huddle together so nervously that they seem to shrink from being seen. As you look at them, you call to mind the courage and independence that made Shelley refuse to be fagged, and then his pitiful plight when the fag-masters got up "Shelley baits," and hunted him through the town;--you can almost see his pale cheeks and his lustrous eyes. Many of these famous names stand in a group of their school friends--a poet between a banker and a soldier, all boys together--and among these many another, perhaps the most popular of all the boys at school, of whom the world has never heard. Gladstone's name is as correct as an epitaph. And so it is an epitaph of the ancient custom of carving your own name, for since his time you have to pay ten shillings when you leave school, and have a carver do it for you. These carved names are still arranged in groups of friends; and sometimes you will find a boy's name where his father and grandfather placed theirs; but they are all as like as so many types in a font; not one of them tells you a syllable about what kind of a boy the owner was. It would be so much better to allow each boy a certain space, and let him carve his own name the day he leaves. [Illustration: THE LOWER SCHOOL, WITH CARVINGS ON SHUTTERS AND POSTS.] Eton, like Winchester, has seventy scholars--"King's scholars," or "collagers," as they are called--who are chosen by competitive examination, and are supported by the funds of the foundation. Every year four or five of these are awarded scholarships at King's College, Cambridge, just as the best boys from Winchester go to New College, Oxford. The rest of the boys, as at Winchester, live under the care of masters in houses of about thirty-five boys each, scattered through the town, and are called "oppidans." The oppidans call the collagers "tugs," a word which probably refers to their _togas_--that is, gowns. Not many years ago the collagers were so poorly fed and housed, and so wretched generally, that the phrase was "beastly tugs"; but of late this class prejudice is dying out, and the fact that several of the collagers have been great athletes and good fellows all round has worked wonders. One still hears of "beastly tugs," and the prejudice against being supported by the college is not yet dead; but one finds it mostly among the younger boys, and even they do not feel it half so much as they pretend.