When it was known that Mr. Lyttelton was to be Dr. Warre’s successor in the headmastership of Eton, it was thought probable that his notorious humanitarian sympathies would lead him to the desired reform; but these expectations proved to be too sanguine. The immense stability of an “old institution,” in so conservative a stronghold as Eton, is a fact that must be reckoned with; for Eton is not like Rugby, where a reforming headmaster might venture, as Dr. Arnold did, to sweep away at a stroke an ancient sporting custom which had nothing but its age to recommend it. We all know the passage in “Tom Brown’s Schooldays”--the speech of “old Brooke”--where Arnold’s abolition of the Rugby Beagles is incidentally referred to: “A lot of you think and say, for I’ve heard you, ‘There’s this new doctor hasn’t been here so long as some of us, and he’s changing all the old customs.…’ But come, now, any of you, name a custom that he has put down. “‘The hounds,’ calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway, with brass buttons, and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest. “Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles, I’ll allow, and had had them for years, and the doctor put them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the keepers for ten miles round; and big-side Hare and Hounds is better fun ten times over.” If we compare this passage with the report of Mr. Lyttelton’s address to the Eton boys at the commencement of his headmastership, in which he frankly avowed his own “strong opinions” on the subject of the hare-hunt, but added that he did not hold these views in his boyhood, and did not see why he should force them on the boys, we see the difference, not so much between an Arnold and a Lyttelton, as between a Rugby and an Eton. It is doubtful if even an Arnold could have safely flouted Etonian susceptibilities in this matter of worrying hares with hounds. The reason given by Mr. Lyttelton for allowing the hare-hunt to continue is that all legislation which outstrips “public opinion” is injurious and unwise, by which he presumably means the “public opinion” of Eton itself--for it is certain enough that public opinion outside Eton would bear the disappearance of the hare-hunt with equanimity--and undoubtedly Eton opinion, to those who dwell under the shadow of the “antique towers,” is a matter of serious consideration, however medieval it may be. It is a curious fact that the large majority of Etonians, though nowadays a bit ashamed of the ram-hunt and other sporting pleasantries of a bygone period, do not in the least suspect that their beloved hare-hunt belongs in effect to the same category of amusement. Thus, Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, in his history of the school, referring to the earlier barbarities, remarks that “it is evident that in the time of Elizabeth cruelty to animals was not counted among the