Education in Victoria is both free and compulsory, and yet the position of the State, or public schools is perfectly different from that of the Council schools at home. Once I was living in a little West Country town in England where the Rector, by sheer force of brains, had raised himself from a Board school to the position which he held. He was a most cultivated and charming man, but the matter of his education was never forgotten. Whenever he did anything his parishioners did not approve of—as even an archangel must have done, certainly he would have been no archangel if he had not—there was a shrugging of shoulders, and the inevitable remark: “Well, what can you expect from a man that’s been at a Board school?” In Australia the fact of a boy being educated at a State school tells against him no whit unless it be among the very few rich people who like to consider themselves exclusive, idle people, of no consequence whatever in any affair of moment. Many families who are but moderately well off send their boys to the State schools while they are quite young, as at home they would send them to a Preparatory. When they reach the age of thirteen or fourteen they then enter them at one of the big schools corresponding to the lesser public schools at home, such as Wellington, Clifton, or Cheltenham. In Melbourne the principal among these schools are the Church of England Grammar School, the Presbyterian College—a beautiful grey stone building, covered in the autumn with a mantle of crimson creeper, and presenting more the appearance of a dignified old English dwelling-house than any building I have ever seen in Victoria—and the Scots College.