consent, therefore, to be led. Eton is a well-worn theme--but can never be outworn! The Royal College of the Blessed Virgin, whose assumption is depicted in the centre of the collegiate seal, was founded in the year 1440, after Henry's visit to Winchester, whence came Eton's first head-master, William of Waynflete. "It was high time," says Fuller, "some school should be founded, considering how low grammar-learning then ran in the land." The original endowments were for "ten sad priests, four lay clerks, six choristers, twenty-five poor grammar-scholars, and twenty-five poor men to pray for the king." There are now on the foundation a provost, vice-provost, six fellows, three conducts, seventy king's scholars, ten clerks, and twelve choristers. Beside these, there are above seven hundred scholars--Oppidans--who are not on the foundation. One of the masters of Eton College is illustrious through all time in which the English language is studied, as the writer of our earliest comedy, or the earliest which has come down intact to modern days. Not later than 1551, as critics and scholars are mostly agreed, did Nicholas Udall write his "Ralph Roister-Doister," which, in plot and dialogue, is immensely superior to John Still's "Gammer Gurton's Needle," supposed to have been written a few years--perhaps as many as fourteen--afterwards. The greatest of literary rarities in the library of Eton College is a copy of Master Nicholas Udall's right merry conceit, which is divided, in what would be considered as modern orthodox form, into five acts; is constructed with comic art of uncommon excellence; contains thirteen characters, some of them powerfully and distinctly marked; and exhibits the manners of the middle order of people at that day, the scene being laid in London. All that we can reasonably guess concerning Nicholas Udall as a teacher of youth is, that he was one to help in setting that early example of severity which was long afterwards followed as a sacred tradition of public-school custom and discipline. Perhaps he had, according to custom of his time, a whipping-boy, or puerile scapegoat, to take on his back the sins of happier pupils. But it is more likely that Master Udall swished without favour all round. Thomas Tusser, who wrote the didactic poem, "Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandrie," was one of Udall's scholars, and gives hard report of him as a most exacting master. It is somewhat remarkable that the first two writers of comic drama in the language should both have been schoolmasters. John Still, author of the piece of low rustic humour before mentioned, of which the dramatic point is that of the needle itself, found by Gammer Gurton's man, Hodge, in a manner equally startling and climacteric, was master of St. John's and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, and afterwards Chancellor of the University, and Bishop of Bath and Wells. One of the best things in "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is a song, the well-known--