Now really, when I read all this virtuous indignation, I am irresistibly reminded of the Bishop in "Little Dorrit," who, when all the guests were extolling Mr. Merdle's wealth, spoke pensively about "the goods of this world," and "tried to look as if he were rather poor himself." In vain I protested that I meant no injurious allusion to Monte Carlo, and proposed to substitute "Mansions in the Isle of Wight" for "Villas in the Riviera." The substitution availed me nothing. "You say 'Mansions.' Do you really know more than one? And how do you know that the schoolmaster who bought it did not marry a wife with a fortune? You cannot investigate his marriage settlements, so your illustration counts for nothing." In the same conciliatory spirit, I urged that "Pineries and Vineries" was a picturesque phrase invented by Lord Randolph Churchill to describe the amenities of a comfortable country house, not of the largest order; but my pedagogue was not to be pacified. "If you didn't mean Pineries and Vineries, you shouldn't have said so. It creates a bad impression in the parents' minds. Of course no reasonable person could object to one's having gardens, or stabling, or a moderate shooting, or a share of a salmon river; but parents don't like the notion that we are living in luxury. They have a nasty way of contrasting it with the nonsense which their boys tell them about tough meat and rancid butter." At this point I began to see some resemblance between my correspondent and Matthew Arnold's critic in the _Quarterly_ of October 1868--"one of the Eton Under-Masters, who, like Demetrius the Silversmith, seems alarmed for the gains of his occupation." For, in spite of all corrections and deductions, I cannot help regarding Public Schoolmasters as a well-paid race. Of course, it is true that their incomes are not comparable to those of successful barristers or surgeons, or even Ministers of State; but, on the other side, their work is infinitely easier; their earnings begin from the day on which they embark on their profession; and no revolution of the wheel of State can shake them from their well-cushioned seats. I am quite willing to admit that, on the figures supplied by my correspondent, he and his colleagues at St. Winifred's are not making so much money as their predecessors made twenty or thirty years ago. But, as far as I can understand, this diminution of incomes does not arise from diminution of charges, but only from the fact that the force of public opinion has driven schoolmasters to recognize, rather more fully than in days gone by, some primary needs of boy-nature. When the Royal Commission of 1862 was enquiring into the boarding arrangements of a famous school, one of the Commissioners was astonished to find that, in spite of the liberal charge for board, the boys got nothing but tea and bread and butter for breakfast. Apparently wishing to let the masters down easy, he suggested that perhaps eggs also were provided.