“High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam, Islanded in Severn Stream; The bridges from the steepled crest Cross the water east and west. “The flag of morn in conqueror’s state Enters at the English gate; The vanquished eve, as night prevails, Bleeds upon the road to Wales.” --_A Shropshire Lad._ In my old school upon the Severn, I can see now that we were not educated at all: no scientific methods were tried upon us. I doubt if any of the masters had ever heard there was such a thing as a science of education. To them education was a natural process which all decent people went through, like washing: and their ideas upon it were as unscientific as was our method of “swilling,” when we ran down naked from the bedrooms to sheds in the backyards, sluiced cold water over us with zinc basins, and then came dripping back to dry upstairs. And yet I do remember one young mathematician whose form by the end of his hour was always reduced to a flushed and radiant chaos: and when the other masters complained he replied that this was part of his “system.” So I suppose that he at all events was scientific, and had possibly studied Pädagogik in Germany. The others were content to teach what they had learned, and in the same manner. Most of them were Shrewsbury boys themselves, and because Greek had been taught there for more than three centuries, they taught Greek. Of course, we had Latin too, and up to the sixth form, our time was equally divided between the two languages; but Latin, as being easier and rather more connected with modern life, never ranked so high, and we turned to it with the relief which most men feel when the ladies rise from the dinner table. Latin prose, it is true, was thought more of than Greek prose, and no doubt there was some instinctive reason why. I suspect that in reality it is the more difficult: for it was the unconscious rule of our ancient tradition that of two subjects the more difficult was the better worth learning, provided always that both were entirely useless.