In spite, however, of its ancient school-rooms, noble grounds, and salubrious climate, Chiltern would probably never have become one of _the_ public schools of England if it had not been for Dr. Lanchester. When Abraham Lanchester became headmaster, at the end of the eighteenth century, he found the place little more than a county grammar school; he left it an institution of National, almost Imperial, importance. Chiltern has lived ever since on the memory of Dr. Lanchester. It is natural, therefore, that he should be worshipped as the second and greater founder of the community. John Buss is honoured for his picturesque figure and his priceless gift of antiquity, but Lanchester is the presiding deity. His statue stands in the centre of the great quadrangle, his portrait looks down from the walls of the Great Hall; the library, the workshops, and other lesser buildings, or additions to buildings, are called after his name; and every foreign preacher in the School Chapel, whether he is pleading for peace or war, for Christian unity or Church defence, for social service or Imperial expansion, closes his peroration with an appeal to the memory of Abraham Lanchester. The Lanchester tradition permeates the place like an atmosphere, invisible but stimulating. It is difficult to analyse, for, like all great truths, it states itself in different terms to different minds and has a special message for each. To the general public it stands for the Classics and faith in the educational value of Latin verse. To the masters it means a firm belief in the efficacy of the methods, or absence of method, to which they have become attached through long habit. To the Old Chilternians it embodies the social ideas and customs with which they grew up; and to the boys themselves, if it means anything more than a name, it represents a certain immutability and fixity of things, an as-it-was-in-the-beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be attitude towards life that appeals to their best conservative instincts. Any change in the hour of a lesson or the colour of a ribbon is regarded as an outrage on the Lanchester tradition, and is popularly supposed to make the dead hero turn in his grave.