The real and unanswerable objection to the infliction of “corporal punishment,” as it was used in my day at Winchester, was that it was a mere form and farce. It caused neither pain nor disgrace, and assuredly morally degraded nobody. I have been scourged five times in the day; not because, as might be supposed, I was so incorrigible that the master found it necessary to go on scourging me, but simply because it so chanced. I had, say, come into chapel “tardè,” _i.e._ after the service had commenced; I had omitted to send in duly my “vulgus”; I had been “floored” in my Horace; I had missed duly answering “sum,” when on returning from “hills” “Gaffer” had met the procession on his grey horse and caused the “prefect of hall” “to call names,” the reason being that I had been far away over the downs to Twyford, and had not been able to run back in time; and an unlucky simultaneousness of these or of a dozen other such sins of omission or commission had occurred, which had to be wiped off by a scourging by the “hostiarius” at the morning school, and another by the “informator;” by a third from the former at “middle school,” when the head master did not attend; by a fourth from the “hostiarius” at evening school, and a fifth from the “informator” the last thing before going out to dinner at six. But this was a rare _tour de force_, scarcely likely to occur again. I was rather proud of it, and wholly unconscious of any “moral degradation.” I have spoken of the “informator” putting on his cocked hat when about to commence his work of scourging. I am at a loss to account for his having worn this very unacademical costume. It was a huge three-cornered cocked hat very much like that of a coachman on state occasions; and must, I take it, have been a survival from about the time of Charles the Second. It has, I believe, been since discarded.