I have received another letter of the same sort as the above, from the same class of petitioners, praying against the application of chalk on Friday Evenings-Another correspondent has favoured me with the following letter. SIR, When I go home for the Holidays I am often asked what kind of a boy such and such a one of my fellow Westminsters is now supposing, Mr. Brown, the boy enquired after be a dunce or a bully, shall I sacrifice truth to my good nature, by lies in his praise, or my good nature to my love of truth, by telling tales of my school-fellow? I remain yours, &c. X. Y. X. No. VI. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1816. If his name be George, I'll call him Peter. NO one can have been much in company with naval officers, without noticing what disgust many of them are apt to ex cite by the introduction of Sea-phrases. Among themselves, nay, even among people who can understand such a language, there is an excuse for this; but, with all the allowances we are so willing to make for his usual abstraction from the society of the world, we cannot help seeing a great deal of affectation and bad taste in the man who calls you "messmate," and bids you "not come athwart his hawse." Almost as disgusting, and more inex cusable, because evidently more affected, is the conduct of the Westminster who uses School-phrases in general society: for however agreeable to his taste, and however expressive such terms as "Tibi this," and "Tip up that," may in reality be, they will only be tolerated where they have received their birth;-there let them be suffered to live quietly in the mouths of the natural heirs, while they obtain the* sanction of succeeding generations. I would not have it thought that I mean to exclude from general conversation any terms which are legitimately English, merely because they are more particularly used at Westminster :-my prohibition only extends so far as to debar the use of such words as must be perfectly unintelligible to any one who has not been educated at Westminster, and sometimes even to those who have. As I have said so much upon the subject of School-phrases, it may not be uninteresting to my readers to have the fol lowing short specimen of some expressions, used in the three great public Schools, I have no doubt that most, if not all of these words, have their origin in circumstances, to which, at this day, we cannot easily comprehend the allusions. I am induced to think this by having been informed of what gave rise to the word ski, so much in use here at present. I presume all my readers have heard of the wars between the Romans and the Volsci: this part of the Roman history the sixth form happened to be reading for lesson at the time when the disturbances between the Westminsters, and what we now call the Skies, were at a great height. Alluding to the subject of their lessons, the Westminsters assumed the name of Romans, and gave their antagonists that of the Volsci, which, by cacophony being pronounced Volski, soon dropped its first syllable, and in that form has been completely established as one of our expressions. Of the truth of this account I have no doubt, as I have it from no less authority than the mouth of our late learned head-master himself. I shall be happy if my approbation can induce the author of the following letter to continue in the course which he has hitherto so prudently pursued. |