An historical work on Eton admits of several modes of treatment, and commands the interest of persons of various tastes and habits of thought. According to some, it should be a biographical register of successive Provosts, Fellows, and Masters, who have guided a great national institution through more than four centuries of almost unbroken prosperity; according to others, it should trace the continuous existence of an ecclesiastical corporation, richly endowed and boasting a picturesque pile of medieval buildings; some think that it should follow the careers of a vast number of England's greatest men from the cradle to the grave; others that it should be a record of educational progress, a treatise on grammars and exercises; while yet another class would wish to see in it a faithful picture of school life at different periods, with long accounts of popular games and boyish adventures.