Of course things have altered for the better.  Masters are no longer stern, severe, abrupt, formidable, unreasonable.  They know that many a boy, who would be inclined on the whole to tell the truth, can easily be frightened into telling a lie; but they have not yet contrived to put the sense of honour among boys in the right proportion.  Such stories as that of George Washington—­when the children were asked who had cut down the apple-tree, and he rose and said, “Sir, I cannot tell a lie; it was I who did it with my little hatchet”—­do not really take the imagination of boys captive.  How constantly did worthy preachers at Eton tell the story of how Bishop Selwyn, as a boy, rose and left the room at a boat-supper because an improper song was sung!  That anecdote was regarded with undisguised amusement, and it was simply thought to be a piece of priggishness.  I cannot imagine that any boy ever heard the story and went away with a glowing desire to do likewise.  The incident really belongs to the domain of manners rather than to that of morals.

The truth is really that boys at school have a code which resembles that of the old chivalry.  The hero may be sensual, unscrupulous, cruel, selfish, indifferent to the welfare of others.  But if he bears himself gallantly, if he has a charm of look and manner, if he is a deft performer in the prescribed athletics, he is the object of profound and devoted admiration.  It is really physical courage, skill, prowess, personal attractiveness which is envied and praised.  A dull, heavy, painstaking, conscientious boy with a sturdy sense of duty may be respected, but he is not followed; while the imaginative, sensitive, nervous, highly-strung boy, who may have the finest qualities of all within him, is apt to be the most despised.  Such a boy is often no good at games, because public performance disconcerts him; he cannot make a ready answer, he has no aplomb, no cheek, no smartness; and he is consequently thought very little of.

To what extent this sort of instinctive preference can be altered, I do not know; it certainly cannot be altered by sermons, and still less by edicts.  Old Dr. Keate said, when he was addressing the school on the subject of fighting, “I must say that I like to see a boy return a blow!” It seems, if one considers it, to be a curious ideal to start life with, considering how little opportunity civilisation now gives for returning blows!  Boys in fact are still educated under a system which seems to anticipate a combative and disturbed sort of life to follow, in which strength and agility, violence and physical activity, will have a value.  Yet, as a matter of fact, such things have very little substantial value in an ordinary citizen’s life at all, except in so far as they play their part in the elaborate cult of athletic exercises, with which we beguile the instinct which craves for manual toil.  All the races, and games, and athletics cultivated so assiduously at school seem now to have very little