sin less
consciously and after a ferocious fashion of their own. Of the boys in
"Tom Brown" it is difficult to speak, because the Rugby boy under Arnold
seems to have been of a peculiar species. A contemporary pupil was
asked, when an undergraduate, what he conceived to be the peculiar
characteristic of Rugby boys. He said, after mature reflection, that
"the _differentia_ of the Rugby boy was his moral thoughtfulness." Now
the characteristic of the ordinary boy is his want of what is called
moral thoughtfulness.

He lives in simple obedience to school traditions. These may compel him,
at one school, to speak in a peculiar language, and to persecute and beat
all boys who are slow at learning this language. At another school he
may regard dislike of the manly game of football as the sin with which
"heaven heads the count of crimes." On the whole this notion seems a
useful protest against the prematurely artistic beings who fill their
studies with photographs of Greek fragments, vases, etchings by the
newest etcher, bits of China, Oriental rugs, and very curious old brass
candlesticks. The "challenge cup" soon passes away from the keeping of
any house in a public school where Bunthorne is a popular and imitated
character. But when we reach aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savage
stage into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are often
terribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they are
vexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, agnosticism,
and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservatives
fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, become too absorbing
a pursuit, but either or both are better than precocious freethinking and
sacrifice on the altar of the Beautiful.

A big boy who is tackling Haeckel or composing _virelais_ in playtime is
doing himself no good, and is worse than useless to the society of which
he is a member. The small boys, who are the most ardent of
hero-worshippers, either despise him or they allow him to address them in
_chansons royaux_, and respond with trebles in _triolets_. At present a
great many boys leave school, pass three years or four at the
universities, and go back as masters to the place where some of their old
schoolfellows are still pupils. It is through these very young masters,
perhaps, that "advanced" speculations and tastes get into schools, where,
however excellent in themselves, they are