at
even this cannot be urged, I would appeal not only to every old
Etonian, but to every boy of the present day. With the exception of
Sunday, to which, of course, I am not now alluding, a boy, in my time,
would almost as soon think of bringing a cricket-bat into church with
him as a prayer-book; and if the prayers attracted our attention at
all, it was but momentarily, and that merely to ascertain whether the
tedious chaplain had nearly arrived at the conclusion of the service.

I assume the nature of boys of the present day to be similar to that
of boys twenty years ago; and if so, I suspect that all these services
have added about as much to the growth and strength of their religious
principles, as the hundred-and-one paternosters and ave-marias
muttered by a monk of Camaldoli for the last half century.

But was the evil merely negative, one would hesitate to object to
anything that has been adopted for ages by a foundation so admirably
conducted as that of Eton, and which has ever worked so well; but an
additional effect of this compulsory attendance is to induce, by the
force of early habit, an indifference and callousness of feeling
during divine service, which but few in after life have the grace to
overcome. But are the tutors of the College sensible of similar
effects within themselves? Probably not; for there is little reason
that they should, inasmuch as they have been preferred to their
present situations, and carefully selected from a multitude, in
consequence of their very singularity in this respect.

The promoters of this system seem to be guided, not by how it affects
the boys, but by how they wish it would. While attending these
services with appropriate feeling themselves, I suspect that they are
apt to forget how different was their own conduct on the same
occasions in their youth; or if not, they must imagine that the
rising generation has become far more immaculate than their
predecessors; "but boys will be boys" to the end of the chapter--and
here it is.

CHAPTER VII.

Six years have now glided away, and my station as an Etonian has
experienced a still greater revolution. In place of being a fag, I was
now the puissant "captain of my dames," and had six lower boys of my
own; but my greatest privilege consisted in being the possessor of
rather more than three thousand "old copies."

These are the original copies of verses on various subjects which have
borne the correction of their