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 rather out of place. Indeed,
the very young master, though usually earnest in his work, must be a sage
indeed if he can avoid talking to the elder boys about the problems that
interest him, and so forcing their minds into precocious attitudes. The
advantage of Eton boys used to be, perhaps is still, that they came up to
college absolutely destitute of "ideas," and guiltless of reading
anything more modern than Virgil. Thus their intellects were quite
fallow, and they made astonishing progress when they bent their fresh and
unwearied minds to study. But too many boys now leave school with
settled opinions derived from the very latest thing out, from the newest
German pessimist or American socialist. It may, however, be argued that
ideas of these sorts are like measles, and that it is better to take them
early and be done with them for ever.
While schools are reformed and Latin grammars of the utmost ingenuity and
difficulty are published, boys on the whole change very little. They
remain the beings whom Thackeray understood better than any other writer:
Thackeray, who liked boys so much and was so little blind to their
defects.
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