think it fits a boy for the world; but the world, bad as it is, has nothing
half so bad."

"A man gets well pummelled at a Public School; is subject to every
misery and every indignity which seventeen years of age can inflict
upon nine and ten; has his eye nearly knocked out, and his clothes
stolen and cut to pieces; and twenty years afterwards, when he is a
chrysalis, and has forgotten the miseries of his grub state, is
determined to act a manly part in life, and says, 'I passed through
all that myself, and I am determined my son shall pass through it as I
have done'; and away goes his bleating progeny to the tyranny and
servitude of the Long Chamber or the Large Dormitory. It would surely
be much more rational to say, 'Because I have passed through it, I am
determined my son shall not pass through it. Because I was kicked for
nothing, and cuffed for nothing, and fagged for everything, I will
spare all these miseries to my child.'"

And, while he thus condemned the discipline under which he had been reared,
he had no better opinion of the instruction. Not that he was an opponent of
classical education: on the contrary, he had a genuine and reasoned
admiration for "the two ancient languages." He held that, compared to them,
"merely as vehicles of thought and passion, all modern languages are dull,
ill-contrived, and barbarous." He thought that even the most accomplished
of modern writers might still be glad to "borrow descriptive power from
Tacitus; dignified perspicuity from Livy; simplicity from Caesar; and from
Homer some portion of that light and heat which, dispersed into ten
thousand channels, has filled the world with bright images and illustrious
thoughts. Let the cultivator of modern literature addict himself to the
purest models of taste which France, Italy, and England could supply--he
might still learn from Virgil to be majestic, and from Tibullus to be