in any school, or among the former members of it, or if it assumes
debased forms, as sometimes happens, we see there a sure sign of
degeneration. He who, having grown up in any society like ours, is
possessed by no such love for it, and stirred by no enthusiasm for its
good name, and no desire to do it good, and to see good growing in every
part of it, such an one has somehow missed the chief blessing that his
membership of his school should have brought to him. He may have been
unfortunate, or he may have proved unworthy. The atmosphere of his
school life, and the associations amidst which he grew up, may have been
such that the best thing he can do is to shake himself clear of them and
forget them. To such an one his school time has been a grave and
lifelong misfortune; and it is the condemnation of any society if there
are many such cases in it.

It is, however, exceptional in English life for men who have grown up in
a great school to be stirred by no glow of patriotic feeling for it.
Whatever their own experience of it may have been, they are not
altogether blind to the things that constitute its greatness, and they
love to hear it well spoken of.

But the quality of their patriotism will depend very much on the quality
of their own life; so that the task we have always before us is to be
infusing into our community such a spirit and purpose, as shall infect
each soul amongst us with those higher aims, and tastes, and motives,
with that hatred of things mean or impure, and that love of things that
are manly, honest, and of good report, which distinguish all nobler
characters from the baser, and which are produced and fostered, and made
to work strongly in every society that has any claim to good influence.

Seeing, then, that a man's patriotism is to a great extent the expression