That is certainly the ideal of the boy, and the disconcerting thing
is that it is also the ideal, practically if not theoretically, of
the parent and the schoolmaster. The school still reserves all its
best gifts, its sunshine and smiles, for the knightly and the
skilful; it rewards all the qualities that are their own reward.
Why, if it wishes to get the right scale adopted, does it not
reward the thing which it professes to uphold as its best result,
worth of character namely? It claims to be a training-ground for
character first, but it does little to encourage secret and
unobtrusive virtues. That is, it adds its prizes to the things
which the natural man values, and it neglects to crown the one
thing at which it professes first to aim. In doing this it only
endorses the verdict of the world, and while it praises moral
effort, it rewards success.

The issue of all this is that the sort of courage which it enforces
is essentially a graceful and showy sort of courage, a lively
readiness, a high-hearted fearlessness--so that timidity and
slowness and diffidence and unreadiness become base and feeble
qualities, when they are not the things of which anyone need be
ashamed! Let me say then that moral courage, the patient and
unrecognised facing of difficulties, the disregard of popular
standards, solidity and steadfastness of purpose, the tranquil
performance of tiresome and disagreeable duties, homely
perseverance, are not the things which are regarded as supreme in
the ideal of the school; so that the fear which is the shadow of
sensitive and imaginative natures is turned into the wrong
channels, and becomes a mere dread of doing the unpopular and
unimpressive thing, or a craven determination not to be found out.
And the dread of being obscure and unacceptable is what haunts the