ridiculously remote from real life. It was bad enough that boys' time
should be wasted thus, but the evil was further emphasized by the
practice of recitation. These exercises, duly corrected and elaborated,
were often recited by their youthful authors to an audience of
complaisant friends and relations. Of such training there could be but
one possible result. 'Less and less attention was paid to the substance
of the speech, more and more to the language; justness and
appropriateness of thought came to be less esteemed than brilliance and
novelty of expression.'[68]

These formal defects of education were accompanied by a widespread
neglect of the true educational spirit. The development on healthy lines
of the _morale_, and intellect of the young became in too many instances
a matter of indifference. Throughout the great work of Quintilian we
have continued evidence of the lack of moral and intellectual enthusiasm
that characterized the schools of his day. Even more passionate are the
denunciations levelled against contemporary education by Messala in the
_Dialogus_ of Tacitus.[69] Parents neglect their children from their
earliest years: they place them in the charge of foreign slaves, often
of the most degraded character; or if they do pay any personal attention
to their upbringing, it is to teach them not honesty, purity, and
respect for themselves and their elders, but pertness, luxurious habits,
and neglect alike of themselves and of others. The schools moreover,
apart from their faulty methods and ideals of instruction, encourage
other faults. The boys' interests lie not in their work, but in the
theatres, the gladiatorial games, the races in the circus--those ancient
equivalents of twentieth-century athleticism. Their minds are utterly
absorbed by these pursuits, and there is little room left for nobler
studies. 'How few boys will talk of anything else at home? What topic of
conversation is so frequent in the lecture-room; what other subject so