What impression of bygone schoolboy life do _Tom Brown_ and _Eric_ make upon our minds?
The outstanding sensation appears to be this, that fifty years ago life at school was more _spacious_ than now--more full of incident and variety. In those days a boy's spare time was his own. How did he spend his half-holidays? If he was a good boy--good in the bad sense of the word--he went and sat upon a hill-top and admired the scenery, or thought of his mother, or possibly gripped another good boy by the hand and said: "Let me call you Edwin, and you shall always call me Eric." If he was a normal healthy boy he went swimming, or bird-nesting, or (more usually) poaching, and generally encountered adventure by the way. If he was a bad boy he retired with other malefactors to a public-house, where he indulged in an orgy of roast goose and brandy-and-water.
_Nous avons changé tout cela._ Compulsory games have put an end to such licence, and in so doing have docked a good deal of liberty as well. The result has been to emphasize the type at the expense of the individual. It is a good type--a grand type--but it bears hardly upon some of its more angular components. The new system keeps the weak boy out of temptation and the idle boy out of mischief; but the quiet, reflective, unathletic boy hates it. He has little chance now to dream dreams or commune with nature. Still, his chance comes later in life; and as we all have to learn to toe the line at some time or another, thrice blessed is he who gets over the lesson in early youth.
The prefectorial system, too, has enlarged boys' sense of responsibility, and has put an end to many abuses which no master could ever reach. But on the whole we may say of the public-school boy throughout the ages that _plus que l'on le change, plus c'est la même chose_. Schoolboy gods have not altered. Strength, fleetness of foot, physical beauty, loyalty to one's House and one's School--youth still worships these things. There is the same admiration for _natural_ brilliancy, be it in athletics or conversation or scholarship, and the same curious contempt for the plodder--even the successful plodder--in all departments of life. The weakest still goes to the wall. He is not bumped against it so vigorously as he used to be; but he still goes there, and always will.