Note 929 — Chapter XVII · The Moral Scope.

Atlantic Monthly, March 1900.—A somewhat similar principle is stated in an article on Eton, in the Edinburgh Review, April 1861: “It was the fashion in Sydney Smith’s days—it is so still—to maintain that the neglect to which boys are necessarily exposed at our public schools, in consequence of the insufficient number of assistant masters, renders them self-reliant and manly; and that the premature initiation into vice, which too often results from that cause, imparts to them an early knowledge of what are apologetically called ‘the ways of the world'; and prevents their running riot when subsequently exposed at the universities to still greater temptations than those offered them in their boyhood by the public-houses and slums of Eton and Windsor.” Quoted in the Dublin Review, October 1878, p. 308.—This “premature initiation into vice” was, accordingly, a frequent result of the system of the great English public schools; moreover, it was considered a positive benefit. A sad prerogative of these schools, indeed!