rect habiliment or athletic virtuosity. This existed inherently in
a large number of contemporary undergraduates. Through this they
achieved the right to call themselves the Best. It was less an assertion
of snobbishness than of faith. Good Eggery had really become a religion.
It was not inconsistent with Christianity: indeed, it probably derived
itself from Christianity through many mailclad and muscular
intercedents. Yet it shrank from anything definitely spiritual as it
would have shrunk from the Salvation Army. Men who intended to be
parsons were of course exceptions, but parsons were regarded as a facet
of the existing social order rather than as trustees for the heirs of
universal truth. Social service was encouraged by fashion, so long as it
meant no more than the supporting of the College Mission in the slums of
Bristol by occasional week-ends. Members of the college would play
billiards in the club for dockhands under or over seventeen, would
subscribe a guinea a year, and as a great concession would attend the
annual report in the J.C.R. There must, however, be no more extravagance
in religion and social service than there should be in dress. The
priestly caste of Good Eggery was represented not by the parsons, but by
the schoolmasters and certain dons. The schoolmasters were the most
powerful, and tried to sustain the legend common to all priestly castes
that they themselves made the religion rather than that they were mere
servants of an idea. Mature Good Eggs affected to laugh at the
schoolmasters whose leading-strings they had severed, but an instinctive
fear endured, so that in time to come Good Egglets would be handed over
for the craft to mold as they had molded their fathers. It could
scarcely be denied that schoolmasters like priests were disinclined to
face facts: it was indubitable that they lived an essentially artificial
life: it was certain that they fostered a clod-headed bigotry, that they
were tempted to regard themselves as philanthropists, that they feared
dreadfully the intrusion of secular influence. It could scarcely be
denied that the Schoolmasterdom of England was a priestcraft as powerful
and arrogant as any which had ever been. But they were gentlemen, that
is to say they shaved oftener than Neapolitan priests; they took a cold
bath in the morning, which probably Calvin's ministers never did; they
were far more politely restrained than the Bacchantes and not less
chaste than the Vestal