akness of youth and a
great part of its charm, the impetuosity, the fearlessness of
consequence, the lightheartedness, the exuberance which would have been
so strong for good if rightly turned, become through want of this right
impetus and control not strong but violent, uncontrollable and reckless
to a degree which terrifies the very authorities who are responsible for
them, in that system which is bringing up children with nothing to hold
by, and nothing to which they can appeal. Girls are inclined to go even
further than boys in this unrestraint through their greater excitability
and recklessness, and their having less instinct of self-preservation.
It is a problem for the local authorities. Their lavish expenditure upon
sanitation, adornment, and--to use the favourite word--"equipment" of
their schools does not seem to touch it; in fact it cannot reach the
real difficulty, for it makes appeal to the senses and neglects the
soul, and the souls of children are hungry for faith and love and
something higher to look for, beyond the well-being of to-day in the
schools, and the struggle for life, in the streets, to-morrow.

It is not only in the elementary schools that such types of formidable
selfishness are produced. In any class of life, in school or home,
wherever a child is growing up without control and "handling," without
the discipline of religion and manners, without the yoke of obligations
enforcing respect and consideration for others, there a rough is being
brought up, not so loud-voiced or so uncouth as the street-rough, but as
much out of tune with goodness and honour, with as little to hold by and
appeal to, as troublesome and dangerous either at home or in society, as
uncertain and unreliable in a party or a ministry, and in any
association that makes demand upon self-control in the name of duty.

This is very generally recognized and deplored, but except within the
Church, which has kept the key to these questions, the remedy is hard to
find. Inspectors of elementary schools have been heard to say that, even
in districts where the Catholic school was composed of the poorest and
roughest elements, the manners were better than those of the well-to-do
children in the neighbouring Council schools. They could not account for
it, but we can; the precious hour of religious teaching for which we
have had to fight so hard, influences the whole day and helps to create
the "Catholic atmosphere" which in its own way