r home,' but that the
shades of the prison-house are closing fast over him, and that we are
helping as much as possible to corrupt him."

Before concluding this chapter I would caution the reader against the
error of supposing that the opinions expressed by Canon Lyttelton and
Dr. Dukes are indicative merely of the conditions they have met at
Haileybury, Eton, and Rugby. They are equally significant of the
conditions which obtain in the innumerable schools from which
Haileybury, Eton, and Rugby are recruited; and as there is no reason
why other preparatory schools should differ from these, they are
significant of the almost universal condition of boys' schools.

CHAPTER III.

CAUSES OF THE PREVALENCE OF IMPURITY AMONG BOYS.

The evidence I have adduced in the previous chapters will convince
most of my readers that few boys retain their innocence after they are
of school age. There may, however, be a few who find it impossible to
reconcile this conclusion with their ideas of boy nature. I will
therefore now examine current conceptions on this subject and expose
their fundamental inaccuracy.

There are some people who imagine that a boy's innate modesty is quite
sufficient protection against defilement. Does experience really
warrant any such conclusion? Those who know much of children will
recognise the fact that even the cardinal virtues of truthfulness and
honesty have often to be learned, and that ideas of personal
cleanliness, of self-restraint in relation to food, and of
consideration for others have usually to be implanted and fostered.
Among people of refinement these virtues are often so early learned
that there is danger lest we should consider them innate. The
susceptibility of some children to suggestions conveyed to them by the
example and precept of their elders is almost unlimited. Hence a
child may, at two, have given up the trick of clearing its nostrils
with the finger-nail, and may, before five, have learned most of the
manners and virtues of refined people. The majority, however, take
longer to learn these things, so that a jolly little chap of ten or
twelve is often by no means scrupulously clean in hands, nails, ears,
and teeth, is often distinctly greedy, and sometimes far from
truthful.

That cleanliness and virtue are acquired and not innate is obvious
enough from the fact that children who grow up among dirty and
unprincipled people are rarely clean and virtuous. Were it possible