Curious to consider.

The fagging, the illicit boating, and the things _forbidden_ by the schoolmaster,--these, I often notice in my Eton acquaintances, are the things that have done them good; these, and not their inconsiderable or considerable knowledge of the Greek accidence almost at all! What is Greek accidence, compared to Spartan discipline, if it can be had?
That latter is a real and grand attainment.

Certainly, if rebellion is unfortunately needful, and you can rebel in a generous manner, several things may be acquired in that operation,--rigorous mutual fidelity, reticence, steadfastness, mild stoicism, and other virtues far transcending your Greek accidence.
Nor can the unwisest "prescribed course of study" be considered quite useless, if it have incited you to try nobly on all sides for a course of your own.

A singular condition of Schools and High-schools, which have come down, in their strange old clothes and "courses of study," from the monkish ages into this highly unmonkish one;--tragical condition, at which the intelligent observer makes deep pause! One benefit, not to be dissevered from the most obsolete University still frequented by young ingenuous living souls, is that of manifold collision and communication with the said young souls; which, to every one of these coevals, is undoubtedly the most important branch of breeding for him.

In this point, as the learned Huber has insisted, [6] the two English Universities,--their studies otherwise being granted to be nearly useless, and even ill done of their kind,--far excel all other Universities: so valuable are the rules of human behavior which from of old have tacitly established themselves there; so manful, with all its sad drawbacks, is the style of English character, "frank, simple, rugged and yet courteous," which has tacitly but imperatively got itself sanctioned and prescribed there.