1. Of all the forms of waste of time against which I would fain warn my boy at Eton, if I were happy enough to have one there, there are two which, being both unpleasant as well as improper, I hope he would take my advice in avoiding after he had fairly tried both. The one is thinking what might have happened if one had done what one didn't; and the other, fearing what may happen after one has done what one ought.

Nevertheless, when one gets older, both these vain occupations of mind become occasionally inevitable; and I never see the outline of Windsor Castle from the train that takes me to Oxford without a quickly checked but irresistible tendency to ask myself what sort of a man I should have turned out had I been an Eton boy. The principal point in that speculation being of course, first, whether I should have cared for pictures? I hesitatingly think not, but I very positively think that it would be well for every Eton boy to have a good chance of caring for them; and his chance mainly consists in three things—the first, in having all bad ones as much as possible kept out of his way; the second, in never being asked to look at any good ones that he doesn't like; the third, in being asked to find out for himself why he likes what he does like, and whether he is a wise boy in doing so, and may become a wiser one in such matters.