The same criticism still applies. We are better cosmopolitans nowadays than were Dr. Moore's contemporaries, but the differences between the nations still subsist; and, just as each nation has the system of education which it deserves, so it has the system of education which best prepares a man to fight the battle of life in his own country. In England, more than in any other country, success depends comparatively little upon book-learning, and very much upon character and the possession of certain qualities which, in our insular pride, we vaunt as specially 'British.' These qualities are not to be acquired in the Swiss schools. The qualities that are to be acquired there may, in some respects, be better and more solid; but they are not so useful in Great Britain. An English boy educated in a Swiss school is, as a rule, when he leaves, rather a clumsy lout, with a smattering of bad French, emancipated from certain prejudices which might be useful to him, but steeped in other prejudices which are likely to stand in his way. One always has the feeling that more might have been made of him at home: not merely at Eton or Harrow, but at Clifton or Marlborough, or even at St. Paul's or the Bedford Grammar School. On the whole, therefore, the educational _raison d'être_ of the English colony at Lausanne disappears under investigation--at any rate, so far as the boys are concerned. The girls, from a certain point of view, may be better off there; for the Swiss girls' schools are good, and the snobbishness which is the vice of English girls' schools is discouraged in them. For the girls, difficulties only arise when they reach a marriageable age. There are no husbands for them at Lausanne, or anywhere in Switzerland, unless it be at Montreux, where Anglo-Indians sometimes come on leave, since all the men whom they meet--one is speaking only of their own countrymen--are either too young or too old--mere students, or else superannuated veterans. They know it, and lament their lot aloud; and the Swiss know it, too, and make remarks. The English colony at Lausanne, they say, is _une vraie pépinière de vieilles filles_. But this is an excursus. We must return to Lausanne, and take another look at its social and intellectual life. [Illustration: THE DENTS DU MIDI AND LA TOUR FROM "ENTRE DEUX VILLES"] CHAPTER VIII VINET AND SAINTE-BEUVE--JUSTE OLIVIER