The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton is truly classical down to its details. As to the advantage of the practice opinions were divided. One enthusiastic advocate goes so far as to say that the Greek word for a cane signifies by derivation, "the sharpener of the young" (_narthex, nearous thegein_), but the best authorities were against it. Seneca is indignant with the savage who will "butcher" a young learner because he hesitates at a word--a venial fault indeed, one would think, when we remember what must have been the aspect of a Roman book, written as it was in capitals, almost without stops, and with little or no distinction between the words. And Quintilian is equally decided, though he allows that flogging was an "institution." As to holidays the practice of the Roman schools probably resembled that which prevails in the Scotch Universities, though with a less magnificent length of vacation. Every one had a holiday on the "days of Saturn" (a festival beginning on the seventeenth of December), and the schoolboys had one of their own on the "days of Minerva," which fell in the latter half of March; but the "long vacation" was in the summer. Horace speaks of lads carrying their fees to school on the fifteenth of the month for eight months in the year (if this interpretation of a doubtful passage is correct). Perhaps as this was a country school the holidays were made longer than usual, to let the scholars take their part in the harvest, which as including the vintage would not be over till somewhat late in the autumn. We find Martial, however, imploring a schoolmaster to remember that the heat of July was not favorable to learning, and suggesting that he should abdicate his seat till the fifteenth of October brought a season more convenient for study. Rome indeed was probably deserted in the later summer and autumn by the wealthier class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in the poet's remark, a remark to which the idlest schoolboy will forgive its Latin for the sake of its admirable sentiment: "Aestate pueri si valent satis discunt." "In summer boys learn enough, if they keep their health."