In reality, as everybody had his own programme of education, dependent on no one’s theories or whims, all this fine ardour produced little but modifications of detail. So men remained faithful to gymnastics and all the sports—riding, hunting, fishing, tennis, perhaps even to sober philosophic deambulations in the style of St. Gregory of Nazianzen. But they held dancing in less abhorrence, and the love of gaming worked havoc. Music triumphed over its detractors, who had been wont to represent it as directly tending towards effeminacy and voluptuous impressibility. Now, on the contrary, it was regarded as a child’s most ennobling avocation and a precious resource for forming his mind. Instruction in the principles of design seemed a necessity for men who were called to live among objects of art, and who, without some practical experience, would infallibly fall a prey to pinchbeck. However, it is impossible to deny that a too exclusive development of the emotional side of their nature did produce, among certain young men, untoward and even disastrous results. Education had become very wide-spread; everybody sought after it, rather out of _amour-propre_ than to supply needs they really felt; and the result was that there was less anxiety to equip solidly a few choice minds than to give the mass a superficial polish. The world was overrun with amiable young men, patterns of social accomplishment, knowing how to bow, dancing well, of excellent table manners, primed moreover with a few tags of Latin or Greek, living in elegant idleness, and thus the pride of the good merchant who had the honour of begetting them and keeping the pot boiling. Their weak point was that they knew too much of life in their beardless youth: aestheticism had brought them neither illusions nor enthusiasm; but they were past-masters in the commercial valuation of some fashionable young lady and her belongings. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, all these young fellows, good or bad, took flight in the most diverse directions, and escaped from their mother for good and all. She sees them go! Some, the smartest of them, go to Court as brilliant pages, all ablaze with gold and velvet: the others into some château, where they combine the duties of head-huntsman and stud-groom, and dine in the kitchen, hoping to be mentioned in their master’s will.