Mr. Hughes has the true, wholesome English love of home, the
English delight in rude physical sports, the English hatred of hypocrisy
and cant, the English fidelity to facts, the English disbelief in all
piety and morality which are not grounded in manliness. The present work
is full of illustrations of these healthy qualities of his nature,
and they are all intimately connected with an elevated, yet eminently
sagacious spirit of Christian philanthropy. Tom Brown at Oxford, as well
as Tom Brown at Rugby, will, so far as he exerts any influence, exert
one for good. He has a plentiful lack of those impossible virtues which
disgust boys and young men with the models set up as examples for them
to emulate in books deliberately moral and religious; but he none the
less shows how a manly and Christian character can be attained by
methods which are all the more influential by departing from the common
mechanical contrivances for fashioning lusty youths into consumptive
saints, incompetent to do the work of the Lord in this world, however
they may fare in the next. Mr. Hughes can hardly be called a disciple of
"Muscular Christianity," except so far as muscle is necessary to give
full efficiency to mind; but he feels all the contempt possible to such
a tolerant nature for that spurious piety which kills the body in order
to give a sickly appearance of life to the soul.
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