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Owing to these causes, we find the theorists discussing, as they now do, the expediency of waiting till the age of seven before beginning serious education—some advising it, others recommending easy and half-playing lessons from an earlier period. And then, as now, we find the same curious silence on the really important fact that the exact number of years a child has lived is nothing to the point in question; and that while one child may be too young at seven to commence work, many more may be distinctly too old.

§ 11. At all events, we may assume in parents the same varieties of over-anxiety, of over-indulgence, of nervousness, and of carelessness about their children; and so it doubtless came to pass that there was in many cases a gap between infancy and school-life, which was spent in playing and doing mischief. This may be fairly inferred, not only from such anecdotes as that of Alcibiades playing with his fellows in the street,ssss1 evidently without the protection of any pædagogue, but also from the large nomenclature of boys’ games preserved to us in the glossaries of later grammarians.