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§ 22. All these hints taken together make us reasonably suspect that, as athletics, the training of the pædotribes was not what we should admire. But, on the other hand, the picturesque and enthusiastic descriptions of beautiful and well-trained Greek boys, coupled with the ideal figures which remain to us in Greek sculpture, prove beyond any doubt that they knew perfectly what a beautiful manly form was, and by what training it could be produced. Let us, however, not exaggerate the matter. Very few boys really equalled the ideal types of the sculptor; and if we make allowance for this, we may conclude that the finest English public-school boy is not inferior to the best Greek types in real life.ssss1 Perhaps some advantage may have resulted from the greater freedom of limb obtained by naked training and rubbing with oil; but the advantage of this over a modern flannel suit or tight athlete’s dress is very small. Nevertheless, the English schoolboy is physically so superior to the schoolboys of other European nations that we may count him, with the Greek boy, as almost a distinct animal.