Father and Son

A study of two temperaments

by Edmund Gosse

Der Glaube ist wie der Liebe:Er Lasst sich nicht erzwingen. 

Schopenhauer

PREFACE

AT the present hour, when fiction takes forms so ingenious and sospecious, it is perhaps necessary to say that the followingnarrative, in all its parts, and so far as the punctiliousattention of the writer has been able to keep it so, isscrupulously true. If it were not true, in this strict sense, topublish it would be to trifle with all those who may be inducedto read it. It is offered to them as a _document_, as a record ofeducational and religious conditions which, having passed away, will never return. In this respect, as the diagnosis of a dyingPuritanism, it is hoped that the narrative will not be altogetherwithout significance. 

It offers, too, in a subsidiary sense, a study of the developmentof moral and intellectual ideas during the progress of infancy. These have been closely and conscientiously noted, and may havesome value in consequence of the unusual conditions in which theywere produced. The author has observed that those who havewritten about the facts of their own childhood have usuallydelayed to note them down until age has dimmed theirrecollections. Perhaps an even more common fault in suchautobiographies is that they are sentimental, and are falsifiedby self-admiration and self-pity. The writer of theserecollections has thought that if the examination of his earliestyears was to be undertaken at all, it should be attempted whilehis memory is still perfectly vivid and while he is stillunbiased by the forgetfulness or the sensibility of advancingyears. 

At one point only has there been any tampering with precise fact. It is believed that, with the exception of the Son, there is butone person mentioned in this book who is still alive. Nevertheless, it has been thought well, in order to avoid anyappearance of offence, to alter the majority of the proper namesof the private persons spoken of. 

It is not usual, perhaps, that the narrative of a spiritualstruggle should mingle merriment and humour with a discussion ofthe most solemn subjects. It has, however, been inevitable thatthey should be so mingled in this narrative. It is true that mostfunny books try to be funny throughout, while theology isscandalized if it awakens a single smile. But life is notconstituted thus, and this book is nothing if it is not a genuineslice of life. There was an extraordinary mixture of comedy andtragedy in the situation which is here described, and those whoare affected by the pathos of it will not need to have itexplained to them that the comedy was superficial and the tragedyessential. 

September 1907

CHAPTER I

THIS book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as wasinevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings heredescribed, one was born to fly backward, the other could not helpbeing carried forward. There came a time when neither spoke thesame language as the other, or encompassed the same hopes, or wasfortified by the same desires. But, at least, it is someconsolation to the survivor, that neither, to the very last hour, ceased to respect the other, or to regard him with a sadindulgence. 

The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces incomparison with which the changes that health or fortune or placeintroduce are as nothing. It is a mournful satisfaction, but yeta satisfaction, that they were both of them able to obey the lawwhich says that ties of close family relationship must behonoured and sustained. Had it not been so, this story wouldnever have been told. 

The struggle began soon, yet of course it did not begin in earlyinfancy. But to familiarize my readers with the conditions of thetwo persons (which were unusual) and with the outlines of theirtemperaments (which were, perhaps innately, antagonistic), it isneedful to open with some account of all that I can truly andindependently recollect, as well as with some statements whichare, as will be obvious, due to household tradition. 

My parents were poor gentlefolks; not young; solitary, sensitive, and although they did not know it, proud. They both belonged towhat is called the Middle Class, and there was this furtherresemblance between them that they each descended from familieswhich had been more than well-to-do in the eighteenth century, and had gradually sunken in fortune. In both houses there hadbeen a decay of energy which had led to decay in wealth. In thecase of my Father's family it had been a slow decline; in that ofmy Mother's, it had been rapid. My maternal grandfather was bornwealthy, and in the opening years of the nineteenth century, immediately after his marriage, he bought a little estate inNorth Wales, on the slopes of Snowdon. Here he seems to havelived in a pretentious way, keeping a pack of hounds andentertaining on an extravagant scale. He had a wife whoencouraged him in this vivid life, and three children, my Motherand her two brothers. His best trait was his devotion to theeducation of his children, in which he proclaimed himself adisciple of Rousseau. But he can hardly have followed theteaching of 'Emile' very closely, since he employed tutors toteach his daughter, at an extremely early age, the very subjectswhich Rousseau forbade, such as history, literature and foreignlanguages. 

My Mother was his special favourite, and his vanity did its bestto make a bluestocking of her. She read Greek, Latin and even alittle Hebrew, and, what was more important, her mind was trainedto be self-supporting. But she was diametrically opposed inessential matters to her easy-going, luxurious and self-indulgentparents. Reviewing her life in her thirtieth year, she remarkedin some secret notes: 'I cannot recollect the time when I did notlove religion. ' She used a still more remarkable expression: 'IfI must date my conversion from my first wish and trial to beholy, I may go back to infancy; if I am to postpone it till aftermy last wilful sin, it is scarcely yet begun. ' The irregularpleasures of her parents' life were deeply distasteful to her, assuch were to many young persons in those days of the wide revivalof Conscience, and when my grandfather, by his recklessexpenditure, which he never checked till ruin was upon him, wasobliged to sell his estate, and live in penury, my Mother was theonly member of the family who did not regret the change. For myown part, I believe I should have liked my reprobate maternalgrandfather, but his conduct was certainly very vexatious. Hedied, in his eightieth year, when I was nine months old. 

It was a curious coincidence that life had brought both myparents along similar paths to an almost identical position inrespect to religious belief. She had started from the Anglicanstandpoint, he from the Wesleyan, and each, almost withoutcounsel from others, and after varied theological experiments, had come to take up precisely the same attitude towards alldivisions of the Protestant Church--that, namely, of detached andunbiased contemplation. So far as the sects agreed with my Fatherand my Mother, the sects were walking in the light; wherever theydiffered from them, they had slipped more or less definitely intoa penumbra of their own making, a darkness into which neither ofmy parents would follow them. Hence, by a process of selection, my Father and my Mother alike had gradually, without violence, found themselves shut outside all Protestant communions, and atlast they met only with a few extreme Calvinists like themselves, on terms of what may almost be called negation--with no priest, noritual, no festivals, no ornament of any kind, nothing but theLord's Supper and the exposition of Holy Scripture drawing theseaustere spirits into any sort of cohesion. They called themselves'the Brethren', simply; a title enlarged by the world outsideinto 'Plymouth Brethren'. 

It was accident and similarity which brought my parents togetherat these meetings of the Brethren. Each was lonely, each waspoor, each was accustomed to a strenuous intellectual self-support. He was nearly thirty-eight, she was past forty-two, whenthey married. From a suburban lodging, he brought her home to hismother's little house in the northeast of London without asingle day's honeymoon. My Father was a zoologist, and a writerof books on natural history; my Mother also was a writer, authoralready of two slender volumes of religious verse--the earlier ofwhich, I know not how, must have enjoyed some slight success, since a second edition was printed--afterwards she devoted herpen to popular works of edification. But how infinitely removedin their aims, their habits, their ambitions from 'literary'people of the present day, words are scarcely adequate todescribe. Neither knew nor cared about any manifestation ofcurrent literature. For each there had been no poet later thanByron, and neither had read a romance since, in childhood, theyhad dipped into the Waverley Novels as they appeared insuccession. For each the various forms of imaginative andscientific literature were merely means of improvement andprofit, which kept the student 'out of the world', gave him fullemployment, and enabled him to maintain himself. But pleasure wasfound nowhere but in the Word of God, and to the endlessdiscussion of the Scriptures each hurried when the day's work wasover. 

In this strange household the advent of a child was not welcomed, but was borne with resignation. The event was thus recorded in myFather's diary:

'E. Delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica. '

This entry has caused amusement, as showing that he was as muchinterested in the bird as in the boy. But this does not follow;what the wording exemplifies is my Father's extreme punctilio. The green swallow arrived later in the day than the son, and theearlier visitor was therefore recorded first; my Father wasscrupulous in every species of arrangement. 

Long afterwards, my Father told me that my Mother suffered muchin giving birth to me, and that, uttering no cry, I appeared tobe dead. I was laid, with scant care, on another bed in the room, while all anxiety and attention were concentrated on my Mother. An old woman who happened to be there, and who was unemployed, turned her thoughts to me, and tried to awake in me a spark ofvitality. She succeeded, and she was afterwards complimented bythe doctor on her cleverness. My Father could not--when he toldme the story--recollect the name of my preserver. I have oftenlonged to know who she was. For all the rapture of life, for allits turmoils, its anxious desires, its manifold pleasures, andeven for its sorrow and suffering, I bless and praise thatanonymous old lady from the bottom of my heart. 

It was six weeks before my Mother was able to leave her room. Theoccasion was made a solemn one, and was attended by a species ofChurching. Mr. Balfour, a valued minister of the denomination, held a private service in the parlour, and 'prayed for our child, that he may be the Lord's'. This was the opening act of that'dedication' which was never henceforward forgotten, and of whichthe following pages will endeavour to describe the results. Around my tender and unconscious spirit was flung the luminousweb, the light and elastic but impermeable veil, which it washoped would keep me 'unspotted from the world'. 

Until this time my Father's mother had lived in the house andtaken the domestic charges of it on her own shoulders. She nowconsented to leave us to ourselves. There is no question that herexodus was a relief to my Mother, since my paternal grandmotherwas a strong and masterful woman, buxom, choleric and practical, for whom the interests of the mind did not exist. Her daughter-in-law, gentle as she was, and ethereal in manner and appearance--strangely contrasted (no doubt), in her tinctures of gold hairand white skin, with my grandmother's bold carnations and blacktresses--was yet possessed of a will like tempered steel. Theywere better friends apart, with my grandmother lodged hard by, ina bright room, her household gods and bits of excellenteighteenth-century furniture around her, her miniatures andsparkling china arranged on shelves. 

Left to my Mother's sole care, I became the centre of hersolicitude. But there mingled with those happy animal instinctswhich sustain the strength and patience of every human mother andwere fully present with her--there mingled with these certainspiritual determinations which can be but rare. They are, intheir outline, I suppose, vaguely common to many religiousmothers, but there are few indeed who fill up the sketch with sofirm a detail as she did. Once again I am indebted to her secretnotes, in a little locked volume, seen until now, nearly sixtyyears later, by no eye save her own. Thus she wrote when I wastwo months old:

'We have given him to the Lord; and we trust that He will reallymanifest him to be His own, if he grow up; and if the Lord takehim early, we will not doubt that he is taken to Himself. Only, if it please the Lord to take him, I do trust we may be sparedseeing him suffering in lingering illness and much pain. But inthis as in all things His will is better than what we can choose. Whether his life be prolonged or not, it has already been ablessing to us, and to the saints, in leading us to much prayer, and bringing us into varied need and some trial. '

The last sentence is somewhat obscure to me. How, at that tenderage, I contrived to be a blessing 'to the saints' may surpriseothers and puzzles myself. But 'the saints' was the habitual termby which were indicated the friends who met on Sunday morningsfor Holy Communion, and at many other tunes in the week forprayer and discussion of the Scriptures, in the small hired hallat Hackney, which my parents attended. I suppose that the solemndedication of me to the Lord, which was repeated in public in myMother's arms, being by no means a usual or familiar ceremonyeven among the Brethren, created a certain curiosity and fervourin the immediate services, or was imagined so to do by the fond, partial heart of my Mother. She, however, who had been so muchisolated, now made the care of her child an excuse for retiringstill further into silence. With those religious persons who metat the Room, as the modest chapel was called, she had littlespiritual, and no intellectual, sympathy. She noted:

'I do not think it would increase my happiness to be in the midstof the saints at Hackney. I have made up my mind to give myselfup to Baby for the winter, and to accept no invitations. To gowhen I can to the Sunday morning meetings and to see my ownMother. '

The monotony of her existence now became extreme, but she seemsto have been happy. Her days were spent in taking care of me, andin directing one young servant. My Father was forever in hisstudy, writing, drawing, dissecting; sitting, no doubt, as I grewafterwards accustomed to see him, absolutely motionless, with hiseye glued to the microscope, for twenty minutes at a time. So thegreater part of every weekday was spent, and on Sunday heusually preached one, and sometimes two extempore sermons. Hisworkday labours were rewarded by the praise of the learnedworld, to which he was indifferent, but by very little money, which he needed more. For over three years after their marriage, neither of my parents left London for a single day, not beingable to afford to travel. They received scarcely any visitors, never ate a meal away from home, never spent an evening in socialintercourse abroad. At night they discussed theology, read aloudto one another, or translated scientific brochures from French orGerman. It sounds a terrible life of pressure and deprivation, and that it was physically unwholesome there can be no shadow ofa doubt. But their contentment was complete and unfeigned. In themidst of this, materially, the hardest moment of their lives, when I was one year old, and there was a question of our leavingLondon, my Mother recorded in her secret notes:

'We are happy and contented, having all things needful andpleasant, and our present habitation is hallowed by many sweetassociations. We have our house to ourselves and enjoy eachother's society. If we move we shall do longer be alone. Thesituation may be more favourable, however, for Baby, as beingmore in the country. I desire to have no choice in the matter, but as I know not what would be for our good, and God knows, so Idesire to leave it with Him, and if it is not His will we shouldmove, He will raise objections and difficulties, and if it is Hiswill He will make Henry [my Father] desirous and anxious to takethe step, and then, whatever the result, let us leave all to Himand not regret it. '

No one who is acquainted with the human heart will mistake thisattitude of resignation for weakness of purpose. It was notpoverty of will, it was abnegation, it was a voluntary act. MyMother, underneath an exquisite amenity of manner, concealed arigour of spirit which took the form of a constant self-denial. For it to dawn upon her consciousness that she wished forsomething, was definitely to renounce that wish, or, moreexactly, to subject it in every thing to what she conceived to bethe will of God. 

This is perhaps the right moment for me to say that at this time, and indeed until the hour of her death, she exercised, withoutsuspecting it, a magnetic power over the will and nature of myFather. Both were strong, but my Mother was unquestionably thestronger of the two; it was her mind which gradually drew his totake up a certain definite position, and this remained permanentalthough she, the cause of it, was early removed. Hence, while itwas with my Father that the long struggle which I have to narratetook place, behind my Father stood the ethereal memory of myMother's will, guiding him, pressing him, holding him to theunswerving purpose which she had formed and defined. And when theinevitable disruption came, what was unspeakably painful was torealize that it was not from one, but from both parents that thepurpose of the child was separated. 

My Mother was a Puritan in grain, and never a word escaped her, not a phrase exists in her diary, to suggest that she had anyprivations to put up with. She seemed strong and well, and so didI; the one of us who broke down was my Father. With his attack ofacute nervous dyspepsia came an unexpected small accession ofmoney, and we were able, in my third year, to take a holiday ofnearly ten months in Devonshire. The extreme seclusion, theunbroken strain, were never repeated, and when we returned toLondon, it was to conditions of greater amenity and to a lessrigid practice of 'the world forgetting by the world forgot'. That this relaxation was more relative than positive, and thatnothing ever really tempted either of my parents from theircavern in an intellectual Thebaid, my recollections will amplyprove. But each of them was forced by circumstances into a moreor less public position, and neither could any longer quiteignore the world around. 

It is not my business here to re-write the biographies of myparents. Each of them became, in a certain measure, celebrated, and each was the subject of a good deal of contemporarydiscussion. Each was prominent before the eyes of a public of hisor her own, half a century ago. It is because their minds werevigorous and their accomplishments distinguished that thecontrast between their spiritual point of view and the aspect ofa similar class of persons today is interesting and may, I hope, be instructive. But this is not another memoir of publicindividuals, each of whom has had more than one biographer. Myserious duty, as I venture to hold it, is other;

 that's the world's side, Thus men saw them, praised them, thought they knew them! There, in turn, I stood aside and praised them! Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 

But this is a different inspection, this is a study of

 the other side, the novel Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, the record of a state of soul once not uncommon in ProtestantEurope, of which my parents were perhaps the latest consistentexemplars among people of light and leading. 

The peculiarities of a family life, founded upon such principles, are, in relation to a little child, obvious; but I may bepermitted to recapitulate them. Here was perfect purity, perfectintrepidity, perfect abnegation; yet there was also narrowness, isolation, an absence of perspective, let it be boldly admitted, an absence of humanity. And there was a curious mixture ofhumbleness and arrogance; entire resignation to the will of Godand not less entire disdain of the judgement and opinion of man. My parents founded every action, every attitude, upon theirinterpretation of the Scriptures, and upon the guidance of theDivine Will as revealed to them by direct answer to prayer. Theirejaculation in the face of any dilemma was, 'Let us cast itbefore the Lord!'

So confident were they of the reality of their intercourse withGod, that they asked for no other guide. They recognized nospiritual authority among men, they subjected themselves to nopriest or minister, they troubled their consciences about nocurrent manifestation of 'religious opinion'. They lived in anintellectual cell, bounded at its sides by the walls of their ownhouse, but open above to the very heart of the uttermost heavens. 

This, then, was the scene in which the soul of a little child wasplanted, not as in an ordinary open flower-border or carefullytended social _parterre_, but as on a ledge, split in the graniteof some mountain. The ledge was hung between night and the snowson one hand, and the dizzy depths of the world upon the other;was furnished with just soil enough for a gentian to struggleskywards and open its stiff azure stars; and offered nolodgement, no hope of salvation, to any rootlet which shouldstray beyond its inexorable limits. 

CHAPTER II

OUT of the darkness of my infancy there comes only one flash ofmemory. I am seated alone, in my baby-chair, at a dinner-tableset for several people. Somebody brings in a leg of mutton, putsit down close to me, and goes out. I am again alone, gazing attwo low windows, wide open upon a garden. Suddenly, noiselessly, a large, long animal (obviously a greyhound) appears at onewindow-sill, slips into the room, seizes the leg of mutton andslips out again. When this happened I could not yet talk. Theaccomplishment of speech came to me very late, doubtless becauseI never heard young voices. Many years later, when I mentionedthis recollection, there was a shout of laughter and surprise:'That, then, was what became of the mutton! It was not you, who, as your Uncle A. Pretended, ate it up, in the twinkling of aneye, bone and all!'

I suppose that it was the startling intensity of this incidentwhich stamped it upon a memory from which all other impressionsof this early date have vanished. 

The adventure of the leg of mutton occurred, evidently, at thehouse of my Mother's brothers, for my parents, at this date, visited no other. My uncles were not religious men, but they hadan almost filial respect for my Mother, who was several yearssenior to the elder of them. When the catastrophe of mygrandfather's fortune had occurred, they had not yet left school. My Mother, in spite of an extreme dislike of teaching, which wasnative to her, immediately accepted the situation of a governessin the family of an Irish nobleman. The mansion was only to beapproached, as Miss Edgeworth would have said, 'through eighteensloughs, at the imminent peril of one's life', and when one hadreached it, the mixture of opulence and squalor, of civility andsavagery, was unspeakable. But my Mother was well paid, and shestayed in this distasteful environment, doing the work she hatedmost, while with the margin of her salary she helped first one ofher brothers and then the other through his Cambridge course. They studied hard and did well at the university. At length theirsister received, in her 'ultima Thule', news that her youngerbrother had taken his degree, and then and there, with a sigh ofintense relief, she resigned her situation and came straight backto England. 

It is not to be wondered at, then, that my uncles looked up totheir sister with feelings of especial devotion. They were notinclined, they were hardly in a position, to criticize her modesof thought. They were easy-going, cultured and kindly gentlemen, rather limited in their views, without a trace of their sister'sforce of intellect or her strenuous temper. E. Resembled her inperson, he was tall, fair, with auburn curls; he cultivated acertain tendency to the Byronic type, fatal and melancholy. A. Was short, brown and jocose, with a pretension to common sense;bluff and chatty. As a little child, I adored my Uncle E. , whosat silent by the fireside holding me against his knee, sayingnothing, but looking unutterably sad, and occasionally shakinghis warm-coloured tresses. With great injustice, on the otherhand, I detested my Uncle A. , because he used to joke in a mannervery displeasing to me, and because he would so far forgethimself as to chase, and even, if it will be credited, to tickleme. My uncles, who remained bachelors to the end of their lives, earned a comfortable living; E. By teaching, A. As 'something inthe City', and they rented an old rambling house in Clapton, thatsame in which I saw the greyhound. Their house had a strange, delicious smell, so unlike anything I smelt anywhere else, thatit used to fill my eyes with tears of mysterious pleasure. I knownow that this was the odour of cigars, tobacco being a species ofincense tabooed at home on the highest religious grounds. 

It has been recorded that I was slow in learning to speak. I usedto be told that having met all invitations to repeat such wordsas 'Papa' and 'Mamma' with gravity and indifference, I one daydrew towards me a volume, and said 'book' with startlingdistinctness. I was not at all precocious, but at a rather earlyage, I think towards the beginning of my fourth year, I learnedto read. I cannot recollect a time when a printed page of Englishwas closed to me. But perhaps earlier still my Mother used torepeat to me a poem which I have always taken for granted thatshe had herself composed, a poem which had a romantic place in myearly mental history. It ran thus, I think:

 O pretty Moon, you shine so bright! I'll go to bid Mamma good-night, And then I'll lie upon my bed And watch you move above my head. 

 Ah! there, a cloud has hidden you! But I can see your light shine thro'; It tries to hide you--quite in vain, For--there you quickly come again!

 It's God, I know, that makes you shine Upon this little bed of mine; But I shall all about you know When I can read and older grow. 

Long, long after the last line had become an anachronism, I usedto shout this poem from my bed before I went to sleep, whetherthe night happened to be moonlit or no. 

It must have been my Father who taught me my letters. To myMother, as I have said, it was distasteful to teach, though shewas so prompt and skillful to learn. My Father, on the contrary, taught cheerfully, by fits and starts. In particular, he had ascheme for rationalizing geography, which I think was admirable. I was to climb upon a chair, while, standing at my side, with apencil and a sheet of paper, he was to draw a chart of themarkings on the carpet. Then, when I understood the system, another chart on a smaller scale of the furniture in the room, then of a floor of the house, then of the back-garden, then of asection of the street. The result of this was that geography cameto me of itself, as a perfectly natural miniature arrangement ofobjects, and to this day has always been the science which givesme least difficulty. My father also taught me the simple rules ofarithmetic, a little natural history, and the elements ofdrawing; and he laboured long and unsuccessfully to make me learnby heart hymns, psalms and chapters of Scripture, in which Ialways failed ignominiously and with tears. This puzzled andvexed him, for he himself had an extremely retentive textualmemory. He could not help thinking that I was naughty, and wouldnot learn the chapters, until at last he gave up the effort. Allthis sketch of an education began, I believe, in my fourth year, and was not advanced or modified during the rest of my Mother'slife. 

Meanwhile, capable as I was of reading, I found my greatestpleasure in the pages of books. The range of these was limited, for story-books of every description were sternly excluded. Nofiction of any kind, religious or secular, was admitted into thehouse. In this it was to my Mother, not to my Father, that theprohibition was due. She had a remarkable, I confess to me stillsomewhat unaccountable impression that to 'tell a story', thatis, to compose fictitious narrative of any kind, was a sin. Shecarried this conviction to extreme lengths. My Father, in lateryears, gave me some interesting examples of her firmness. As ayoung man in America, he had been deeply impressed by'Salathiel', a pious prose romance by that then popular writer, the Rev. George Croly. When he first met my Mother, herecommended it to her, but she would not consent to open it. Norwould she read the chivalrous tales in verse of Sir Walter Scott, obstinately alleging that they were not 'true'. She would readnone but lyrical and subjective poetry. Her secret diary revealsthe history of this singular aversion to the fictitious, althoughit cannot be said to explain the cause of it. As a child, however, she had possessed a passion for making up stories, andso considerable a skill in it that she was constantly beingbegged to indulge others with its exercise. But I will, on socurious a point, leave her to speak for herself:

'When I was a very little child, I used to amuse myself and mybrothers with inventing stories, such as I read. Having, as Isuppose, naturally a restless mind and busy imagination, thissoon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately, mybrothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and Ifound in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had notknown there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore [a Calvinistgoverness], finding it out, lectured me severely, and told me itwas wicked. From that time forth I considered that to invent astory of any kind was a sin. But the desire to do so was toodeeply rooted in my affections to be resisted in my own strength[she was at that time nine years of age], and unfortunately I knewneither my corruption nor my weakness, nor did I know where togain strength. The longing to invent stories grew with violence;everything I heard or read became food for my distemper. Thesimplicity of truth was not sufficient for me; I must needsembroider imagination upon it, and the folly, vanity andwickedness which disgraced my heart are more than I am able toexpress. Even now [at the age of twenty-nine], tho' watched, prayed and striven against, this is still the sin that mosteasily besets me. It has hindered my prayers and prevented myimprovement, and therefore, has humbled me very much. '

This is, surely, a very painful instance of the repression of aninstinct. There seems to have been, in this case, a vocation suchas is rarely heard, and still less often wilfully disregarded andsilenced. Was my Mother intended by nature to be a novelist? Ihave often thought so, and her talents and vigour of purpose, directed along the line which was ready to form 'the chiefpleasure of her life', could hardly have failed to conduct her togreat success. She was a little younger than Bulwer Lytton, alittle older than Mrs. Gaskell--but these are vain and trivialspeculations!

My own state, however, was, I should think, almost unique amongthe children of cultivated parents. In consequence of the sternordinance which I have described, not a single fiction was reador told to me during my infancy. The rapture of the child whodelays the process of going to bed by cajoling 'a story' out ofhis mother or his nurse, as he sits upon her knee, well tuckedup, at the corner of the nursery fire--this was unknown to me. Never in all my early childhood did anyone address to me theaffecting preamble, 'Once upon a time!' I was told aboutmissionaries, but never about pirates; I was familiar withhummingbirds, but I had never heard of fairies--Jack the Giant-Killer, Rumpelstiltskin and Robin Hood were not of myacquaintance; and though I understood about wolves, Little RedRidinghood was a stranger even by name. So far as my 'dedication'was concerned, I can but think that my parents were in error thusto exclude the imaginary from my outlook upon facts. They desiredto make me truthful; the tendency was to make me positive andsceptical. Had they wrapped me in the soft folds of supernaturalfancy, my mind might have been longer content to follow theirtraditions in an unquestioning spirit. 

Having easily said what, in those early years, I did not read, Ihave great difficulty in saying what I did read. But a queervariety of natural history, some of it quite indigestible by myundeveloped mind; many books of travels, mainly of a scientificcharacter, among them voyages of discovery in the South Seas, bywhich my brain was dimly filled with splendour; some geographyand astronomy, both of them sincerely enjoyed; much theology, which I desired to appreciate but could never get my teeth into(if I may venture to say so), and over which my eye and tonguelearned to slip without penetrating, so that I would read, andread aloud, and with great propriety of emphasis, page after pagewithout having formed an idea or retained an expression. Therewas, for instance, a writer on prophecy called Jukes, of whoseworks each of my parents was inordinately fond, and I was earlyset to read Jukes aloud to them. I did it glibly, like a machine, but the sight of Jukes' volumes became an abomination to me, andI never formed the outline of a notion what they were about. Later on, a publication called _The Penny Cyclopaedia_ became mydaily, and for a long time almost my sole study; to the subjectof this remarkable work I may presently return. 

It is difficult to keep anything like chronological order inrecording fragments of early recollection, and in speaking of myreading I have been led too far ahead. My memory does not, practically, begin till we returned from certain visits, madewith a zoological purpose, to the shores of Devon and Dorset, andsettled, early in my fifth year, in a house at Islington, in thenorth of London. Our circumstances were now more easy; my Fatherhad regular and well-paid literary work; and the house was largerand more comfortable than ever before, though still very simpleand restricted. My memories, some of which are exactly dated bycertain facts, now become clear and almost abundant. What I donot remember, except from having it very often repeated to me, is what may be considered the only 'clever' thing that I saidduring an otherwise unillustrious childhood. It was notstartlingly 'clever', but it may pass. A lady--when I was justfour--rather injudiciously showed me a large print of a humanskeleton, saying, 'There! you don't know what that is, do you?'Upon which, immediately and very archly, I replied, 'Isn't it aman with the meat off?' This was thought wonderful, and, as it issupposed that I had never had the phenomenon explained to me, itcertainly displays some quickness in seizing an analogy. I hadoften watched my Father, while he soaked the flesh off the bonesof fishes and small mammals. If I venture to repeat this trifle, it is only to point out that the system on which I was beingeducated deprived all things, human life among the rest, of theirmystery. The 'bare-grinning skeleton of death' was to me merely aprepared specimen of that featherless plantigrade vertebrate, 'homo sapiens'. 

As I have said that this anecdote was thought worth repeating, Iought to proceed to say that there was, so far as I canrecollect, none of that flattery of childhood which is so oftenmerely a backhanded way of indulging the vanity of parents. MyMother, indeed, would hardly have been human if she had notoccasionally entertained herself with the delusion that hersolitary duckling was a cygnet. This my Father did not encourage, remarking, with great affection, and chucking me under the chin, that I was 'a nice little ordinary boy'. My Mother, stung by thiswant of appreciation, would proceed so far as to declare that shebelieved that in future times the F. R. S. Would be chiefly knownas his son's father! (This is a pleasantry frequent inprofessional families. )

To this my Father, whether convinced or not, would make no demur, and the couple would begin to discuss, in my presence, thedirection which my shining talents would take. In consequence ofmy dedication to 'the Lord's Service', the range of possibilitieswas much restricted. My Father, who had lived long in theTropics, and who nursed a perpetual nostalgia for 'the littlelazy isles where the trumpet-orchids blow', leaned towards thefield of missionary labour. My Mother, who was cold about foreignmissions, preferred to believe that I should be the CharlesWesley of my age, 'or perhaps', she had the candour to admit, 'merely the George Whitefield'. I cannot recollect the time whenI did not understand that I was going to be a minister of theGospel. 

It is so generally taken for granted that a life strictlydedicated to religion is stiff and dreary, that I may have somedifficulty in persuading my readers that, as a matter of fact, inthese early days of my childhood, before disease and death hadpenetrated to our slender society, we were always cheerful andoften gay. My parents were playful with one another, and therewere certain stock family jests which seldom failed to enliventhe breakfast table. My Father and Mother lived so completely inthe atmosphere of faith, and were so utterly convinced of theirintercourse with God, that, so long as that intercourse was notclouded by sin, to which they were delicately sensitive, theycould afford to take the passing hour very lightly. They wouldeven, to a certain extent, treat the surroundings of theirreligion as a subject of jest, joking very mildly and gentlyabout such things as an attitude at prayer or the nature of asupplication. They were absolutely indifferent to forms. Theyprayed, seated in their chairs, as willingly as, reversed, upontheir knees; no ritual having any significance for them. MyMother was sometimes extremely gay, laughing with a soft, merrysound. What I have since been told of the guileless mirth of nunsin a convent has reminded me of the gaiety of my parents duringmy early childhood. 

So long as I was a mere part of them, without individualexistence, and swept on, a satellite, in their atmosphere, I wasmirthful when they were mirthful, and grave when they were grave. The mere fact that I had no young companions, no storybooks, nooutdoor amusements, none of the thousand and one employmentsprovided for other children in more conventional surroundings, did not make me discontented or fretful, because I did not knowof the existence of such entertainments. In exchange, I becamekeenly attentive to the limited circle of interests open to me. Oddly enough, I have no recollection of any curiosity about otherchildren, nor of any desire to speak to them or play with them. They did not enter into my dreams, which were occupied entirelywith grown-up people and animals. I had three dolls, to whom myattitude was not very intelligible. Two of these were female, onewith a shapeless face of rags, the other in wax. But, in my fifthyear, when the Crimean War broke out, I was given a third doll, asoldier, dressed very smartly in a scarlet cloth tunic. I used toput the dolls on three chairs, and harangue them aloud, but mysentiment to them was never confidential, until our maid-servantone day, intruding on my audience, and misunderstanding theoccasion of it, said: 'What? a boy, and playing with a soldierwhen he's got two lady-dolls to play with?' I had never thoughtof my dolls as confidants before, but from that time forth I paida special attention to the soldier, in order to make up to himfor Lizzie's unwarrantable insult. 

The declaration of war with Russia brought the first breath ofoutside life into our Calvinist cloister. My parents took in adaily newspaper, which they had never done before, and events inpicturesque places, which my Father and I looked out on the map, were eagerly discussed. One of my vividest early memories can bedated exactly. I was playing about the house, and suddenly burstinto the breakfast-room, where, close to the door, sat an amazingfigure, a very tall young man, as stiff as my doll, in a gorgeousscarlet tunic. Quite far away from him, at her writing-table, myMother sat with her Bible open before her, and was urging thegospel plan of salvation on his acceptance. She promptly told meto run away and play, but I had seen a great sight. Thisguardsman was in the act of leaving for the Crimea, and hisadventures, --he was converted in consequence of my Mother'sinstruction, --were afterwards told by her in a tract, called 'TheGuardsman of the Alma', of which I believe that more than half amillion copies were circulated. He was killed in that battle, andthis added an extraordinary lustre to my dream of him. I see himstill in my mind's eye, large, stiff, and unspeakably brilliant, seated, from respect, as near as possible to our parlour door. This apparition gave reality to my subsequent conversations withthe soldier doll. 

That same victory of the Alma, which was reported in London on myfifth birthday, is also marked very clearly in my memory by afamily circumstance. We were seated at breakfast, at our smallround table drawn close up to the window, my Father with his backto the light. Suddenly, he gave a sort of cry, and read out theopening sentences from _The Times_ announcing a battle in thevalley of the Alma. No doubt the strain of national anxiety hadbeen very great, for both he and my Mother seemed deeply excited. He broke off his reading when the fact of the decisive victorywas assured, and he and my Mother sank simultaneously on theirknees in front of their tea and bread-and-butter, while in a loudvoice my Father gave thanks to the God of Battles. Thispatriotism was the more remarkable, in that he had schooledhimself, as he believed, to put his 'heavenly citizenship' aboveall earthly duties. To those who said: 'Because you are aChristian, surely you are not less an Englishman?' he would replyby shaking his head, and by saying: 'I am a citizen of no earthlyState'. He did not realize that, in reality, and to use a cantphrase not yet coined in 1854, there existed in Great Britain nomore thorough 'Jingo' than he. 

Another instance of the remarkable way in which the interests ofdaily life were mingled in our strange household, with thepractice of religion, made an impression upon my memory. We hadall three been much excited by a report that a certain darkgeometer-moth, generated in underground stables, had been metwith in Islington. Its name, I think is, 'Boletobia fuliginaria', and I believe that it is excessively rare in England. We weresitting at family prayers, on a summer morning, I think in 1855, when through the open window a brown moth came sailing. My Motherimmediately interrupted the reading of the Bible by saying to myFather, 'O! Henry, do you think that can be "Boletobia"?' MyFather rose up from the sacred book, examined the insect, whichhad now perched, and replied: 'No! it is only the commonVapourer, "Orgyia antiqua"!', resuming his seat, and theexposition of the Word, without any apology or embarrassment. 

In the course of this, my sixth year, there happened a series ofminute and soundless incidents which, elementary as they may seemwhen told, were second in real importance to none in my mentalhistory. The recollection of them confirms me in the opinion thatcertain leading features in each human soul are inherent to it, and cannot be accounted for by suggestion or training. In my owncase, I was most carefully withdrawn, like Princess Blanchefleurin her marble fortress, from every outside influence whatever, yet to me the instinctive life came as unexpectedly as her lovercame to her in the basket of roses. What came to me was theconsciousness of self, as a force and as a companion, and it cameas the result of one or two shocks, which I will relate. 

In consequence of hearing so much about an Omniscient God, abeing of supernatural wisdom and penetration who was always withus, who made, in fact, a fourth in our company, I had come tothink of Him, not without awe, but with absolute confidence. MyFather and Mother, in their serene discipline of me, never arguedwith one another, never even differed; their wills seemedabsolutely one. My Mother always deferred to my Father, and inhis absence spoke of him to me, as if he were all-wise. Iconfused him in some sense with God; at all events I believedthat my Father knew everything and saw everything. One morning inmy sixth year, my Mother and I were alone in the morning-room, when my Father came in and announced some fact to us. I wasstanding on the rug, gazing at him, and when he made thisstatement, I remember turning quickly, in embarrassment, andlooking into the fire. The shock to me was as that of athunderbolt, for what my Father had said 'was not true'. MyMother and I, who had been present at the trifling incident, wereaware that it had not happened exactly as it had been reported tohim. My Mother gently told him so, and he accepted thecorrection. Nothing could possibly have been more trifling to myparents, but to me it meant an epoch. Here was the appallingdiscovery, never suspected before, that my Father was not as God, and did not know everything. The shock was not caused by anysuspicion that he was not telling the truth, as it appeared tohim, but by the awful proof that he was not, as I had supposed, omniscient. 

This experience was followed by another, which confirmed thefirst, but carried me a great deal further. In our littleback-garden, my Father had built up a rockery for ferns and mossesand from the water-supply of the house he had drawn a leaden pipeso that it pierced upwards through the rockery and produced, whena tap was turned, a pretty silvery parasol of water. The pipe wasexposed somewhere near the foot of the rockery. One day, twoworkmen, who were doing some repairs, left their tools during thedinner-hour in the back-garden, and as I was marching about Isuddenly thought that to see whether one of these tools couldmake a hole in the pipe would be attractive. It did make such ahole, quite easily, and then the matter escaped my mind. But aday or two afterwards, when my Father came in to dinner, he wasvery angry. He had turned the tap, and instead of the fountainarching at the summit, there had been a rush of water through ahole at the foot. The rockery was absolutely ruined. 

Of course I realized in a moment what I had done, and I satfrozen with alarm, waiting to be denounced. But my Motherremarked on the visit of the plumbers two or three days before, and my Father instantly took up the suggestion. No doubt that wasit; the mischievous fellows had thought it amusing to stab thepipe and spoil the fountain. No suspicion fell on me; no questionwas asked of me. I sat there, turned to stone within, butoutwardly sympathetic and with unchecked appetite. 

We attribute, I believe, too many moral ideas to little children. It is obvious that in this tremendous juncture I ought to havebeen urged forward by good instincts, or held back by naughtyones. But I am sure that the fear which I experienced for a shorttime, and which so unexpectedly melted away, was a purelyphysical one. It had nothing to do with the motions of a contriteheart. As to the destruction of the fountain, I was sorry aboutthat, for my own sake, since I admired the skipping waterextremely and had had no idea that I was spoiling its display. But the emotions which now thronged within me, and which led me, with an almost unwise alacrity, to seek solitude in the back-garden, were not moral at all, they were intellectual. I was notashamed of having successfully--and so surprisingly--deceived myparents by my crafty silence; I looked upon that as aprovidential escape, and dismissed all further thought of it. Ihad other things to think of. 

In the first place, the theory that my Father was omniscient orinfallible was now dead and buried. He probably knew very little;in this case he had not known a fact of such importance that ifyou did not know that, it could hardly matter what you knew. MyFather, as a deity, as a natural force of immense prestige, fellin my eyes to a human level. In future, his statements aboutthings in general need not be accepted implicitly. But of all thethoughts which rushed upon my savage and undeveloped little brainat this crisis, the most curious was that I had found a companionand a confidant in myself. There was a secret in this world andit belonged to me and to a somebody who lived in the same bodywith me. There were two of us, and we could talk with oneanother. It is difficult to define impressions so rudimentary, but it is certain that it was in this dual form that the sense ofmy individuality now suddenly descended upon me, and it isequally certain that it was a great solace to me to find asympathizer in my own breast. 

About this time, my Mother, carried away by the current of herliterary and her philanthropic work, left me more and more to myown devices. She was seized with a great enthusiasm; as one ofher admirers and disciples has written, 'she went on her way, sowing beside all waters'. I would not for a moment let it besupposed that I regard her as a Mrs. Jellyby, or that I think sheneglected me. But a remarkable work had opened up before her;after her long years in a mental hermitage, she was drawn forthinto the clamorous harvest-field of souls. She developed anunexpected gift of persuasion over strangers whom she met in theomnibus or in the train, and with whom she courageously grappled. This began by her noting, with deep humility and joy, that 'Ihave reason to judge the sound conversion to God of three youngpersons within a few weeks, by the instrumentality of myconversations with them'. At the same time, as another of herbiographers has said, 'those testimonies to the Blood of Christ, the fruits of her pen, began to be spread very widely, even tothe most distant parts of the globe'. My Father, too, was at thistime at the height of his activity. After breakfast, each of themwas amply occupied, perhaps until night-fall; our evenings westill always spent together. Sometimes my Mother took me with heron her 'unknown day's employ'; I recollect pleasant ramblesthrough the City by her side, and the act of looking up at herfigure soaring above me. But when all was done, I had hours andhours of complete solitude, in my Father's study, in the back-garden, above all in the garret. 

The garret was a fairy place. It was a low lean-to, lighted fromthe roof. It was wholly unfurnished, except for two objects, anancient hat-box and a still more ancient skin-trunk. The hat-boxpuzzled me extremely, till one day, asking my Father what it was, I got a distracted answer which led me to believe that it wasitself a sort of hat, and I made a laborious but repeated effortto wear it. The skin-trunk was absolutely empty, but the insideof the lid of it was lined with sheets of what I now know to havebeen a sensational novel. It was, of course, a fragment, but Iread it, kneeling on the bare floor, with indescribable rapture. It will be recollected that the idea of fiction, of adeliberately invented story, had been kept from me with entiresuccess. I therefore implicitly believed the tale in the lid ofthe trunk to be a true account of the sorrows of a lady of title, who had to flee the country, and who was pursued into foreignlands by enemies bent upon her ruin. Somebody had an interviewwith a 'minion' in a 'mask'; I went downstairs and looked upthese words in Bailey's 'English Dictionary', but was left indarkness as to what they had to do with the lady of title. Thisridiculous fragment filled me with delicious fears; I fanciedthat my Mother, who was out so much, might be threatened bydangers of the same sort; and the fact that the narrative cameabruptly to an end, in the middle of one of its most thrillingsentences, wound me up almost to a disorder of wonder andromance. 

The preoccupation of my parents threw me more and more upon myown resources. But what are the resources of a solitary child ofsix? I was never inclined to make friends with servants, nor didour successive maids proffer, so far as I recollect, anyadvances. Perhaps, with my 'dedication' and my grown-up ways oftalking, I did not seem to them at all an attractive little boy. I continued to have no companions, or even acquaintances of myown age. I am unable to recollect exchanging two words withanother child till after my Mother's death. 

The abundant energy which my Mother now threw into her publicwork did not affect the quietude of our private life. We had somevisitors in the daytime, people who came to consult one parentor the other. But they never stayed to a meal, and we neverreturned their visits. I do not quite know how it was thatneither of my parents took me to any of the sights of London, although I am sure it was a question of principle with them. Notwithstanding all our study of natural history, I was neverintroduced to live wild beasts at the Zoo, nor to dead ones atthe British Museum. I can understand better why we never visiteda picture-gallery or a concert-room. So far as I can recollect, the only time I was ever taken to any place of entertainment waswhen my Father and I paid a visit, long anticipated, to the GreatGlobe in Leicester Square. This was a huge structure, theinterior of which one ascended by means of a spiral staircase. Itwas a poor affair; that was concave in it which should have beenconvex, and my imagination was deeply affronted. I could invent afar better Great Globe than that in my mind's eye in the garret. 

Being so restricted, then, and yet so active, my mind took refugein an infantile species of natural magic. This contended with thedefinite ideas of religion which my parents were continuing, withtoo mechanical a persistency, to force into my nature, and it ranparallel with them. I formed strange superstitions, which I canonly render intelligible by naming some concrete examples. Ipersuaded myself that, if I could only discover the proper wordsto say or the proper passes to make, I could induce the gorgeousbirds and butterflies in my Father's illustrated manuals to cometo life, and fly out of the book, leaving holes behind them. Ibelieved that, when, at the Chapel, we sang, drearily and slowly, loud hymns of experience and humiliation, I could boom forth witha sound equal to that of dozens of singers, if I could only hitupon the formula. During morning and evening prayers, which wereextremely lengthy and fatiguing, I fancied that one of my twoselves could flit up, and sit clinging to the cornice, and lookdown on my other self and the rest of us, if I could only findthe key. I laboured for hours in search of these formulas, thinking to compass my ends by means absolutely irrational. Forexample, I was convinced that if I could only count consecutivenumbers long enough, without losing one, I should suddenly, onreaching some far-distant figure, find myself in possession ofthe great secret. I feel quite sure that nothing externalsuggested these ideas of magic, and I think it probable that theyapproached the ideas of savages at a very early stage ofdevelopment. 

All this ferment of mind was entirely unobserved by my parents. But when I formed the belief that it was necessary, for thesuccess of my practical magic, that I should hurt myself, andwhen, as a matter of fact, I began, in extreme secrecy, to runpins into my flesh and bang my joints with books, no one will besurprised to hear that my Mother's attention was drawn to thefact that I was looking 'delicate'. The notice nowadaysuniversally given to the hygienic rules of life was rare fiftyyears ago and among deeply religious people, in particular, fatalistic views of disease prevailed. If anyone was ill, itshowed that 'the Lord's hand was extended in chastisement', andmuch prayer was poured forth in order that it might be explainedto the sufferer, or to his relations, in what he or they hadsinned. People would, for instance, go on living over a cess-pool, working themselves up into an agony to discover how theyhad incurred the displeasure of the Lord, but never moving away. As I became very pale and nervous, and slept badly at nights, with visions and loud screams in my sleep, I was taken to aphysician, who stripped me and tapped me all over (this gave mesome valuable hints for my magical practices), but could findnothing the matter. He recommended, --whatever physicians in suchcases always recommend, --but nothing was done. If I was feeble itwas the Lord's will, and we must acquiesce. 

It culminated in a sort of fit of hysterics, when I lost allself-control, and sobbed with tears, and banged my head on thetable. While this was proceeding, I was conscious of that dualindividuality of which I have already spoken, since while onepart of me gave way, and could not resist, the other part in someextraordinary sense seemed standing aloof, much impressed. I wasalone with my Father when this crisis suddenly occurred, and Iwas interested to see that he was greatly alarmed. It was a verylong time since we had spent a day out of London, and I said, onbeing coaxed back to calmness, that I wanted 'to go into thecountry'. Like the dying Falstaff, I babbled of green fields. MyFather, after a little reflection, proposed to take me toPrimrose Hill. I had never heard of the place, and names havealways appealed directly to my imagination. I was in the highestdegree delighted, and could hardly restrain my impatience. Assoon as possible we set forth westward, my hand in my Father's, with the liveliest anticipations. I expected to see a mountainabsolutely carpeted with primroses, a terrestrial galaxy likethat which covered the hill that led up to Montgomery Castle inDonne's poem. But at length, as we walked from the Chalk Farmdirection, a miserable acclivity stole into view--surrounded, even in those days, on most sides by houses, with its grass wornto the buff by millions of boots, and resembling what I meant by'the country' about as much as Poplar resembles Paradise. We satdown on a bench at its inglorious summit, whereupon I burst intotears, and in a heart-rending whisper sobbed, 'Oh! Papa, let usgo home!'

This was the lachrymose epoch in a career not otherwise given toweeping, for I must tell one more tale of tears. About thistime, --the autumn of 1855, --my parents were disturbed more thanonce in the twilight, after I had been put to bed, by shrieksfrom my crib. They would rush up to my side, and find me in greatdistress, but would be unable to discover the cause of it. Thefact was that I was half beside myself with ghostly fears, increased and pointed by the fact that there had been some daringburglaries on our street. Our servant-maid, who slept at the topof the house, had seen, or thought she saw, upon a moonlightnight the figure of a crouching man, silhouetted against the sky, slip down from the roof and leap into her room. She screamed, andhe fled away. Moreover, as if this were not enough for my tendernerves, there had been committed a horrid murder at a baker'sshop just around the corner in the Caledonian Road, to whichmurder actuality was given to us by the fact that my Mother hadbeen 'just thinking' of getting her bread from this shop. Children, I think, were not spared the details of these affairsfifty years ago; at least, I was not, and my nerves were a packetof spilikins. 

But what made me scream at nights was that when my Mother hadtucked me up in bed, and had heard me say my prayer, and hadprayed aloud on her knees at my side, and had stolen downstairs--noises immediately began in the room. There was a rustling ofclothes, and a slapping of hands, and a gurgling, and a sniffing, and a trotting. These horrible muffled sounds would go on, anddie away, and be resumed; I would pray very fervently to God tosave me from my enemies; and sometimes I would go to sleep. Buton other occasions, my faith and fortitude alike gave way, and Iscreamed 'Mama! Mama!' Then would my parents come bounding up thestairs, and comfort me, and kiss me, and assure me it was nothing. And nothing it was while they were there, but no sooner had theygone than the ghostly riot recommenced. It was at last discoveredby my Mother that the whole mischief was due to a card of framedtexts, fastened by one nail to the wall; this did nothing whenthe bedroom door was shut, but when it was left open (in order thatmy parents might hear me call), the card began to gallop in thedraught, and made the most intolerable noises. 

Several things tended at this time to alienate my conscience fromthe line which my Father had so rigidly traced for it. Thequestion of the efficacy of prayer, which has puzzled wiser headsthan mine was, began to trouble me. It was insisted on in ourhousehold that if anything was desired, you should not, as myMother said, 'lose any time in seeking for it, but ask God toguide you to it'. In many junctures of life this is preciselywhat, in sober fact, they did. I will not dwell here on theirtheories, which my Mother put forth, with unflinching directness, in her published writings. But I found that a difference was madebetween my privileges in this matter and theirs, and this led tomany discussions. My parents said: 'Whatever you need, tell Himand He will grant it, if it is His will. ' Very well; I had needof a large painted humming-top which I had seen in a shop-windowin the Caledonian Road. Accordingly, I introduced a supplicationfor this object into my evening prayer, carefully adding thewords: 'If it is Thy will. ' This, I recollect, placed my Motherin a dilemma, and she consulted my Father. Taken, I suppose, at adisadvantage, my Father told me I must not pray for 'things likethat'. To which I answered by another query, 'Why?' And I addedthat he said we ought to pray for things we needed, and that Ineeded the humming-top a great deal more than I did the conversionof the heathen or the restitution of Jerusalem to the Jews, twoobjects of my nightly supplication which left me very cold. 

I have reason to believe, looking back upon this scene conductedby candlelight in the front parlour, that my Mother was muchbaffled by the logic of my argument. She had gone so far as tosay publicly that no 'things or circumstances are tooinsignificant to bring before the God of the whole earth'. Ipersisted that this covered the case of the humming-top, whichwas extremely significant to me. I noticed that she held alooffrom the discussion, which was carried on with some show ofannoyance by my Father. He had never gone quite so far as she didin regard to this question of praying for material things. I amnot sure that she was convinced that I ought to have beenchecked; but he could not help seeing that it reduced theirfavourite theory to an absurdity for a small child to exercisethe privilege. He ceased to argue, and told me peremptorily thatit was not right for me to pray for things like humming-tops, andthat I must do it no more. His authority, of course, was Paramount, and I yielded; but my faith in the efficacy of prayer was a gooddeal shaken. The fatal suspicion had crossed my mind that the reasonwhy I was not to pray for the top was because it was too expensivefor my parents to buy, that being the usual excuse for not gettingthings I wished for. 

It was about the date of my sixth birthday that I did somethingvery naughty, some act of direct disobedience, for which myFather, after a solemn sermon, chastised me, sacrificially, bygiving me several cuts with a cane. This action was justified, aseverything he did was justified, by reference to Scripture 'Sparethe rod and spoil the child'. I suppose that there are somechildren, of a sullen and lymphatic temperament, who aresmartened up and made more wide-awake by a whipping. It islargely a matter of convention, the exercise being endured (I amtold) with pride by the infants of our aristocracy, but nottolerated by the lower classes. I am afraid that I proved myinherent vulgarity by being made, not contrite or humble, butfuriously angry by this caning. I cannot account for the flame ofrage which it awakened in my bosom. My dear, excellent Father hadbeaten me, not very severely, without ill-temper, and with themost genuine desire to improve me. But he was not well-advisedespecially so far as the 'dedication to the Lord's service' wasconcerned. This same 'dedication' had ministered to my vanity, and there are some natures which are not improved by beinghumiliated. I have to confess with shame that I went about thehouse for some days with a murderous hatred of my Father lockedwithin my bosom. He did not suspect that the chastisement had notbeen wholly efficacious, and he bore me no malice; so that aftera while, I forgot and thus forgave him. But I do not regardphysical punishment as a wise element in the education of proudand sensitive children. 

My theological misdeeds culminated, however, in an act so puerileand preposterous that I should not venture to record it if it didnot throw some glimmering of light on the subject which I haveproposed to myself in writing these pages. My mind continued todwell on the mysterious question of prayer. It puzzled me greatlyto know why, if we were God's children, and if he was watchingover us by night and day, we might not supplicate for toys andsweets and smart clothes as well as for the conversion of theheathen. Just at this juncture, we had a special service at theRoom, at which our attention was particularly called to what wealways spoke of as 'the field of missionary labour'. The East wasrepresented among 'the saints' by an excellent Irish peer, whohad, in his early youth, converted and married a lady of colour;this Asiatic shared in our Sunday morning meetings, and was anobject of helpless terror to me; I shrank from her amiablecaresses, and vaguely identified her with a personage much spokenof in our family circle, the 'Personal Devil'. 

All these matters drew my thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross-examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin, andpinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatryconsisted in praying to anyone or anything but God himself. Woodand stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to bebowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed myFather further on this subject, and he assured me that God wouldbe very angry, and would signify His anger, if anyone, in aChristian country, bowed down to wood and stone. I cannot recallwhy I was so pertinacious on this subject, but I remember that myFather became a little restive under my cross-examination. Idetermined, however, to test the matter for myself, and onemorning, when both my parents were safely out of the house, Iprepared for the great act of heresy. I was in the morning-roomon the ground-floor, where, with much labour, I hoisted a smallchair on to the table close to the window. My heart was nowbeating as if it would leap out of my side, but I pursued myexperiment. I knelt down on the carpet in front of the table andlooking up I said my daily prayer in a loud voice, onlysubstituting the address 'Oh Chair!' for the habitual one. 

Having carried this act of idolatry safely through, I waited tosee what would happen. It was a fine day, and I gazed up at theslip of white sky above the houses opposite, and expectedsomething to appear in it. God would certainly exhibit his angerin some terrible form, and would chastise my impious and willfulaction. I was very much alarmed, but still more excited; Ibreathed the high, sharp air of defiance. But nothing happened;there was not a cloud in the sky, not an unusual sound in thestreet. Presently, I was quite sure that nothing would happen. Ihad committed idolatry, flagrantly and deliberately, and God didnot care. 

The result of this ridiculous act was not to make me question theexistence and power of God; those were forces which I did notdream of ignoring. But what it did was to lessen still further myconfidence in my Father's knowledge of the Divine mind. My Fatherhad said, positively, that if I worshipped a thing made of wood, God would manifest his anger. I had then worshipped a chair, made(or partly made) of wood, and God had made no sign whatever. MyFather, therefore, was not really acquainted with the Divinepractice in cases of idolatry. And with that, dismissing thesubject, I dived again into the unplumbed depths of the _PennyCyclopaedia_. 

CHAPTER III

THAT I might die in my early childhood was a thought whichfrequently recurred to the mind of my Mother. She endeavoured, with a Roman fortitude, to face it without apprehension. Soonafter I had completed my fifth year, she had written as followsin her secret journal:

'Should we be called on to weep over the early grave of the dearone whom now we are endeavouring to train for heaven, may we beable to remember that we never ceased to pray for and watch overhim. It is easy, comparatively, to watch over an infant. Yetshall I be sufficient for these things? I am not. But God issufficient. In his strength I have begun the warfare, in hisstrength I will persevere, and I will faint not until either Imyself or my little one is beyond the reach of earthlysolicitude. '

That either she or I would be called away from earth, and thatour physical separation was at hand, seems to have been alwaysvaguely present in my Mother's dreams, as an obstinate convictionto be carefully recognized and jealously guarded against. 

It was not, however, until the course of my seventh year that thetragedy occurred, which altered the whole course of our familyexistence. My Mother had hitherto seemed strong and in goodhealth; she had even made the remark to my Father, that 'sorrowand pain, the badges of Christian discipleship', appeared to bewithheld from her. On her birthday, which was to be her last, shehad written these ejaculations in her locked diary:

'Lord, forgive the sins of the past, and help me to be faithful infuture! May this be a year of much blessing, a year of jubilee!May I be kept lowly, trusting, loving! May I have more blessingthan in all former years combined! May I be happier as a wife, mother, sister, writer, mistress, friend!'

But a symptom began to alarm her, and in the beginning of May, having consulted a local physician without being satisfied, shewent to see a specialist in a northern suburb in whose judgementshe had great confidence. This occasion I recollect with extremevividness. I had been put to bed by my Father, in itself anoteworthy event. My crib stood near a window overlooking thestreet; my parents' ancient four-poster, a relic of theeighteenth century, hid me from the door, but I could see therest of the room. After falling asleep on this particularevening, I awoke silently, surprised to see two lighted candleson the table, and my Father seated writing by them. I also saw alittle meal arranged. 

While I was wondering at all this, the door opened, and my Motherentered the room; she emerged from behind the bed-curtains, withher bonnet on, having returned from her expedition. My Fatherrose hurriedly, pushing back his chair. There was a pause, whilemy Mother seemed to be steadying her voice, and then she replied, loudly and distinctly, 'He says it is--' and she mentioned one ofthe most cruel maladies by which our poor mortal nature can betormented. Then I saw them hold one another in a silent longembrace, and presently sink together out of sight on their knees, at the farther side of the bed, whereupon my Father lifted up hisvoice in prayer. Neither of them had noticed me, and now I layback on my pillow and fell asleep. 

Next morning, when we three sat at breakfast, my mind reverted tothe scene of the previous night. With my eyes on my plate, as Iwas cutting up my food, I asked, casually, 'What is--?'mentioning the disease whose unfamiliar name I had heard from mybed. Receiving no reply, I looked up to discover why my questionwas not answered, and I saw my parents gazing at each other withlamentable eyes. In some way, I know not how, I was conscious ofthe presence of an incommunicable mystery, and I kept silence, though tortured with curiosity, nor did I ever repeat my inquiry. 

About a fortnight later, my Mother began to go three times a weekall the long way from Islington to Pimlico, in order to visit acertain practitioner, who undertook to apply a special treatmentto her case. This involved great fatigue and distress to her, butso far as I was personally concerned it did me a great deal ofgood. I invariably accompanied her, and when she was very tiredand weak, I enjoyed the pride of believing that I protected her. The movement, the exercise, the occupation, lifted my morbidfears and superstitions like a cloud. The medical treatment towhich my poor Mother was subjected was very painful, and she hada peculiar sensitiveness to pain. She carried on her evangelicalwork as long as she possibly could, continuing to converse withher fellow passengers on spiritual matters. It was wonderful thata woman, so reserved and proud as she by nature was, couldconquer so completely her natural timidity. In those last months, she scarcely ever got into a railway carriage or into an omnibus, without presently offering tracts to the persons sitting withinreach of her, or endeavouring to begin a conversation with someone of the sufficiency of the Blood of Jesus to cleanse the humanheart from sin. Her manners were so gentle and persuasive, shelooked so innocent, her small, sparkling features were lighted upwith so much benevolence, that I do not think she ever met withdiscourtesy or roughness. Imitative imp that I was, I sometimestook part in these strange conversations, and was mightily puffedup by compliments paid, in whispers, to my infant piety. But myMother very properly discouraged this, as tending in me tospiritual pride. 

If my parents, in their desire to separate themselves from theworld, had regretted that through their happiness they seemed tohave forfeited the Christian privilege of affliction, they couldnot continue to complain of any absence of temporal adversity. Everything seemed to combine, in the course of this fatal year1856, to harass and alarm them. Just at the moment when illnesscreated a special drain upon their resources, their slenderincome, instead of being increased, was seriously diminished. There is little sympathy felt in this world of rhetoric for thesilent sufferings of the genteel poor, yet there is no class thatdeserves a more charitable commiseration. 

At the best of times, the money which my parents had to spend wasan exiguous and an inelastic sum. Strictly economical, proud--inan old-fashioned mode now quite out of fashion--to conceal thefact of their poverty, painfully scrupulous to avoid givinginconvenience to shop-people, tradesmen or servants, their wholefinancial career had to be carried on with the adroitness of acampaign through a hostile country. But now, at the moment whenfresh pressing claims were made on their resources, my Mother'ssmall capital suddenly disappeared. It had been placed, on badadvice (they were as children in such matters), in a Cornishmine, the grotesque name of which, Wheal Maria, became familiarto my ears. One day the river Tamar, in a playful mood, brokeinto Wheal Maria, and not a penny more was ever lifted from thatunfortunate enterprise. About the same time, a small annuitywhich my Mother had inherited also ceased to be paid. 

On my Father's books and lectures, therefore, the whole weightnow rested, and that at a moment when he was depressed andunnerved by anxiety. It was contrary to his principles to borrowmoney, so that it became necessary to pay doctor's and chemist'sbills punctually, and yet to carry on the little household withthe very small margin. Each artifice of economy was now exercisedto enable this to be done without falling into debt, and everybranch of expenditure was cut down, clothes, books, the littlegarden which was my Father's pride, all felt the pressure of newpoverty. Even our food, which had always been simple, now becameSpartan indeed, and I am sure that my Mother often pretended tohave no appetite that there might remain enough to satisfy myhunger. Fortunately my Father was able to take us away in theautumn for six weeks by the sea in Wales, the expenses of thistour being paid for by a professional engagement, so that myseventh birthday was spent in an ecstasy of happiness, on goldensands, under a brilliant sky, and in sight of the glorious azureocean beating in from an infinitude of melting horizons. Here, too, my Mother, perched in a nook of the high rocks, surveyed thewest, and forgot for a little while her weakness and the gnawing, grinding pain. 

But in October, our sorrows seemed to close in upon us. We wentback to London, and for the first time in their married life, myparents were divided. My Mother was now so seriously weaker thatthe omnibus journeys to Pimlico became impossible. My Fathercould not leave his work and so my Mother and I had to take agloomy lodging close to the doctor's house. The experiences uponwhich I presently entered were of a nature in which childhoodrarely takes a part. I was now my Mother's sole and ceaselesscompanion; the silent witness of her suffering, of her patience, of her vain and delusive attempts to obtain alleviation of heranguish. For nearly three months I breathed the atmosphere ofpain, saw no other light, heard no other sounds, thought no otherthoughts than those which accompany physical suffering andweariness. To my memory these weeks seem years; I have no measureof their monotony. The lodgings were bare and yet tawdry; out ofdingy windows we looked from a second storey upon a dull smallstreet, drowned in autumnal fog. My Father came to see us when hecould, but otherwise, save when we made our morning expedition tothe doctor, or when a slatternly girl waited upon us with ourdistasteful meals, we were alone, without any other occupationthan to look forward to that occasional abatement of sufferingwhich was what we hoped for most. 

It is difficult for me to recollect how these interminable hourswere spent. But I read aloud in a great part of them. I have nowin my mind's cabinet a picture of my chair turned towards thewindow, partly that I might see the book more distinctly, partlynot to see quite so distinctly that dear patient figure rockingon her sofa, or leaning, like a funeral statue, like a muse upona monument, with her head on her arms against the mantelpiece. Iread the Bible every day, and at much length; also, --with Icannot but think some praiseworthy patience, --a book ofincommunicable dreariness, called Newton's 'Thoughts on theApocalypse'. Newton bore a great resemblance to my old aversion, Jukes, and I made a sort of playful compact with my Mother thatif I read aloud a certain number of pages out of 'Thoughts on theApocalypse', as a reward I should be allowed to recite 'my ownfavourite hymns'. Among these there was one which united hersuffrages with mine. Both of us extremely admired the piece byToplady which begins:

 What though my frail eyelids refuse Continual watchings to keep, And, punctual as midnight renews, Demand the refreshment of sleep. 

To this day, I cannot repeat this hymn without a sense ofpoignant emotion, nor can I pretend to decide how much of this isdue to its merit and how much to the peculiar nature of thememories it recalls. But it might be as rude as I genuinely thinkit to be skilful, and I should continue to regard it as a sacredpoem. Among all my childish memories none is clearer than mylooking up, --after reading, in my high treble, Kind Author and Ground of my hope, Thee, Thee for my God I avow; My glad Ebenezer set up, And own Thou hast help'd me till now; I muse on the years that are past, Wherein my defence Thou hast prov'd, Nor wilt Thou relinquish at last A sinner so signally lov'd, --

and hearing my Mother, her eyes brimming with tears and heralabastrine fingers tightly locked together, murmur inunconscious repetition:

 Nor wilt Thou relinquish at last A sinner so signally lov'd. 

In our lodgings at Pimlico I came across a piece of verse whichexercised a lasting influence on my taste. It was called 'TheCameronian's Dream', and it had been written by a certain JamesHyslop, a schoolmaster on a man-of-war. I do not know how it cameinto my possession, but I remember it was adorned by an extremelydim and ill-executed wood-cut of a lake surrounded by mountains, with tombstones in the foreground. This lugubrious frontispiecepositively fascinated me, and lent a further gloomy charm to theballad itself. It was in this copy of mediocre verses that thesense of romance first appealed to me, the kind of nature-romancewhich is connected with hills, and lakes, and the picturesquecostumes of old times. The following stanza, for instance, brought a revelation to me:

 'Twas a dream of those ages of darkness and blood, When the minister's home was the mountain and wood; When in Wellwood's dark valley the standard of Zion, All bloody and torn, 'mong the heather was lying. 

I persuaded my Mother to explain to me what it was all about, andshe told me of the affliction of the Scottish saints, theirflight to the waters and the wilderness, their cruel murder whilethey were singing 'their last song to the God of Salvation'. Iwas greatly fired, and the following stanza, in particular, reached my ideal of the Sublime:

 The muskets were flashing, the blue swords were gleaming, The helmets were cleft, and the red blood was streaming, The heavens grew dark, and the thunder was rolling, When in Wellwood's dark muirlands the mighty were falling. 

Twenty years later I met with the only other person whom I haveever encountered who had even heard of 'The Cameronian's Dream'. This was Robert Louis Stevenson, who had been greatly struck byit when he was about my age. Probably the same ephemeral editionof it reached, at the same time, each of our pious households. 

As my Mother's illness progressed, she could neither sleep, saveby the use of opiates, nor rest, except in a sloping posture, propped up by many pillows. It was my great joy, and a pleasantdiversion, to be allowed to shift, beat up, and rearrange thesepillows, a task which I learned to accomplish not too awkwardly. Her sufferings, I believe, were principally caused by theviolence of the medicaments to which her doctor, who was trying anew and fantastic 'cure', thought it proper to subject her. Letthose who take a pessimistic view of our social progress askthemselves whether such tortures could today be inflicted on adelicate patient, or whether that patient would be allowed toexist, in the greatest misery in a lodging with no professionalnurse to wait upon her, and with no companion but a littlehelpless boy of seven years of age. Time passes smoothly andswiftly, and we do not perceive the mitigations which he bringsin his hands. Everywhere, in the whole system of human life, improvements, alleviations, ingenious appliances and humaneinventions are being introduced to lessen the great burden ofsuffering. 

If we were suddenly transplanted into the world of only fiftyyears ago, we should be startled and even horror-stricken by thewretchedness to which the step backwards would reintroduce us. Itwas in the very year of which I am speaking, a year of which mypersonal memories are still vivid, that Sir James Simpsonreceived the Monthyon prize as a recognition of his discovery ofthe use of anaesthetics. Can our thoughts embrace the mitigationof human torment which the application of chloroform alone hascaused? My early experiences, I confess, made me singularlyconscious, at an age when one should know nothing about thesethings, of that torrent of sorrow and anguish and terror whichflows under all footsteps of man. Within my childish conscience, already, some dim inquiry was awake as to the meaning of thismystery of pain--

 The floods of the tears meet and gather; The sound of them all grows like thunder; Oh into what bosom, I wonder, Is poured the whole sorrow of years? For Eternity only seems keeping Account of the great human weeping; May God then, the Maker and Father, May He find a place for the tears!

In my Mother's case, the savage treatment did no good; it had tobe abandoned, and a day or two before Christmas, while the fruitswere piled in the shop-fronts and the butchers were shoutingoutside their forests of carcases, my Father brought us back in acab through the streets to Islington, a feeble and languishingcompany. Our invalid bore the journey fairly well, enjoying theair, and pointing out to me the glittering evidences of theseason, but we paid heavily for her little entertainment, since, at her earnest wish the window of the cab having been kept open, she caught a cold, which became, indeed, the technical cause of adeath that no applications could now have long delayed. 

Yet she lingered with us six weeks more, and during this time Iagain relapsed, very naturally, into solitude. She now had thecare of a practised woman, one of the 'saints' from the Chapel, and I was only permitted to pay brief visits to her bedside. ThatI might not be kept indoors all day and everyday, a man, alsoconnected with the meeting-house, was paid a trifle to take meout for a walk each morning. This person, who was by turnsfamiliar and truculent, was the object of my intense dislike. Ourrelations became, in the truest sense, 'forced'; I was obliged towalk by his side, but I held that I had no further responsibilityto be agreeable, and after a while I ceased to speak to him, orto answer his remarks. On one occasion, poor dreary man, he met afriend and stopped to chat with him. I considered this act tohave dissolved the bond; I skipped lightly from his side, examined several shop-windows which I had been forbidden to lookinto, made several darts down courts and up passages, andfinally, after a delightful morning, returned home, having knownmy directions perfectly. My official conductor, in a shockingcondition of fear, was crouching by the area-rails looking up anddown the street. He darted upon me, in a great rage, to know'what I meant by it?' I drew myself up as tall as I could, hissed'Blind leader of the blind!' at him, and, with this inappropriatebut very effective Parthian shot, slipped into the house. 

When it was quite certain that no alleviations and no medicalcare could prevent, or even any longer postpone the departure ofmy Mother, I believe that my future conduct became the object ofher greatest and her most painful solicitude. She said to myFather that the worst trial of her faith came from the feelingthat she was called upon to leave that child whom she had socarefully trained from his earliest infancy for the peculiarservice of the Lord, without any knowledge of what his furthercourse would be. In many conversations, she most tenderly andclosely urged my Father, who, however, needed no urging, to watchwith unceasing care over my spiritual welfare. As she grew nearerher end, it was observed that she became calmer, and lesstroubled by fears about me. The intensity of her prayers andhopes seemed to have a prevailing force; it would have been a sinto doubt that such supplications, such confidence and devotion, such an emphasis of will, should not be rewarded by an answerfrom above in the affirmative. She was able, she said, to leaveme 'in the hands of her loving Lord', or, on another occasion, 'to the care of her covenant God'. 

Although her faith was so strong and simple, my Mother possessedno quality of the mystic. She never pretended to any visionarygifts, believed not at all in dreams or portents, and encouragednothing in herself or others which was superstitious orfantastic. In order to realize her condition of mind, it isnecessary, I think, to accept the view that she had formed adefinite conception of the absolute, unmodified and historicalveracity, in its direct and obvious sense, of every statementcontained within the covers of the Bible. For her, and for myFather, nothing was symbolic, nothing allegorical or allusive inany part of Scripture, except what was, in so many words, proffered as a parable or a picture. Pushing this to its extremelimit, and allowing nothing for the changes of scene or time orrace, my parents read injunctions to the Corinthian convertswithout any suspicion that what was apposite in dealing withhalf-breed Achaian colonists of the first century might notexactly apply to respectable English men and women of thenineteenth. They took it, text by text, as if no sort ofdifference existed between the surroundings of Trimalchion'sfeast and those of a City dinner. Both my parents, I think, weredevoid of sympathetic imagination; in my Father, I am sure, itwas singularly absent. Hence, although their faith was sostrenuous that many persons might have called it fanatical, therewas no mysticism about them. They went rather to the oppositeextreme, to the cultivation of a rigid and iconoclasticliteralness. 

This was curiously exemplified in the very lively interest whichthey both took in what is called 'the interpretation ofprophecy', and particularly in unwrapping the dark sayings boundup in the Book of Revelation. In their impartial survey of theBible, they came to this collection of solemn and splendidvisions, sinister and obscure, and they had no intention ofallowing these to be merely stimulating to the fancy, or vaguelydoctrinal in symbol. When they read of seals broken and of vialspoured forth, of the star which was called Wormwood that fellfrom Heaven, and of men whose hair was as the hair of women andtheir teeth as the teeth of lions, they did not admit for amoment that these vivid mental pictures were of a poeticcharacter, but they regarded them as positive statements, inguarded language, describing events which were to happen, andcould be recognized when they did happen. It was the explanation, the perfectly prosaic and positive explanation, of all thesewonders which drew them to study the Habershons and the Newtonswhose books they so much enjoyed. They were helped by theseguides to recognize in wild Oriental visions direct statementsregarding Napoleon III and Pope Pius IX and the King of Piedmont, historic figures which they conceived as foreshadowed, inlanguage which admitted of plain interpretation, under the namesof denizens of Babylon and companions of the Wild Beast. 

My Father was in the habit of saying, in later years, that nosmall element in his wedded happiness had been the fact that myMother and he were of one mind in the interpretation of SacredProphecy. Looking back, it appears to me that this unusual mentalexercise was almost their only relaxation, and that in theireconomy it took the place which is taken, in profaner families, by cards or the piano. It was a distraction; it took themcompletely out of themselves. During those melancholy weeks atPimlico, I read aloud another work of the same nature as those ofHabershon and Jukes, the _Horae Apocalypticae_ of a Mr. Elliott. This was written, I think, in a less disagreeable style, andcertainly it was less opaquely obscure to me. My recollectiondistinctly is that when my Mother could endure nothing else, thearguments of this book took her thoughts away from her pain andlifted her spirits. Elliott saw 'the queenly arrogance of Popery'everywhere, and believed that the very last days of Babylon theGreat were came. Lest I say what may be thought extravagant, letme quote what my Father wrote in his diary at the time of myMother's death. He said that the thought that Rome was doomed (asseemed not impossible in 1857) so affected my Mother that it'irradiated' her dying hours with an assurance that was like 'thelight of the Morning Star, the harbinger of the rising sun'. 

After our return to Islington, there was a complete change in myrelation to my Mother. At Pimlico, I had been all-important, heronly companion, her friend, her confidant. But now that she wasat home again, people and things combined to separate me fromher. Now, and for the first time in my life, I no longer slept inher room, no longer sank to sleep under her kiss, no longer sawher mild eyes smile on me with the earliest sunshine. Twice aday, after breakfast and before I went to rest, I was brought toher bedside; but we were never alone; other people, sometimesstrange people, were there. We had no cosy talk; often she wastoo weak to do more than pat my hand; her loud and almostconstant cough terrified and harassed me. I felt, as I stood, awkwardly and shyly, by her high bed, that I had shrunken into avery small and insignificant figure, that she was floating out ofmy reach, that all things, but I knew not what nor how, werecorning to an end. She herself was not herself; her head, thatused to be held so erect, now rolled or sank upon the pillow; thesparkle was all extinguished from those bright, dear eyes. Icould not understand it; I meditated long, long upon it all in myinfantile darkness, in the garret, or in the little slip of acold room where my bed was now placed; and a great, blind angeragainst I knew not what awakened in my soul. 

The two retreats which I have mentioned were now all that wereleft to me. In the back-parlour someone from outside gave meoccasional lessons of a desultory character. The breakfast-roomwas often haunted by visitors, unknown to me by face or name, --ladies, who used to pity me and even to pet me, until I becamenimble in escaping from their caresses. Everything seemed to beunfixed, uncertain; it was like being on the platform of arailway-station waiting for a train. In all this time, theagitated, nervous presence of my Father, whose pale face waspermanently drawn with anxiety, added to my perturbation, and Ibecame miserable, stupid--as if I had lost my way in a cold fog. 

Had I been older and more intelligent, of course, it might havebeen of him and not of myself that I should have been thinking. As I now look back upon that tragic time, it is for him that myheart bleeds, --for them both, so singularly fitted as they wereto support and cheer one another in an existence which their owninnate and cultivated characteristics had made little hospitableto other sources of comfort. This is not to be dwelt on here. Butwhat must be recorded was the extraordinary tranquillity, theserene and sensible resignation, with which at length my parentsfaced the awful hour. Language cannot utter what they suffered, but there was no rebellion, no repining; in their case even anatheist might admit that the overpowering miracle of grace wasmightily efficient. 

It seems almost cruel to the memory of their opinions that theonly words which rise to my mind, the only ones which seem in theleast degree adequate to describe the attitude of my parents, hadfallen from the pen of one whom, in their want of imaginativesympathy, they had regarded as anathema. But John Henry Newmanmight have come from the contemplation of my Mother's death-bedwhen he wrote: 'All the trouble which the world inflicts upon us, and which flesh cannot but feel, --sorrow, pain, care, bereavement, --these avail not to disturb the tranquillity and theintensity with which faith gazes at the Divine Majesty. ' It was'tranquillity', it was not the rapture of the mystic. Almost inthe last hour of her life, urged to confess her 'joy' in theLord, my Mother, rigidly honest, meticulous in self-analysis, asever, replied: 'I have peace, but not _joy_. It would not do to gointo eternity with a lie in my mouth. '

When the very end approached, and her mind was growing clouded, she gathered her strength together to say to my Father, 'I shallwalk with Him in white. Won't you take your lamb and walk withme?' Confused with sorrow and alarm, my Father failed tounderstand her meaning. She became agitated, and she repeated twoor three times: 'Take our lamb, and walk with me!' Then my Fathercomprehended, and pressed me forward; her hand fell softly uponmine and she seemed content. Thus was my dedication, that hadbegun in my cradle, sealed with the most solemn, the mostpoignant and irresistible insistence, at the death-bed of theholiest and purest of women. But what a weight, intolerable asthe burden of Atlas, to lay on the shoulders of a little fragilechild!

CHAPTER IV

CERTAINLY the preceding year, the seventh of my life, had beenweighted for us with comprehensive disaster. I have not yetmentioned that, at the beginning of my Mother's fatal illness, misfortune came upon her brothers. I have never known theparticulars of their ruin, but, I believe in consequence of A. 'sunsuccessful speculations, and of the fact that E. Had allowedthe use of his name as a surety, both my uncles were obliged tofly from their creditors, and take refuge in Paris. This happenedjust when our need was the sorest, and this, together with thepoignancy of knowing that their sister's devoted labours for themhad been all in vain, added to their unhappiness. It wasdoubtless also the reason why, having left England, they wrote tous no more, carefully concealing from us even their address, sothat when my Mother died, my Father was unable to communicatewith them. I fear that they fell into dire distress; before verylong we learned that A. Had died, but it was fifteen years morebefore we heard anything of E. , whose life had at length beenpreserved by the kindness of an old servant, but whose mind wasnow so clouded that he could recollect little or nothing of thepast; and soon he also died. Amiable, gentle, without any speciesof practical ability, they were quite unfitted to struggle withthe world, which had touched them only to wreck them. 

The flight of my uncles at this particular juncture left mewithout a relative on my Mother's side at the time of her death. This isolation threw my Father into a sad perplexity. His onlyobvious source of income--but it happened to be a remarkablyhopeful one--was an engagement to deliver a long series oflectures on marine natural history throughout the north andcentre of England. These lectures were an entire novelty; nothinglike them had been offered to the provincial public before; andthe fact that the newly-invented marine aquarium was thefashionable toy of the moment added to their attraction. MyFather was bowed down by sorrow and care, but he was not broken. His intellectual forces were at their height, and so was hispopularity as an author. The lectures were to begin in march; myMother was buried on 13 February. It seemed at first, in theinertia of bereavement, to be all beyond his powers to make thesupreme effort, but the wholesome prick of need urged him on. Itwas a question of paying for food and clothes, of keeping a roofabove our heads. The captain of a vessel in a storm must navigatehis ship, although his wife lies dead in the cabin. That was myFather's position in the spring of 1857; he had to stimulate, instruct, amuse large audiences of strangers, and seem gay, although affliction and loneliness had settled in his heart. Hehad to do this, or starve. 

But the difficulty still remained. During these months what wasto become of me? My Father could not take me with him from hotelto hotel and from lecture-hall to lecture-hall. Nor could heleave me, as people leave the domestic cat, in an empty house forthe neighbours to feed at intervals. The dilemma threatened to beinsurmountable, when suddenly there descended upon us a kind, butlittle-known, paternal cousin from the west of England, who hadheard of our calamities. This lady had a large family of her ownat Bristol; she offered to find room in it for me so long as evermy Father should be away in the north; and when my Father, bewildered by so much goodness, hesitated, she came up to Londonand carried me forcibly away in a whirlwind of good-nature. Herbenevolence was quite spontaneous; and I am not sure that she hadnot added to it already by helping to nurse our beloved suffererthrough part of her illness. Of that I am not positive, but Irecollect very clearly her snatching me from our cold anddesolate hearthstone, and carrying me off to her cheerful houseat Clifton. 

Here, for the first time, when half through my eighth year, I wasthrown into the society of young people. My cousins were none ofthem, I believe, any longer children, but they were youths andmaidens busily engaged in various personal interests, allcollected in a hive of wholesome family energy. Everybody wasvery kind to me, and I sank back, after the strain of so manymonths, into mere childhood again. This long visit to my cousinsat Clifton must have been very delightful; I am dimly aware thatit was--yet I remember but few of its incidents. My memory, soclear and vivid about earlier solitary times, now in all thissociety becomes blurred and vague. I recollect certain pleasures;being taken, for instance, to a menagerie, and having a practicaljoke, in the worst taste, played upon me by the pelican. One ofmy cousins, who was a medical student, showed me a pistol, andhelped me to fire it; he smoked a pipe, and I was oddly consciousthat both the firearm and the tobacco were definitely hostile tomy 'dedication'. My girl-cousins took turns in putting me to bed, and on cold nights, or when they were in a hurry, allowed me tosay my prayer under the bed-clothes instead of kneeling at achair. The result of this was further spiritual laxity, because Icould not help going to sleep before the prayer was ended. 

The visit to Clifton was, in fact, a blessed interval in mystrenuous childhood. It probably prevented my nerves frombreaking down under the pressure of the previous months. TheClifton family was God-fearing, in a quiet, sensible way, butthere was a total absence of all the intensity and compulsion ofour religious life at Islington. I was not encouraged--I evenremember that I was gently snubbed--when I rattled forth, parrot-fashion, the conventional phraseology of 'the saints'. For ashort, enchanting period of respite, I lived the life of anordinary little boy, relapsing, to a degree which would havefilled my Father with despair, into childish thoughts andchildish language. The result was that of this little happybreathing-space I have nothing to report. Vague, half-blindremembrances of walks, with my tall cousins waving like treesabove me, pleasant noisy evenings in a great room on the ground-floor, faint silver-points of excursions into the country, allthis is the very pale and shadowy testimony to a brief intervalof healthy, happy child-life, when my hard-driven soul wasallowed to have, for a little while, no history. 

The life of a child is so brief, its impressions are so illusoryand fugitive, that it is as difficult to record its history as itwould be to design a morning cloud sailing before the wind. It isshort, as we count shortness in after years, when the drag oflead pulls down to earth the foot that used to flutter with awinged impetuosity, and to float with the pulse of Hermes. But inmemory, my childhood was long, long with interminable hours, hours with the pale cheek pressed against the windowpane, hoursof mechanical and repeated lonely 'games', which had lost theirsavour, and were kept going by sheer inertness. Not unhappy, notfretful, but long, --long, long. It seems to me, as I look back tothe life in the motherless Islington house, as I resumed it inthat slow eighth year of my life, that time had ceased to move. There was a whole age between one tick of the eight-day clock inthe hall, and the next tick. When the milkman went his rounds inour grey street, with his eldritch scream over the top of eachset of area railings, it seemed as though he would neverdisappear again. There was no past and no future for me, and thepresent felt as though it were sealed up in a Leyden jar. Even mydreams were interminable, and hung stationary from the nightlysky. 

At this time, the street was my theatre, and I spent longperiods, as I have said, leaning against the window. I feel nowthat coldness of the pane, and the feverish heat that wasproduced, by contrast, in the orbit round the eye. Now and thenamusing things happened. The onion-man was a joy long waited for. This worthy was a tall and bony Jersey Protestant with a raucousvoice, who strode up our street several times a week, carrying ayoke across his shoulders, from the ends of which hung ropes ofonions. He used to shout, at abrupt intervals, in a tone whichmight wake the dead:

 Here's your rope . . . . To hang the Pope . . . . And a penn'orth of cheese to choke him. 

The cheese appeared to be legendary; he sold only onions. MyFather did not eat onions, but he encouraged this terriblefellow, with his wild eyes and long strips of hair, because ofhis godly attitude towards the 'Papacy', and I used to watch himdart out of the front door, present his penny, and retire, graciously waving back the proffered onion. On the other hand, myFather did not approve of a fat sailor, who was a constantpasser-by. This man, who was probably crazed, used to wall veryslowly up the centre of our street, vociferating with the voiceof a bull, Wa-a-atch and pray-hay! Night and day-hay!

This melancholy admonition was the entire business of his life. He did nothing at all but walk up and down the streets ofIslington exhorting the inhabitants to watch and pray. I do notrecollect that this sailor-man stopped to collect pennies, and myimpression is that he was, after his fashion, a volunteerevangelist. 

The tragedy of Mr. Punch was another, and a still greaterdelight. I was never allowed to go out into the street to minglewith the little crowd which gathered under the stage, and as Iwas extremely near-sighted, the impression I received was vague. But when, by happy chance, the show stopped opposite our door, Isaw enough of that ancient drama to be thrilled with terror anddelight. I was much affected by the internal troubles of thePunch family; I thought that with a little more tact on the partof Mrs. Punch and some restraint held over a temper, naturallyviolent, by Mr. Punch, a great deal of this sad misunderstandingmight have been prevented. 

The momentous close, when a figure of shapeless horror appears onthe stage, and quells the hitherto undaunted Mr. Punch, was to methe bouquet of the entire performance. When Mr. Punch, losing hisnerve, points to this shape and says in an awestruck, squeakingwhisper, 'Who's that? Is it the butcher?' and the stern answercomes, 'No, Mr. Punch!' And then, 'Is it the baker?' 'No, Mr. Punch!' 'Who is it then?' (this in a squeak trembling with emotionand terror); and then the full, loud reply, booming like ajudgement-bell, 'It is the Devil come to take you down to Hell, 'and the form of Punch, with kicking legs, sunken in epilepsy onthe floor, --all this was solemn and exquisite to me beyondwords. I was not amused--I was deeply moved and exhilarated, 'purged', as the old phrase hath it, 'with pity and terror'. 

Another joy, in a lighter key, was watching a fantastic old manwho came slowly up the street, hung about with drums and flutesand kites and coloured balls, and bearing over his shoulders agreat sack. Children and servant-girls used to bolt up out ofareas, and chaffer with this gaudy person, who would presentlytrudge on, always repeating the same set of words--

 Here's your toys For girls and boys, For bits of brass And broken glass, (these four lines being spoken in a breathless hurry) A penny or a vial-bottell . . . . (this being drawled out in an endless wail). 

I was not permitted to go forth and trade with this old person, but sometimes our servant-maid did, thereby making me feel thatif I did not hold the rose of merchandise, I was very near it. Myexperiences with my cousins at Clifton had given me the habit oflooking out into the world--even though it was only into thepale world of our quiet street. 

My Father and I were now great friends. I do not doubt that hefelt his responsibility to fill as far as might be the gap whichthe death of my Mother had made in my existence. I spent a largeportion of my time in his study while he was writing or drawing, and though very little conversation passed between us, I thinkthat each enjoyed the companionship of the other. There were two, and sometimes three aquaria in the room, tanks of sea-water, withglass sides, inside which all sorts of creatures crawled andswam; these were sources of endless pleasure to me, and at thistime began to be laid upon me the occasional task of watching andafterwards reporting the habits of animals. 

At other times, I dragged a folio volume of the _Penny Cyclopaedia_up to the study with me, and sat there reading successivearticles on such subjects as Parrots, Parthians, Passion-flowers, Passover and Pastry, without any invidious preferences, allinformation being equally welcome, and equally fugitive. Thatsomething of all this loose stream of knowledge clung to oddcells of the back of my brain seems to be shown by the fact thatto this day, I occasionally find myself aware of some strayuseless fact about peonies or pemmican or pepper, which I canonly trace back to the _Penny Cyclopaedia_ of my infancy. 

It will be asked what the attitude of my Father's mind was to me, and of mine to his, as regards religion, at this time, when wewere thrown together alone so much. It is difficult to reply withexactitude. But so far as the former is concerned, I thinly thatthe extreme violence of the spiritual emotions to which my Fatherhad been subjected, had now been followed by a certain reaction. He had not changed his views in any respect, and he was preparedto work out the results of them with greater zeal than ever, butjust at present his religious nature, like his physical nature, was tired out with anxiety and sorrow. He accepted thesupposition that I was entirely with him in all respects, so far, that is to say, as a being so rudimentary and feeble as a littlechild could be. My Mother, in her last hours, had dwelt on ourunity in God; we were drawn together, she said, elect from theworld, in a triplicity of faith and joy. She had constantlyrepeated the words: 'We shall be one family, one song. One song!one family!' My Father, I think, accepted this as a prophecy, hefelt no doubt of our triple unity; my Mother had now merelypassed before us, through a door, into a world of light, where weshould presently join her, where all things would be radiant andblissful, but where we three would, in some unknown way, beparticularly drawn together in a tie of inexpressible beatitude. He fretted at the delay; he would have taken me by the hand, andhave joined her in the realms of holiness and light, at once, without this dreary dalliance with earthly cares. 

He held this confidence and vision steadily before him, butnothing availed against the melancholy of his natural state. Hewas conscious of his dull and solitary condition, and he saw, too, that it enveloped me. I think his heart was, at this time, drawn out towards me in an immense tenderness. Sometimes, whenthe early twilight descended upon us in the study, and he couldno longer peer with advantage into the depths of his microscope, he would beckon me to him silently, and fold me closely in hisarms. I used to turn my face up to his, patiently andwonderingly, while the large, unwilling tears gathered in thecorners of his eyelids. My training had given me a preternaturalfaculty of stillness, and we would stay so, without a word or amovement, until the darkness filled the room. And then, with mylittle hand in his, we would walk sedately downstairs to theparlour, where we would find that the lamp was lighted, and thatour melancholy vigil was ended. I do not think that at any partof our lives my Father and I were drawn so close to one anotheras we were in that summer of 1857. Yet we seldom spoke of whatlay so warm and fragrant between us, the flower-like thought ofour Departed. 

The visit to my cousins had made one considerable change in me. Under the old solitary discipline, my intelligence had grown atthe expense of my sentiment. I was innocent, but inhuman. Thelong suffering and the death of my Mother had awakened my heart, had taught me what pain was, but had left me savage and morose. Ihad still no idea of the relations of human beings to oneanother; I had learned no word of that philosophy which comes tothe children of the poor in the struggle of the street and to thechildren of the well-to-do in the clash of the nursery. In otherwords, I had no humanity; I had been carefully shielded from thechance of 'catching' it, as though it were the most dangerous ofmicrobes. But now that I had enjoyed a little of the commonexperience of childhood, a great change had come upon me. BeforeI went to Clifton, my mental life was all interior, a rack ofbaseless dream upon dream. But, now, I was eager to look out ofthe window, to go out in the streets; I was taken with acuriosity about human life. Even from my vantage of the window-pane, I watched boys and girls go by with an interest which beganto be almost wistful. 

Still I continued to have no young companions. But on summerevenings I used to drag my Father out, taking the initiativemyself, stamping in playful impatience at his irresolution, fetching his hat and stick, and waiting. We used to sally forthat last together, hand in hand, descending the Caledonian Road, with all its shops, as far as Mother Shipton, or else windingamong the semi-genteel squares and terraces westward byCopenhagen Street, or, best of all, mounting to the Regent'sCanal, where we paused to lean over the bridge and watchflotillas of ducks steer under us, or little white dogs dash, impotently furious, from stem to stern of the great, lazy bargespainted in a crude vehemence of vermilion and azure. These werehappy hours, when the spectre of Religion ceased to overshadow usfor a little while, when my Father forgot the Apocalypse anddropped his austere phraseology, and when our bass and treblevoices used to ring out together over some foolish little jest orsome mirthful recollection of his past experiences. Little softoases these, in the hard desert of our sandy spiritual life athome. 

There was an unbending, too, when we used to sing together, in mycase very tunelessly. I had inherited a plentiful lack of musicalgenius from my Mother, who had neither ear nor voice, and who hadsaid, in the course of her last illness, 'I shall sing Hispraise, _at length_, in strains I never could master here below'. My Father, on the other hand, had some knowledge of theprinciples of vocal music, although not, I am afraid, much taste. He had at least great fondness for singing hymns, in the mannerthen popular with the Evangelicals, very loudly, and so slowlythat I used to count how many words I could read silently, between one syllable of the singing and another. My lack of skilldid not prevent me from being zealous at these vocal exercises, and my Father and I used to sing lustily together. The Wesleys, Charlotte Elliott ('Just as I am, without one plea'), and JamesMontgomery ('Forever with the Lord') represented his predilectionin hymnology. I acquiesced, although that would not have been myindependent choice. These represented the devotional verse whichmade its direct appeal to the evangelical mind, and served inthose 'Puseyite' days to counteract the High Church poetryfounded on 'The Christian Year'. Of that famous volume I never metwith a copy until I was grown up, and equally unknown in ourcircle were the hymns of Newman, Faber and Neale. 

It was my Father's plan from the first to keep me entirelyignorant of the poetry of the High Church, which deeply offendedhis Calvinism; he thought that religious truth could be suckedin, like mother's milk, from hymns which were godly and sound, and yet correctly versified; and I was therefore carefullytrained in this direction from an early date. But my spirit hadrebelled against some of these hymns, especially against thosewritten--a mighty multitude--by Horatius Bonar; naughtilyrefusing to read Bonar's 'I heard the voice of Jesus say' to myMother in our Pimlico lodgings. A secret hostility to thisparticular form of effusion was already, at the age of seven, beginning to define itself in my brain, side by side with anunctuous infantile conformity. 

I find a difficulty in recalling the precise nature of thereligious instruction which my Father gave me at this time. Itwas incessant, and it was founded on the close inspection of theBible, particularly of the epistles of the New Testament. Thissummer, as my eighth year advanced, we read the 'Epistle to theHebrews', with very great deliberation, stopping every moment, that my Father might expound it, verse by verse. Theextraordinary beauty of the language--for instance, the matchlesscadences and images of the first chapter--made a certainimpression upon my imagination, and were (I think) my earliestinitiation into the magic of literature. I was incapable ofdefining what I felt, but I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a purely aesthetic emotion, when myFather read, in his pure, large, ringing voice, such passages as'The heavens are the works of Thy hands. They shall perish, butThou remainest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, andas a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed;but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail. ' But thedialectic parts of the Epistle puzzled and confused me. Suchmetaphysical ideas as 'laying again the foundation of repentancefrom dead works' and 'crucifying the Son of God afresh' were notsuccessfully brought down to the level of my understanding. 

My Father's religious teaching to me was almost exclusivelydoctrinal. He did not observe the value of negative education, that is to say, of leaving Nature alone to fill up the gaps whichit is her design to deal with at a later and riper date. He didnot, even, satisfy himself with those moral injunctions whichshould form the basis of infantile discipline. He was in atremendous hurry to push on my spiritual growth, and he fed mewith theological meat which it was impossible for me to digest. Some glimmer of a suspicion that he was sailing on the wrong tackmust, I should suppose, have broken in upon him when we hadreached the eighth and ninth chapters of Hebrews, where, addressing readers who had been brought up under the Jewishdispensation, and had the formalities of the Law of Moses intheir very blood, the apostle battles with their dangerousconservatism. It is a very noble piece of spiritual casuistry, but it is signally unfitted for the comprehension of a child. Suddenly by my flushing up with anger and saying, 'Oh how I dohate that Law, ' my Father perceived, and paused in amazement toperceive, that I took the Law to be a person of malignant temperfrom whose cruel bondage, and from whose intolerable tyranny andunfairness, some excellent person was crying out to be delivered. I wished to hit Law with my fist, for being so mean andunreasonable. 

Upon this, of course, it was necessary to reopen the whole lineof exposition. My Father, without realizing it, had been talkingon his own level, not on mine, and now he condescended to me. Butwithout very great success. The melodious language, the divineforensic audacities, the magnificent ebb and flow of argumentwhich make the 'Epistle to the Hebrews' such a miracle, were farand away beyond my reach, and they only bewildered me. Someevangelical children of my generation, I understand, were broughtup on a work called 'Line upon Line: Here a Little, and there aLittle'. My Father's ambition would not submit to anythingsuggested by such a title as that, and he committed, from his ownpoint of view, a fatal mistake when he sought to build spires andbattlements without having been at the pains to settle afoundation beneath them. 

We were not always reading the 'Epistle to the Hebrews', however;not always was my flesh being made to creep by having it insistedupon that 'almost all things are by the Law purged with blood, and without blood is no remission of sin'. In our lighter moods, we turned to the 'Book of Revelation', and chased the phantom ofPopery through its fuliginous pages. My Father, I think, missedmy Mother's company almost more acutely in his researches intoprophecy than in anything else. This had been their unceasingrecreation, and no third person could possibly follow the curiouspath which they had hewn for themselves through this jungle ofsymbols. But, more and more, my Father persuaded himself that I, too, was initiated, and by degrees I was made to share in allhis speculations and interpretations. 

Hand in hand we investigated the number of the Beast, whichnumber is six hundred three score and six. Hand in hand weinspected the nations, to see whether they had the mark ofBabylon in their foreheads. Hand in hand we watched the spiritsof devils gathering the kings of the earth into the place whichis called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. Our unity in theseexcursions was so delightful, that my Father was lulled in anysuspicion he might have formed that I did not quite understandwhat it was all about. Nor could he have desired a pupil moredocile or more ardent than I was in my flaming denunciations ofthe Papacy. 

If there was one institution more than another which, at thisearly stage of my history, I loathed and feared, it was what weinvariably spoke of as 'the so-called Church of Rome'. In lateryears, I have met with stout Protestants, gallant 'Down-with-the-Pope' men from County Antrim, and ladies who see the hand of theJesuits in every public and private misfortune. It is the habitof a loose and indifferent age to consider this dwindling body ofenthusiasts with suspicion, and to regard their attitude towardsRome as illiberal. But my own feeling is that they are all toomild, that their denunciations err on the side of the anodyne. Ihave no longer the slightest wish myself to denounce the Romancommunion, but, if it is to be done, I have an idea that thelatter-day Protestants do not know how to do it. In LordChesterfield's phrase, these anti-Pope men 'don't understandtheir own silly business'. They make concessions and allowances, they put on gloves to touch the accursed thing. 

Not thus did we approach the Scarlet Woman in the 'fifties. Wepalliated nothing, we believed in no good intentions, we used (Imyself used, in my tender innocency) language of the seventeenthcentury such as is now no longer introduced into any species ofcontroversy. As a little boy, when I thought, with intensevagueness, of the Pope, I used to shut my eyes tight and clenchmy fists. We welcomed any social disorder in any part of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy. If there was a custom-house officer stabbed in a fracas at Sassari, we gave loud thanksthat liberty and light were breaking in upon Sardinia. If therewas an unsuccessful attempt to murder the Grand Duke, we liftedup our voices to celebrate the faith and sufferings of the dearpersecuted Tuscans, and the record of some apocryphal monstrosityin Naples would only reveal to us a glorious opening for Gospelenergy. My Father celebrated the announcement in the newspapersof a considerable emigration from the Papal Dominions byrejoicing at 'this outcrowding of many, throughout the harlot'sdomain, from her sins and her plagues'. 

No, the Protestant League may consider itself to be an earnestand active body, but I can never look upon its efforts asanything but lukewarm, standing, as I do, with the light of otherdays around me. As a child, whatever I might question, I neverdoubted the turpitude of Rome. I do not think I had formed anyidea whatever of the character or pretensions or practices of theCatholic Church, or indeed of what it consisted, or its nature;but I regarded it with a vague terror as a wild beast, the onlygood point about it being that it was very old and was soon todie. When I turned to Jukes or Newton for further detail, I couldnot understand what they said. Perhaps, on the whole, there wasno disadvantage in that. 

It is possible that someone may have observed to my Father thatthe conditions of our life were unfavourable to our health, although I hardly think that he would have encouraged any suchadvice. As I look back upon this far-away time, I am surprised atthe absence in it of any figures but our own. He and I together, now in the study among the sea-anemones and starfishes; now onthe canal-bridge, looking down at the ducks; now at our hardlittle meals, served up as those of a dreamy widower are likelyto be when one maid-of-all-work provides them, now under the lampat the maps we both loved so much, this is what I see--no thirdpresence is ever with us. Whether it occurred to himself thatsuch a solitude _a deux_ was excellent, in the long run, forneither of us, or whether any chance visitor or one of the'Saints', who used to see me at the Room every Sunday morning, suggested that a female influence might put a little rose-colourinto my pasty cheeks, I know not. All I am sure of is that oneday, towards the close of the summer, as I was gazing into thestreet, I saw a four-wheeled cab stop outside our door, anddeposit, with several packages, a strange lady, who was shown upinto my Father's study and was presently brought down andintroduced to me. 

Miss Marks, as I shall take the liberty of calling this person, was so long a part of my life that I must pause to describe her. She was tall, rather gaunt, with high cheek-bones; her teeth wereprominent and very white; her eyes were china-blue, and werealways absolutely fixed, wide open, on the person she spoke to;her nose was inclined to be red at the tip. She had a kind, hearty, sharp mode of talking, but did not exercise it much, being on the whole taciturn. She was bustling and nervous, notparticularly refined, not quite, I imagine, what is called 'alady'. I supposed her, if I thought of the matter at all, to bevery old, but perhaps she may have been, when we knew her first, some forty-five summers. Miss Marks was an orphan, depending uponher work for her living; she would not, in these days ofexaminations, have come up to the necessary educationalstandards, but she had enjoyed experience in teaching, and wasprepared to be a conscientious and careful governess, up to herlights. I was now informed by my Father that it was in thiscapacity that she would in future take her place in ourhousehold. I was not informed, what I gradually learned byobservation, that she would also act in it as housekeeper. 

Miss Marks was a somewhat grotesque personage, and might easilybe painted as a kind of eccentric Dickens character, a mixture ofMrs. Pipchin and Miss Sally Brass. I will confess that when, inyears to come, I read 'Dombey and Son', certain features of Mrs. Pipchin did irresistibly remind me of my excellent pastgoverness. I can imagine Miss Marks saying, but with a facetiousintent, that children who sniffed would not go to heaven. But Iwas instantly ashamed of the parallel, because my gaunt oldfriend was a thoroughly good and honest woman, not intelligentand not graceful, but desirous in every way to do her duty. Herduty to me she certainly did, and I am afraid I hardly rewardedher with the devotion she deserved. From the first, I wasindifferent to her wishes, and, as much as was convenient, Iignored her existence. She held no power over my attention, andif I accepted her guidance along the path of instruction, it wasbecause, odd as it may sound, I really loved knowledge. Iaccepted her company without objection, and though there wereoccasional outbreaks of tantrums on both sides, we got on verywell together for several years. I did not, however, at any timesurrender my inward will to the wishes of Miss Marks. 

In the circle of our life the religious element took sopreponderating a place, that it is impossible to avoidmentioning, what might otherwise seem unimportant, thetheological views of Miss Marks. How my Father had discoveredher, or from what field of educational enterprise he plucked herin her prime, I never knew, but she used to mention that myFather's ministrations had 'opened her eyes', from which 'scales'had fallen. She had accepted, on their presentation to her, theentire gamut of his principles. Miss Marks was accustomed, whileputting me to bed, to dwell darkly on the incidents of her past, which had, I fear, been an afflicted one. I believe I do herrather limited intelligence no injury when I say that it wasprepared to swallow, at one mouthful, whatever my Fatherpresented to it, so delighted was its way-worn possessor to findherself in a comfortable, or, at least, an independent position. She soon bowed, if there was indeed any resistance from thefirst, very contentedly in the House of Rimmon, learning torepeat, with marked fluency, the customary formulas andshibboleths. On my own religious development she had no greatinfluence. Any such guttering theological rushlight as Miss Marksmight dutifully exhibit faded for me in the blaze of my Father'sglaring beacon-lamp of faith. 

Hardly was Miss Marks settled in the family, than my Father leftus on an expedition about which my curiosity was exercised, butnot until later, satisfied. He had gone, as we afterwards found, to South Devon, to a point on the coast which he had known ofold. Here he had hired a horse, and had ridden about until he sawa spot he liked, where a villa was being built on speculation. Nothing equals the courage of these recluse men; my Father gotoff his horse, and tied it to the gate, and then he went in andbought the house on a ninety-nine years' lease. I need hardly saythat he had made the matter a subject of the most earnest prayer, and had entreated the Lord for guidance. When he felt attractedto this particular villa, he did not doubt that he was directedto it in answer to his supplication, and he wasted no time infurther balancing or inquiring. On my eighth birthday, with bagand baggage complete, we all made the toilful journey down intoDevonshire, and I was a town-child no longer. 

CHAPTER V

A NEW element now entered into my life, a fresh rival arose tocompete for me with my Father's dogmatic theology. This rival wasthe Sea. When Wordsworth was a little child, the presence of themountains and the clouds lighted up his spirit with gleams thatwere like the flashing of a shield. He has described, in themarvellous pages of the 'Prelude', the impact of nature upon theinfant soul, but he has described it vaguely and faintly, withsome 'infirmity of love for days disowned by memory', --I thinkbecause he was brought up in the midst of spectacular beauty, andcould name no moment, mark no 'here' or 'now', when the wonderbroke upon him. It was at the age of twice five summers, hethought, that he began to hold unconscious intercourse withnature, 'drinking in a pure organic pleasure' from the floatingmists and winding waters. Perhaps, in his anxiety to be truthful, and in the absence of any record, he put the date of thisconscious rapture too late rather than too early. Certainly myown impregnation with the obscurely-defined but keenly-feltloveliness of the open sea dates from the first week of my ninthyear. 

The village, on the outskirts of which we had taken up our abode, was built parallel to the cliff line above the shore, but half amile inland. For a long time after the date I have now reached, no other form of natural scenery than the sea had any effect uponme at all. The tors of the distant moor might be drawn in deepblue against the pallor of our morning or our evening sky, but Inever looked at them. It was the Sea, always the sea, nothing butthe sea. From our house, or from the field at the back of ourhouse, or from any part of the village itself, there was noappearance to suggest that there could lie anything in aneasterly direction to break the infinitude of red ploughedfields. But on that earliest morning, how my heart remembers wehastened, --Miss Marks, the maid, and I between them, along acouple of high-walled lanes, when suddenly, far below us, in animmense arc of light, there stretched the enormous plain ofwaters. We had but to cross a step or two of downs, when thehollow sides of the great limestone cove yawned at our feet, descending, like a broken cup, down, down to the moon of snow-white shingle and the expanse of blue-green sea. 

In these twentieth-century days, a careful municipality hasstudded the down with rustic seats and has shut its dangers outwith railings, has cut a winding carriage-drive round the curvesof the cove down to the shore, and has planted sausage-laurels atintervals in clearings made for that aesthetic purpose. When lastI saw the place, thus smartened and secured, with its hair incurl-papers and its feet in patent-leathers, I turned from it inanger and disgust, and could almost have wept. I suppose that tothose who knew it in no other guise, it may still have beauty. Noparish councils, beneficent and shrewd, can obscure the lustre ofthe waters or compress the vastness of the sky. But what mancould do to make wild beauty ineffectual, tame and empty, hasamply been performed at Oddicombe. 

Very different was it fifty years ago, in its uncouth majesty. Noroad, save the merest goat-path, led down its concave wilderness, in which loose furze-bushes and untrimmed brambles wantoned intothe likeness of trees, each draped in audacious tissue of wildclematis. Through this fantastic maze the traveller wound hisway, led by little other clue than by the instinct of descent. For me, as a child, it meant the labour of a long, an endlessmorning, to descend to the snow-white pebbles, to sport at theedge of the cold, sharp sea, and then to climb up home again, slipping in the sticky red mud, clutching at the smooth boughs ofthe wild ash, toiling, toiling upwards into flat land out of thathollow world of rocks. 

On the first occasion I recollect, our Cockney housemaid, enthusiastic young creature that she was, flung herself down uponher knees, and drank of the salt waters. Miss Marks, moreinstructed in phenomena, refrained, but I, although I wasperfectly aware what the taste would be, insisted on sipping afew drops from the palm of my hand. This was a slight recurrenceof what I have called my 'natural magic' practices, which hadpassed into the background of my mind, but had not quitedisappeared. I recollect that I thought I might secure some powerof walking on the sea, if I drank of it--a perfectly irrationalmovement of mind, like those of savages. 

My great desire was to walk out over the sea as far as I could, and then lie flat on it, face downwards, and peer into thedepths. I was tormented with this ambition, and, like many grown-up people, was so fully occupied by these vain and ridiculousdesires that I neglected the actual natural pleasures around me. The idea was not quite so demented as it may seem, because wewere in the habit of singing, as well as reading, of thoseenraptured beings who spend their days in 'flinging down theirgolden crowns upon the jasper sea'. Why, I argued, should I notbe able to fling down my straw hat upon the tides of Oddicombe?And, without question, a majestic scene upon the Lake ofGennesaret had also inflamed my fancy. Of all these things, ofcourse, I was careful to speak to no one. 

It was not with Miss Marks, however, but with my Father, that Ibecame accustomed to make the laborious and exquisite journeysdown to the sea and back again. His work as a naturalisteventually took him, laden with implements, to the rock-pools onthe shore, and I was in attendance as an acolyte. But ourearliest winter in South Devon was darkened for us both bydisappointments, the cause of which lay, at the time, far out ofmy reach. In the spirit of my Father were then running, withfurious velocity, two hostile streams of influence. I wasstanding, just now, thinking of these things, where the Cascineends in the wooded point which is carved out sharply by the lion-coloured swirl of the Arno on the one side and by the pure flowof the Mugnone on the other. The rivers meet, and run parallel, but there comes a moment when the one or the other must conquer, and it is the yellow vehemence that drowns the purer tide. 

So, through my Father's brain, in that year of scientific crisis, 1857, there rushed two kinds of thought, each absorbing, eachconvincing, yet totally irreconcilable. There is a peculiar agonyin the paradox that truth has two forms, each of themindisputable, yet each antagonistic to the other. It was thisdiscovery, that there were two theories of physical life, each ofwhich was true, but the truth of each incompatible with the truthof the other, which shook the spirit of my Father withperturbation. It was not, really, a paradox, it was a fallacy, ifhe could only have known it, but he allowed the turbid volume ofsuperstition to drown the delicate stream of reason. He took onestep in the service of truth, and then he drew back in an agony, and accepted the servitude of error. 

This was the great moment in the history of thought when thetheory of the mutability of species was preparing to throw aflood of light upon all departments of human speculation andaction. It was becoming necessary to stand emphatically in onearmy or the other. Lyell was surrounding himself with disciples, who were making strides in the direction of discovery. Darwin hadlong been collecting facts with regard to the variation ofanimals and plants. Hooker and Wallace, Asa Gray and evenAgassiz, each in his own sphere, were coming closer and closer toa perception of that secret which was first to reveal itselfclearly to the patient and humble genius of Darwin. In the yearbefore, in 1856, Darwin, under pressure from Lyell, had begunthat modest statement of the new revelation, that 'abstract of anessay', which developed so mightily into 'The Origin of Species'. Wollaston's 'Variation of Species' had just appeared, and hadbeen a nine days' wonder in the wilderness. 

On the other side, the reactionaries, although never dreaming ofthe fate which hung over them, had not been idle. In 1857 theastounding question had for the first time been propounded withcontumely, 'What, then, did we come from an orang-outang?' Thefamous 'Vestiges of Creation' had been supplying a sugar-and-water panacea for those who could not escape from the trend ofevidence, and who yet clung to revelation. Owen was encouragingreaction by resisting, with all the strength of his prestige, thetheory of the mutability of species. 

In this period of intellectual ferment, as when a great politicalrevolution is being planned, many possible adherents wereconfidentially tested with hints and encouraged to reveal theirbias in a whisper. It was the notion of Lyell, himself a greatmover of men, that, before the doctrine of natural selection wasgiven to a world which would be sure to lift up at it a howl ofexecration, a certain bodyguard of sound and experiencednaturalists, expert in the description of species, should beprivately made aware of its tenor. Among those who were thusinitiated, or approached with a view towards possibleillumination, was my Father. He was spoken to by Hooker, andlater on by Darwin, after meetings of the Royal Society in thesummer of 1857. 

My Father's attitude towards the theory of natural selection wascritical in his career, and oddly enough, it exercised an immenseinfluence on my own experience as a child. Let it be admitted atonce, mournful as the admission is, that every instinct in hisintelligence went out at first to greet the new light. It hadhardly done so, when a recollection of the opening chapter of'Genesis' checked it at the outset. He consulted with Carpenter, agreat investigator, but one who was fully as incapable as himselfof remodelling his ideas with regard to the old, acceptedhypotheses. They both determined, on various grounds, to havenothing to do with the terrible theory, but to hold steadily tothe law of the fixity of species. It was exactly at this juncturethat we left London, and the slight and occasional but alwaysextremely salutary personal intercourse with men of scientificleading which my Father had enjoyed at the British Museum and atthe Royal Society came to an end. His next act was to burn hisships down to the last beam and log out of which a raft couldhave been made. By a strange act of wilfulness, he closed thedoors upon himself forever. 

My Father had never admired Sir Charles Lyell. I think that thefamous 'Lord Chancellor manner' of the geologist intimidated him, and we undervalue the intelligence of those whose conversationputs us at a disadvantage. For Darwin and Hooker, on the otherhand, he had a profound esteem, and I know not whether this hadanything to do with the fact that he chose, for his impetuousexperiment in reaction, the field of geology, rather than that ofzoology or botany. Lyell had been threatening to publish a bookon the geological history of Man, which was to be a bombshellflung into the camp of the catastrophists. My Father, after longreflection, prepared a theory of his own, which, as he fondlyhoped, would take the wind out of Lyell's sails, and justifygeology to godly readers of 'Genesis'. It was, very briefly, thatthere had been no gradual modification of the surface of theearth, or slow development of organic forms, but that when thecatastrophic act of creation took place, the world presented, instantly, the structural appearance of a planet on which lifehad long existed. 

The theory, coarsely enough, and to my Father's greatindignation, was defined by a hasty press as being this--that Godhid the fossils in the rocks in order to tempt geologists intoinfidelity. In truth, it was the logical and inevitableconclusion of accepting, literally, the doctrine of a sudden actof creation; it emphasized the fact that any breach in thecircular course of nature could be conceived only on thesupposition that the object created bore false witness to pastprocesses, which had never taken place. For instance, Adam wouldcertainly possess hair and teeth and bones in a condition whichit must have taken many years to accomplish, yet he was createdfull-grown yesterday. He would certainly--though Sir ThomasBrowne denied it--display an 'omphalos', yet no umbilical cordhad ever attached him to a mother. 

Never was a book cast upon the waters with greater anticipationsof success than was this curious, this obstinate, this fanaticalvolume. My Father lived in a fever of suspense, waiting for thetremendous issue. This 'Omphalos' of his, he thought, was tobring all the turmoil of scientific speculation to a close, flinggeology into the arms of Scripture, and make the lion eat grasswith the lamb. It was not surprising, he admitted, that there hadbeen experienced an ever-increasing discord between the factswhich geology brings to light and the direct statements of theearly chapters of 'Genesis'. Nobody was to blame for that. MyFather, and my Father alone, possessed the secret of the enigma;he alone held the key which could smoothly open the lock ofgeological mystery. He offered it, with a glowing gesture, toatheists and Christians alike. This was to be the universalpanacea; this the system of intellectual therapeutics which couldnot but heal all the maladies of the age. But, alas! atheists andChristians alike looked at it, and laughed, and threw it away. 

In the course of that dismal winter, as the post began to bringin private letters, few and chilly, and public reviews, many andscornful, my Father looked in vain for the approval of thechurches, and in vain for the acquiescence of the scientificsocieties, and in vain for the gratitude of those 'thousands ofthinking persons', which he had rashly assured himself ofreceiving. As his reconciliation of Scripture statements andgeological deductions was welcomed nowhere, as Darwin continuedsilent, and the youthful Huxley was scornful, and even CharlesKingsley, from whom my Father had expected the most instantappreciation, wrote that he could not 'give up the painful andslow conclusion of five and twenty years' study of geology, andbelieve that God has written on the rocks one enormous andsuperfluous lie', --as all this happened or failed to happen, agloom, cold and dismal, descended upon our morning teacups. Itwas what the poets mean by an 'inspissated' gloom; it thickenedday by day, as hope and self-confidence evaporated in thin cloudsof disappointment. My Father was not prepared for such a fate. Hehad been the spoiled darling of the public, the constantfavourite of the press, and now, like the dark angels of old, so huge a rout Encumbered him with ruin. 

He could not recover from amazement at having offended everybodyby an enterprise which had been undertaken in the cause ofuniversal reconciliation. 

During that grim season, my Father was no lively companion, andcircumstance after circumstance combined to drive him furtherfrom humanity. He missed more than ever the sympathetic ear of myMother; there was present to support him nothing of that artful, female casuistry which insinuates into the wounded consciousnessof a man the conviction that, after all, he is right and all therest of the world is wrong. My Father used to tramp in solitudearound and around the red ploughed field which was going to behis lawn, or sheltering himself from the thin Devonian rain, paceup and down the still-naked verandah where blossoming creeperswere to be. And I think that there was added to his chagrin withall his fellow mortals a first tincture of that heresy which wasto attack him later on. It was now that, I fancy, he began, inhis depression, to be angry with God. How much devotion had hegiven, how many sacrifices had he made, only to be left stormingaround this red morass with no one in all the world to care forhim except one pale-faced child with its cheek pressed to thewindow!

After one or two brilliant excursions to the sea, winter, in itsdampest, muddiest, most languid form, had fallen upon us and shutus in. It was a dreary winter for the wifeless man and themotherless boy. We had come into the house, in precipitateabandonment to that supposed answer to prayer, a great deal toosoon. In order to rake together the lump sum for buying it, myFather had denuded himself of almost everything, and our sticksof chairs and tables filled but two or three rooms. Half thelittle house, or 'villa' as we called it, was not papered, two-thirds were not furnished. The workmen were still finishing theoutside when we arrived, and in that connection I recall a littleincident which exhibits my Father's morbid delicacy ofconscience. He was accustomed in his brighter moments--and thiswas before the publication of his 'Omphalos'--occasionally tosing loud Dorsetshire songs of his early days, in a strange, broad Wessex lingo that I loved. One October afternoon he and Iwere sitting on the verandah, and my Father was singing; justaround the corner, out of sight, two carpenters were putting upthe framework of a greenhouse. In a pause, one of them said tohis fellow: 'He can zing a zong, zo well's another, though he bea minister. ' My Father, who was holding my hand loosely, clutchedit, and looking up, I saw his eyes darken. He never sang asecular song again during the whole of his life. 

Later in the year, and after his literary misfortune, hisconscience became more troublesome than ever. I think heconsidered the failure of his attempt at the reconciliation ofscience with religion to have been intended by God as apunishment for something he had done or left undone. In thosebrooding tramps around and around the garden, his soul was on itsknees searching the corners of his conscience for some sin ofomission or commission, and one by one every pleasure, everyrecreation, every trifle scraped out of the dust of pastexperience, was magnified into a huge offence. He thought thatthe smallest evidence of levity, the least unbending to humaninstinct, might be seized by those around him as evidence ofinconsistency, and might lead the weaker brethren into offence. The incident of the carpenters and the comic song is typical of acondition of mind which now possessed my Father, in which actafter act became taboo, not because each was sinful in itself, but because it might lead others into sin. 

I have the conviction that Miss Marks was now mightily afraid ofmy Father. Whenever she could, she withdrew to the room shecalled her 'boudoir', a small, chilly apartment, sparselyfurnished, looking over what was in process of becoming thevegetable garden. Very properly, that she might have somesanctuary, Miss Marks forbade me to enter this virginal bower, which, of course, became to me an object of harrowing curiosity. Through the key-hole I could see practically nothing; one day Icontrived to slip inside, and discovered that there was nothingto see but a plain bedstead and a toilet-table, void of allattraction. In this 'boudoir', on winter afternoons, a fire wouldbe lighted, and Miss Marks would withdraw to it, not seen by usanymore between high-tea and the apocalyptic exercise known as'worship'--in less strenuous households much less austerelypractised under the name of 'family prayers'. Left meanwhile toour own devices, my Father would mainly be reading his book orpaper held close up to the candle, while his lips and heavyeyebrows occasionally quivered and palpitated, with literaryardour, in a manner strangely exciting to me. Miss Marks, in avery high cap, and her large teeth shining, would occasionallyappear in the doorway, desiring, with spurious geniality, to knowhow we were 'getting on'. But on these occasions neither of usreplied to Miss Marks. 

Sometimes in the course of this winter, my Father and I had longcosy talks together over the fire. Our favourite subject wasmurders. I wonder whether little boys of eight, soon to goupstairs alone at night, often discuss violent crime with awidower-papa? The practice, I cannot help thinking, is unusual;it was, however, consecutive with us. We tried other secularsubjects, but we were sure to come around at last to 'what do yousuppose they really did with the body?' I was told, a thrilledlistener, the adventure of Mrs. Manning, who killed a gentleman onthe stairs and buried him in quick-lime in the back-kitchen, andit was at this time that I learned the useful historical fact, which abides with me after half a century, that Mrs. Manning washanged in black satin, which thereupon went wholly out of fashionin England. I also heard about Burke and Hare, whose story nearlyfroze me into stone with horror. 

These were crimes which appear in the chronicles. But who willtell me what 'the Carpet-bag Mystery' was, which my Father and Idiscussed evening after evening? I have never come across awhisper of it since, and I suspect it of having been a hoax. As Irecall the details, people in a boat, passing down the Thames, saw a carpet-bag hung high in air, on one of the projections of apier of Waterloo Bridge. Being with difficulty dragged down--orperhaps up--this bag was found to be full of human remains, dreadful butcher's business of joints and fragments. Persons weremissed, were identified, were again denied--the whole is a vapourin my memory which shifts as I try to define it. But clear enoughis the picture I hold of myself, in a high chair, on the left-hand side of the sitting-room fireplace, the leaping flamesreflected in the glass-case of tropical insects on the oppositewall, and my Father, leaning anxiously forward, with upliftedfinger, emphasizing to me the pros and cons of the horriblecarpet-bag evidence. 

I suppose that my interest in these discussions--and Heaven knowsI was animated enough--amused and distracted my Father, whoseidea of a suitable theme for childhood's ear now seems to mesurprising. I soon found that these subjects were not welcome toeverybody, for, starting the Carpet-bag Mystery one morning withMiss Marks, in the hope of delaying my arithmetic lesson, shefairly threw her apron over her ears, and told me, from thatvantage, that if I did not desist at once, she should scream. 

Occasionally we took winter walks together, my Father and I, downsome lane that led to a sight of the sea, or over the rollingdowns. We tried to recapture the charm of those delightfulstrolls in London, when we used to lean over the bridges andwatch the ducks. But we could not recover this pleasure. MyFather was deeply enwoven in the chain of his own thoughts, andwould stalk on, without a word, buried in angry reverie. If hespoke to me, on these excursions, it was a pain to me to answerhim. I could talk on easy terms with him indoors, seated in myhigh chair, with our heads on a level, but it was intolerablylaborious to look up into the firmament and converse with a darkface against the sky. The actual exercise of walking, too, wasvery exhausting to me; the bright red mud, to the strange colourof which I could not for a long while get accustomed, becomingcaked about my little shoes, and wearying me extremely. I wouldgrow petulant and cross, contradict my Father, and oppose hiswhims. These walks were distressing to us both, yet he did notlike to walk alone, and he had no other friend. However, as thewinter advanced, they had to be abandoned, and the habit of ourtaking a 'constitutional' together was never resumed. 

I look back upon myself at this time as upon a cantankerous, ill-tempered and unobliging child. The only excuse I can offer isthat I really was not well. The change to Devonshire had notsuited me; my health gave the excellent Miss Marks some anxiety, but she was not ready in resource. The dampness of the house wasterrible; indoors and out, the atmosphere seemed soaked in chillyvapours. Under my bed-clothes at night I shook like a jelly, unable to sleep for cold, though I was heaped with coverings, while my skin was all puckered with gooseflesh. I could eatnothing solid, without suffering immediately from violenthiccough, so that much of my time was spent lying prone on myback upon the hearthrug, awakening the echoes like a cuckoo. MissMarks, therefore, cut off all food but milk-sop, a loathly bowlof which appeared at every meal. In consequence the hiccoughlessened, but my strength declined with it. I languished in aperpetual catarrh. I was roused to a conscious-ness that I wasnot considered well by the fact that my Father prayed publicly atmorning and evening 'worship' that if it was the Lord's will totake me to himself there might be no doubt whatever about mybeing a sealed child of God and an inheritor of glory. I waspartly disconcerted by, partly vain of, this open advertisementof my ailments. 

Of our dealings with the 'Saints', a fresh assortment of whom metus on our arrival in Devonshire, I shall speak presently. MyFather's austerity of behaviour was, I think, perpetuallyaccentuated by his fear of doing anything to offend theconsciences of these persons, whom he supposed, no doubt, to bemore sensitive than they really were. He was fond of saying that'a very little stain upon the conscience makes a wide breach inour communion with God', and he counted possible errors ofconduct by hundreds and by thousands. It was in this winter thathis attention was particularly drawn to the festival ofChristmas, which, apparently, he had scarcely noticed in London. 

On the subject of all feasts of the Church he held views of analmost grotesque peculiarity. He looked upon each of them asnugatory and worthless, but the keeping of Christmas appeared tohim by far the most hateful, and nothing less than an act ofidolatry. 'The very word is Popish', he used to exclaim, 'Christ's Mass!' pursing up his lips with the gesture of one whotastes assafoetida by accident. Then he would adduce theantiquity of the so-called feast, adapted from horrible heathenrites, and itself a soiled relic of the abominable Yule-Tide. Hewould denounce the horrors of Christmas until it almost made meblush to look at a holly-berry. 

On Christmas Day of this year 1857 our villa saw a very unusualsight. My Father had given strictest charge that no differencewhatever was to be made in our meals on that day; the dinner wasto be neither more copious than usual nor less so. He was obeyed, but the servants, secretly rebellious, made a small plum-puddingfor themselves. (I discovered afterwards, with pain, that MissMarks received a slice of it in her boudoir. ) Early in theafternoon, the maids, --of whom we were now advanced to keepingtwo, --kindly remarked that 'the poor dear child ought to have abit, anyhow', and wheedled me into the kitchen, where I ate aslice of plum-pudding. Shortly I began to feel that pain insidewhich in my frail state was inevitable, and my conscience smoteme violently. At length I could bear my spiritual anguish nolonger, and bursting into the study I called out: 'Oh! Papa, Papa, I have eaten of flesh offered to idols!' It took some time, between my sobs, to explain what had happened. Then my Fathersternly said: 'Where is the accursed thing?' I explained that asmuch as was left of it was still on the kitchen table. He took meby the hand, and ran with me into the midst of the startledservants, seized what remained of the pudding, and with the platein one hand and me still tight in the other, ran until we reachedthe dust-heap, when he flung the idolatrous confectionery on tothe middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into themass. The suddenness, the violence, the velocity of thisextraordinary act made an impression on my memory which nothingwill ever efface. 

The key is lost by which I might unlock the perverse malady fromwhich my Father's conscience seemed to suffer during the whole ofthis melancholy winter. But I think that a dislocation of hisintellectual system had a great deal to do with it. Up to thispoint in his career, he had, as we have seen, nourished thedelusion that science and revelation could be mutually justified, that some sort of compromise was possible. With great and evergreater distinctness, his investigations had shown him that inall departments of organic nature there are visible the evidencesof slow modification of forms, of the type developed by thepressure and practice of aeons. This conviction had been bornein upon him until it was positively irresistible. Where was hisplace, then, as a sincere and accurate observer? Manifestly, itwas with the pioneers of the new truth, it was with Darwin, Wallace and Hooker. But did not the second chapter of 'Genesis'say that in six days the heavens and earth were finished, and thehost of them, and that on the seventh day God ended his workwhich he had made?

Here was a dilemma! Geology certainly seemed to be true, but theBible, which was God's word, was true. If the Bible said that allthings in Heaven and Earth were created in six days, created insix days they were, --in six literal days of twenty-four hourseach. The evidences of spontaneous variation of form, acting, over an immense space of time, upon ever-modifying organicstructures, seemed overwhelming, but they must either be broughtinto line with the six-day labour of creation, or they must berejected. I have already shown how my Father worked out theingenious 'Omphalos' theory in order to justify himself as astrictly scientific observer who was also a humble slave ofrevelation. But the old convention and the new rebellion wouldalike have none of his compromise. 

To a mind so acute and at the same time so narrow as that of myFather--a mind which is all logical and positive without breadth, without suppleness and without imagination--to be subjected to acheck of this kind is agony. It has not the relief of a smallernature, which escapes from the dilemma by some foggy formula; northe resolution of a larger nature to take to its wings andsurmount the obstacle. My Father, although half suffocated by theemotion of being lifted, as it were, on the great biologicalwave, never dreamed of letting go his clutch of the ancienttradition, but hung there, strained and buffeted. It isextraordinary that he--an 'honest hodman of science', as Huxleyonce called him--should not have been content to allow others, whose horizons were wider than his could be, to pursue thosepurely intellectual surveys for which he had no species ofaptitude. As a collector of facts and marshaller of observations, he had not a rival in that age; his very absence of imaginationaided him in this work. But he was more an attorney thanphilosopher, and he lacked that sublime humility which is thecrown of genius. For, this obstinate persuasion that he aloneknew the mind of God, that he alone could interpret the designsof the Creator, what did it result from if not from a congenitallack of that highest modesty which replies 'I do not know' evento the questions which Faith, with menacing forger, insists onhaving most positively answered?

CHAPTER VI

DURING the first year of our life in Devonshire, the ninth yearof my age, my Father's existence, and therefore mine, was almostentirely divided between attending to the little community of'Saints' in the village and collecting, examining and describingmarine creatures from the seashore. In the course of these twelvemonths, we had scarcely any social distractions of any kind, andI never once crossed the bounds of the parish. After the worst ofthe winter was over, my Father recovered much of his spirits andhis power of work, and the earliest sunshine soothed andrefreshed us both. I was still almost always with him, but we hadnow some curious companions. 

The village, at the southern end of which our villa stood, wasnot pretty. It had no rural picturesqueness of any kind. The onlypleasant feature of it, the handsome and ancient parish churchwith its umbrageous churchyard, was then almost entirelyconcealed by a congress of mean shops, which were ultimately, before the close of my childhood, removed. The village consistedof two parallel lines of contiguous houses, all white-washed andmost of them fronted by a trifling shop-window; for half a milethis street ascended to the church, and then descended foranother half-mile, ending suddenly in fields, the hedges of whichdisplayed, at intervals, the inevitable pollard elm-tree. 

The walk through the village, which we seemed make incessantly, was very wearisome to me. I dreaded the rudeness of the children, and there was nothing in the shops to amuse me. Walking on theinch or two of broken pavement in front of the houses wasdisagreeable and tiresome, and the odor which breathed on closedays from the open doors and windows made me feel faint. But thiswalk was obligatory, since the 'Public Room', as our littlechapel was called, lay at the farther extremity of the drearystreet. 

We attended this place of worship immediately on our arrival, andmy Father, uninvited but unresisted, immediately assumed theadministration of it. It was a square, empty room, built, for Iknow not what purpose, over a stable. Ammoniac odours used torise through the floor as we sat there at our long devotions. Before our coming, a little flock of persons met in the Room, acommunity of the indefinite sort just then becoming frequent inthe West of England, pious rustics connected with no otherrecognized body of Christians, and depending directly on theindependent study of the Bible. They were largely women, butthere was more than a sprinkling of men, poor, simple andgenerally sickly. In later days, under my Father's ministration, the body increased and positively flourished. It came to includeretired professional men, an admiral, nay, even the brother of apeer. But in those earliest years the 'brethren' and 'sisters'were all of them ordinary peasants. They were jobbing gardenersand journeymen carpenters, masons and tailors, washerwomen anddomestic servants. I wish that I could paint, in colours so vividthat my readers could perceive what their little societyconsisted of, this quaint collection of humble, conscientious, ignorant and gentle persons. In chronicle or fiction I have neverbeen fortunate enough to meet with anything which resembled them. The caricatures of enmity and worldly scorn are as crude, to mymemory, as the unction of religious conventionality isfeatureless. 

The origin of the meeting had been odd. A few years before wecame, a crew of Cornish fishermen, quite unknown to thevillagers, were driven by stress of weather into the haven underthe cliff. They landed, and, instead of going to a public-house, they looked about for a room where they could hold a prayer-meeting. They were devout Wesleyans; they had come from the opensea, they were far from home, and they had been starved by lackof their customary religious privileges. As they stood about inthe street before their meeting, they challenged the respectablegirls who came out to stare at them, with the question, 'Do youlove the Lord Jesus, my maid?' Receiving dubious answers, theypressed the inhabitants to come in and pray with them, whichseveral did. Ann Burmington, who long afterwards told me aboutit, was one of those girls, and she repeated that the fishermensaid, 'What a dreadful thing it will be, at the Last Day, whenthe Lord says, "Come, ye blessed", and says it not to you, andthen, "Depart ye cursed", and you maidens have to depart. ' Theywere finely-built young men, with black beards and shining eyes, and I do not question that some flash of sex unconsciouslymingled with the curious episode, although their behaviour was inall respects discreet. It was, perhaps, not wholly a coincidencethat almost all those particular girls remained unmarried to theend of their lives. After two or three days, the fishermen wentoff to sea again. They prayed and sailed away, and the girls, whohad not even asked their names, never heard of them again. Butseveral of the young women were definitely converted, and theyformed the nucleus of our little gathering. 

My Father preached, standing at a desk; or celebrated thecommunion in front of a deal table, with a white napkin spreadover it. Sometimes the audience was so small, generally sounexhilarating, that he was discouraged, but he never flagged inenergy and zeal. Only those who had given evidence of intelligentacceptance of the theory of simple faith in their atonementthrough the Blood of Jesus were admitted to the communion, or, asit was called, 'the Breaking of Bread'. It was made a very strongpoint that no one should 'break bread', unless for good reasonshown--until he or she had been baptized, that is to say, totally immersed, in solemn conclave, by the ministering brother. This rite used, in our earliest days, to be performed, withpicturesque simplicity, in the sea on the Oddicombe beach, but tothis there were, even in those quiet years, extreme objections. Ajeering crowd could scarcely be avoided, and women, inparticular, shrank from the ordeal. This used to be a practicaldifficulty, and my Father, when communicants confessed that theyhad not yet been baptized, would shake his head and say gravely, 'Ah! ah! you shun the Cross of Christ!' But that baptism in thesea on the open beach _was_ a 'cross', he would not deny, and whenwe built our own little chapel, a sort of font, planked over, wasarranged in the room itself. 

Among these quiet, taciturn people, there were several whom Irecall with affection. In this remote corner of Devonshire, onthe road nowhither, they had preserved much of the air of thateighteenth century which the elders among them perfectlyremembered. There was one old man, born before the FrenchRevolution, whose figure often recurs to me. This was JamesPetherbridge, the Nestor of our meeting, extremely tall andattenuated; he came on Sundays in a full, white smockfrock, smartly embroidered down the front, and when he settled himselfto listen, he would raise this smock like a skirt, and reveal apair of immensely long thin legs, cased in tight leggings, andending in shoes with buckles. As the sacred message fell from myFather's lips the lantern jaws of Mr. Petherbridge slowly fellapart, while his knees sloped to so immense a distance from oneanother that it seemed as though they never could meet again. Hehad been pious all his life, and he would tell us, in some modestpride, that when he was a lad, the farmer's wife who was hismistress used to say, 'I think our Jem is going to be a Methody, he do so hanker after godly discoursings. ' Mr. Petherbridge wasaccustomed to pray orally at our prayer-meetings, in a funny oldvoice like wind in a hollow tree, and he seldom failed to expressa hope that 'the Lord would support Miss Lafroy'-- who was thevillage schoolmistress, and one of our congregation, --'in herlabour of teaching the young idea how to shoot'. I, notunderstanding this literary allusion, long believed the school tobe addicted to some species of pistol-practice. 

The key of the Room was kept by Richard Moxhay, the mason, whowas of a generation younger than Mr. Petherbridge, but yet'getting on in years'. Moxhay, I cannot tell why, was alwaysdressed in white corduroy, on which any stain of Devonshirescarlet mud was painfully conspicuous; when he was smartened up, his appearance suggested that somebody had given him a coating ofthat rich Western whitewash which looks like Devonshire cream. His locks were long and sparse, and as deadly black as hisclothes were white. He was a modest, gentle man, with a wife evenmore meek and gracious than himself. They never, to myrecollection, spoke unless they were spoken to, and theirmelancholy impassiveness used to vex my Father, who once, referring to the Moxhays, described them, sententiously butjustly, as being 'laborious, but it would be an exaggeration tosay happy, Christians'. Indeed, my memory pictures almost all the'saints' of that early time as sad and humble souls, lackingvitality, yet not complaining of anything definite. A quitesurprising number of them, it is true, male and female, sufferedfrom different forms of consumption, so that the Room rang inwinter evenings with a discord of hacking coughs. But it seems tome that, when I was quite young, half the inhabitants of ourrural district were affected with phthisis. No doubt, ourpeculiar religious community was more likely to attract thefeeble members of a population, than to tempt the flush and thefair. 

Miss Marks, patient pilgrim that she was, accepted this quaintsociety without a murmur, although I do not think it was much toher taste. But in a very short time it was sweetened to her bythe formation of a devoted and romantic friendship for one of the'sisters', who was, indeed, if my childish recollection does notfail me, a very charming person. The consequence of thisenthusiastic alliance was that I was carried into the bosom ofthe family to which Miss Marks' new friend belonged, and of theseexcellent people I must give what picture I can. 

Almost opposite the Room, therefore at the far end of thevillage, across one of the rare small gardens (in which thisfirst winter I discovered with rapture the magenta stars of a newflower, hepatica)--a shop-window displayed a thin row of platesand dishes, cups and saucers; above it was painted the name ofBurmington. This china-shop was the property of three orphansisters, Ann, Mary Grace, and Bess, the latter lately married toa carpenter, who was 'elder' at our meeting; the other two, resolute old maids. Ann, whom I have already mentioned, had beenone of the girls converted by the Cornish fishermen. She wasabout ten years older than Bess, and Mary Grace came halfwaybetween them. Ann was a very worthy woman, but masterful andpassionate, suffering from an ungovernable temper, which atcalmer moments she used to refer to, not without complacency, as'the sin which doth most easily beset me'. Bess wasinsignificant, and vulgarized by domestic cares. But Mary Gracewas a delightful creature. The Burmingtons lived in what wasalmost the only old house surviving in the village. It was anextraordinary construction of two storeys, with vast rooms, andwinding passages, and surprising changes of level. The sisterswere poor, but very industrious, and never in anything like want;they sold, as I have said, crockery, and they took in washing, and did a little fine needlework, and sold the produce of agreat, vague garden at the back. In process of time, the eldersisters took a young woman, whose name was Drusilla Elliott, tolive with them as servant and companion; she was a convertedperson, worshipping with a kindred sect, the Bible Christians. Iremember being much interested in hearing how Bess, before hermarriage, became converted. Mary Grace, on account of her infirmhealth, slept alone in one room; in another, of vast size, stooda family fourposter, where Ann slept with Drusilla Elliott, andanother bed in the same room took Bess. The sisters and theirfriend had been constantly praying that Bess might 'find peace', for she was still a stranger to salvation. One night, shesuddenly called out, rather crossly, 'What are you two whisperingabout? Do go to sleep, ' to which Ann replied: 'We are praying foryou. ' 'How do you know, ' answered Bess, 'that I don't believe?' Andthen she told them that, that very night, when she was sitting inthe shop, she had closed with God's offer of redemption. Late inthe night as it was, Ann and Drusilla could do no less than go inand waken Mary Grace, whom, however, they found awake, praying, she too, for the conversion of Bess. They told her the good news, and all four, kneeling in the darkness, gave thanks aloud to Godfor his infinite mercy. 

It was Mary Grace Burmington who now became the romantic friendof Miss Marks, and a sort of second benevolence to me. She musthave been under thirty years of age; she wax very small, and shewas distressingly deformed in the spine, but she had an animated, almost a sparkling countenance. When we first arrived in thevillage, Mary Grace was only just recovering from a gastric feverwhich had taken her close to the grave. I remember hearing thatthe vicar, a stout and pompous man at whom we always glareddefiance, went, in Mary Grace's supposed extremity, to theBurmingtons' shop-door, and shouted: 'Peace be to this house, 'intending to offer his ministrations, but that Ann, who was inone of her tantrums, positively hounded him from the doorstep anddown the garden, in her passionate nonconformity. Mary Grace, however, recovered, and soon became, not merely Miss Marks'inseparable friend, but my Father's spiritual factotum. He foundit irksome to visit the 'saints' from house to house, and MaryGrace Burmington gladly assumed this labour. She proved a mostefficient coadjutor; searched out, cherished and confirmed any ofthose, especially the young, who were attracted by my Father'spreaching, and for several years was a great joy and comfort tous all. Even when her illness so increased that she could nolonger rise from her bed, she was a centre of usefulness andcheerfulness from that retreat, where she 'received', in a kindof rustic state, under a patchwork coverlid that was like abasket of flowers. 

My Father, ever reflecting on what could be done to confirm myspiritual vocation, to pin me down, as it were, beyond anypossibility of escape, bethought him that it would accustom me towhat he called 'pastoral work in the Lord's service', if Iaccompanied Mary Grace on her visits from house to house. If itis remembered that I was only eight and a half when this schemewas carried into practice, it will surprise no one to hear thatit was not crowned with success. I disliked extremely thisvisitation of the poor. I felt shy, I had nothing to say, withdifficulty could I understand their soft Devonian patois, andmost of all--a signal perhaps of my neurotic condition--I dreadedand loathed the smells of their cottages. One had to run over thewhole gamut of odours, some so faint that they embraced thenostril with a fairy kiss, others bluntly gross, of the 'knock-you-down' order; some sweet, with a dreadful sourness; somebitter, with a smack of rancid hair-oil. There were fine manlysmells of the pigsty and the open drain, and these pridedthemselves on being all they seemed to be; but there were alsofeminine odours, masquerading as you knew not what, in whichpenny whiffs, vials of balm and opoponax, seemed to have becometainted, vaguely, with the residue of the slop-pail. It was not, I think, that the villagers were particularly dirty, but thosewere days before the invention of sanitary science, and my pooryoung nose was morbidly, nay ridiculously sensitive. I often camehome from 'visiting the saints' absolutely incapable of eatingthe milk-sop, with brown sugar strewn over it, which was myevening meal. 

There was one exception to my unwillingness to join in thepastoral labours of Mary Grace. When she announced, on a fineafternoon, that we were going to Pavor and Barton, I was alwaysagog to start. These were two hamlets in our parish, and, Ishould suppose, the original home of its population. Pavor was, even then, decayed almost to extinction, but Barton preserved itsdesultory street of ancient, detached cottages. Each, howeverpoor, had a wild garden around it, and, where the inhabitantspossessed some pride in their surroundings, the roses and thejasmines and that distinguished creeper, --which one sees nowhereat its best but in Devonshire cottage-gardens, --the statelycotoneaster, made the whole place a bower. Barton was in vividcontrast to our own harsh, open, squalid village, with its meanmodern houses, its absence of all vegetation. The ancientthatched cottages of Barton were shut in by moist hills, andcanopied by ancient trees; they were approached along a deep lanewhich was all a wonder and a revelation to me that spring, since, in the very words of Shelley:

 There in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray. 

Around and beyond Barton there lay fairyland. All was mysterious, unexplored, rich with infinite possibilities. I should one dayenter it, the sword of make-believe in my hand, the cap ofcourage on my head, 'when you are a big boy', said the oracle ofMary Grace. For the present, we had to content ourselves withbeing an unadventurous couple--a little woman, bent half-double, and a preternaturally sedate small boy--as we walked veryslowly, side by side, conversing on terms of high familiarity, inwhich Biblical and colloquial phrases were quaintly jumbled, through the sticky red mud of the Pavor lanes with Barton as abourne before us. 

When we came home, my Father would sometimes ask me forparticulars. Where had we been, whom had we found at home, whattestimony had those visited been able to give of the Lord'sgoodness to them, what had Mary Grace replied in the way ofexhortation, reproof or condolence? These questions I hated atthe time, but they were very useful to me, since they gave me thehabit of concentrating my attention on what was going on in thecourse of our visits, in case I might be called upon to give areport. My Father was very kind in the matter; he cultivated mypowers of expression, he did not snub me when I failed to beintelligent. But I overheard Miss Marks and Mary Grace discussingthe whole question under the guise of referring to 'you knowwhom, not a hundred miles hence', fancying that I could notrecognize their little ostrich because its head was in a bag ofmetaphor. I understood perfectly, and gathered that they both ofthem thought this business of my going into undrained cottagesinjudicious. Accordingly, I was by degrees taken 'visiting' onlywhen Mary Grace was going into the country-hamlets, and then Iwas usually left outside, to skip among the flowers and stalk thebutterflies. 

I must not, however, underestimate the very prominent part takenall through this spring and summer of 1858 by the collection ofspecimens on the seashore. My Father had returned, the chagrin ofhis failure in theorizing now being mitigated, to what was hisreal work in life, the practical study of animal forms in detail. He was not a biologist, in the true sense of the term. Thatluminous indication which Flaubert gives of what the action ofthe scientific mind should be, _affranchissant esprit et pesantles mondes, sans haine, sans peur, sans pitie, sans amour et sansDieu_, was opposed in every segment to the attitude of my Father, who, nevertheless, was a man of very high scientific attainment. 

But, again I repeat, he was not a philosopher; he was incapable, by temperament and education, of forming broad generalizationsand of escaping in a vast survey from the troublesome pettinessof detail. He saw everything through a lens, nothing in theimmensity of nature. Certain senses were absent in him; I thinkthat, with all his justice, he had no conception of theimportance of liberty; with all his intelligence, the boundariesof the atmosphere in which his mind could think at all werealways close about him; with all his faith in the Word of God, hehad no confidence in the Divine Benevolence; and with all hispassionate piety, he habitually mistook fear for love. 

It was down on the shore, tramping along the pebbled terraces ofthe beach, clambering over the great blocks of fallenconglomerate which broke the white curve with rufous promontoriesthat jutted into the sea, or, finally, bending over those shallowtidal pools in the limestone rocks which were our proper hunting-ground, --it was in such circumstances as these that my Fatherbecame most easy, most happy, most human. That hard look acrosshis brows, which it wearied me to see, the look that came fromsleepless anxiety of conscience, faded away, and left the darkcountenance still always stern indeed, but serene andunupbraiding. Those pools were our mirrors, in which, reflectedin the dark hyaline and framed by the sleek and shining fronds ofoar-weed there used to appear the shapes of a middle-aged man anda funny little boy, equally eager, and, I almost find thepresumption to say, equally well prepared fog business. 

If anyone goes down to those shores now, if man or boy seeks tofollow in our traces, let him realize at once, before he takesthe trouble to roll up his sleeves, that his zeal will end inlabour lost. There is nothing, now, where in our days there wasso much. Then the rocks between tide and tide were submarinegardens of a beauty that seemed often to be fabulous, and waspositively delusive, since, if we delicately lifted theweedcurtains of a windless pool, though we might for a moment seeits sides and floor paven with living blossoms, ivory-white, rosy-red, grange and amethyst, yet all that panoply would meltaway, furled into the hollow rock, if we so much as dropped apebble in to disturb the magic dream. 

Half a century ago, in many parts of the coast of Devonshire andCornwall, where the limestone at the water's edge is wrought intocrevices and hollows, the tideline was, like Keats' Grecian vase, 'a still unravished bride of quietness'. These cups and basinswere always full, whether the tide was high or low, and the onlyway in which they were affected was that twice in the twenty-fourhours they were replenished by cold streams from the great sea, and then twice were left brimming to be vivified by the temperatemovement of the upper air. They were living flower-beds, soexquisite in their perfection, that my Father, in spite of hisscientific requirements, used not seldom to pause before he beganto rifle them, ejaculating that it was indeed a pity to disturbsuch congregated beauty. The antiquity of these rock-pools, andthe infinite succession of the soft and radiant forms, sea-anemones, seaweeds, shells, fishes, which had inhabited them, undisturbed since the creation of the world, used to occupy myFather's fancy. We burst in, he used to say, where no one hadever thought of intruding before; and if the Garden of Eden hadbeen situate in Devonshire, Adam and Eve, stepping lightly downto bathe in the rainbow-coloured spray, would have seen theidentical sights that we now saw, --the great prawns gliding liketransparent launches, anthea waving in the twilight its thickwhite waxen tentacles, and the fronds of the duke faintlystreaming on the water like huge red banners in some revertedatmosphere. 

All this is long over and done with. The ring of living beautydrawn about our shores was a very thin and fragile one. It hadexisted all those centuries solely in consequence of theindifference, the blissful ignorance of man. These rockbasins, fringed by corallines, filled with still water almost as pellucidas the upper air itself, thronged with beautiful sensitive formsof life, they exist no longer, they are all profaned, andemptied, and vulgarized. An army of 'collectors' has passed overthem, and ravaged every corner of them. The fairy paradise hasbeen violated, the exquisite product of centuries of naturalselection has been crushed under the rough paw of well-meaning, idle-minded curiosity. That my Father, himself so reverent, soconservative, had by the popularity of his books acquired thedirect responsibility for a calamity that he had neveranticipated became clear enough to himself before many years hadpassed, and cost him great chagrin. No one will see again on theshore of England what I saw in my early childhood, the submarinevision of dark rocks, speckled and starred with an infinitevariety of colour, and streamed over by silken flags of royalcrimson and purple. 

In reviving these impressions, I am unable to give any exactchronological sequence to them. These particular adventures beganearly in 1858, they reached their greatest intensity in thesummer of 1859, and they did not altogether cease, so far as myFather was concerned, until nearly twenty years later. But it waswhile he was composing what, as I am told by scientific men oftoday, continues to be his most valuable contribution toknowledge, his _History of the British Sea-Anemones and Corals_, that we worked together on the shore for a definite purpose, andthe last instalment of that still-classic volume was ready forpress by the close of 1859. 

The way in which my Father worked, in his most desperateescapades, was to wade breast-high into one of the huge pools, and examine the worm-eaten surface of the rock above and belowthe brim. In such remote places--spots where I could neverventure being left, a slightly timorous Andromeda, chained to asafer level of the cliff--in these extreme basins, there usedoften to lurk a marvellous profusion of animal and vegetableforms. My Father would search for the roughest and most corrodedpoints of rock, those offering the best refuge for a variety ofcreatures, and would then chisel off fragments as low down in thewater as he could. These pieces of rock were instantly plunged inthe saltwater of jars which we had brought with us for thepurpose. When as much had been collected as we could carry away--my Father always dragged about an immense square basket, thecreak of whose handles I can still fancy that I hear--we turnedto trudge up the long climb home. Then all our prizes were spreadout, face upward, in shallow pans of clean sea-water. 

In a few hours, when all dirt had subsided, and what livingcreatures we had brought seemed to have recovered theircomposure, my work began. My eyes were extremely keen andpowerful, though they were vexatiously near-sighted. Of no use inexamining objects at any distance, in investigating a minutesurface, my vision was trained to be invaluable. The shallow pan, with our spoils, would rest on a table near the window, and I, kneeling on a chair opposite the light, would lean over thesurface until everything was within an inch or two of my eyes. Often I bent, in my zeal, so far forward that the water touchedthe tip of my nose and gave me a little icy shock. In thisattitude, an idle spectator might have formed the impression thatI was trying to wash my head and could not quite summon upresolution enough to plunge. In this odd pose I would remain fora long time, holding my breath and examining with extreme careevery atom of rock, every swirl of detritus. This was a taskwhich my Father could only perform by the help of a lens, withwhich, of course, he took care to supplement my examination. Butthat my survey was of use, he has himself most handsomelytestified in his _Actinologia Britannica_, where he expresses hisdebt to the 'keen and well-practised eye of my little son'. Nor, if boasting is not to be excluded, is it every eminent biologist, every proud and masterful F. R. S. , who can lay his hand on hisheart and swear that, before reaching the age of ten years, hehad added, not merely a new species, but a new genus to theBritish fauna. That however, the author of these pages can do, who, on 29 June 1859, discovered a tiny atom, --and ran in thegreatest agitation to announce the discovery of that object 'as aform with which he was unacquainted', --which figures since thenon all lists of sea-anemones as phellia murocincta, or the walledcorklet. Alas! that so fair a swallow should have made nobiological summer in after-life. 

These delicious agitations by the edge of the salt-sea wave musthave greatly improved my health, which however was still lookedupon as fragile. I was loaded with coats and comforters, andstrolled out between Miss Marks and Mary Grace Burmington, amuffled ball of flannel. This alone was enough to give me a lookof delicacy which the 'saints', in their blunt way, made noscruple of commenting upon to my face. I was greatly impressed bya conversation held over my bed one evening by the servants. Ourcook, Susan, a person of enormous size, and Kate, the tattling, tiresome parlour-maid who waited upon us, on the summer evening Ispeak of were standing--I cannot tell why--on each side of mybed. I shut my eyes, and lay quite still, in order to escapeconversing with them, and they spoke to one another. 'Ah, poorlamb, ' Kate said trivially, '_he's_ not long for this world; goinghome to Jesus, he is, --in a jiffy, I should say by the look of'un. ' But Susan answered: 'Not so. I dreamed about 'un, and Iknow for sure that he is to be spared for missionary service. ''Missionary service?' repeated Kate, impressed. 'Yes, ' Susan wenton, with solemn emphasis, 'he'll bleed for his Lord in heathenparts, that's what the future have in store for _'im_. ' When theywere gone, I beat upon the coverlid with my fists, and Idetermined that whatever happened, I would not, not, _not_, go outto preach the Gospel among horrid, tropical niggers. 

CHAPTER VII

IN the history of an infancy so cloistered and uniform as mine, such a real adventure as my being publicly and successfullykidnapped cannot be overlooked. There were several 'innocents' inour village--harmless eccentrics who had more or lessunquestionably crossed the barrier which divides the sane fromthe insane. They were not discouraged by public opinion; indeed, several of them were favoured beings, suspected by my Father ofexaggerating their mental density in order to escape having towork, like dogs, who, as we all know, could speak as well as wedo, were they not afraid of being made to fetch and carry. MissMary Flaw was not one of these imbeciles. She was what the Frenchcall a _detraquee_; she had enjoyed good intelligence and an activemind, but her wits had left the rails and were careening aboutthe country. Miss Flaw was the daughter of a retired Baptistminister, and she lived, with I remember not what relations, in alittle solitary house high up at Barton Cross, whither Mary Graceand I would sometimes struggle when our pastoral duties wereover. In later years, when I met with those celebrated verses inwhich the philosopher expresses the hope

 In the downhill of life, when I find I'm declining, May my lot no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining, And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea

my thoughts returned instinctively, and they still return, to thehigh abode of Miss Flaw. There was a porch at her door, both forshelter and shade, and it was covered with jasmine; but the charmof the place was a summer-house close by, containing a table, encrusted with cowry-shells, and seats from which one saw thedistant waters of the bay. At the entrance to this grotto therewas always set a 'snug elbow-chair', destined, I suppose, for theRev. Mr. Flaw, or else left there in pious memory of him, since Icannot recollect whether he was alive or dead. 

I delighted in these visits to Mary Flaw. She always received uswith effusion, tripping forward to meet us, and leading us, eachby a hand held high, with a dancing movement which I thoughtinfinitely graceful, to the cowry-shell bower, where she wouldregale us with Devonshire cream and with small hard biscuits thatwere like pebbles. The conversation of Mary Flaw was a greattreat to me. I enjoyed its irregularities, its waywardness; itwas like a tune that wandered into several keys. As Mary GraceBurmington put it, one never knew what dear Mary Flaw would saynext, and that she did not herself know added to the charm. Shehad become crazed, poor thing, in consequence of a disappointmentin love, but of course I did not know that, nor that she wascrazed at all. I thought her brilliant and original, and I likedher very much. In the light of coming events, it would beaffectation were I to pretend that she did not feel a similarpartiality for me. 

Miss Flaw was, from the first, devoted to my Father'sministrations, and it was part of our odd village indulgence thatno one ever dreamed of preventing her from coming to the Room. OnSunday evenings the bulk of the audience was arranged on forms, with backs to them, set in the middle of the floor, with apassage round them, while other forms were placed against thewalls. My Father preached from a lectern, facing the audience. Ifdarkness came on in the course of the service, Richard Moxhay, glimmering in his cream-white corduroys, used to go slowlyaround, lighting groups of tallow candles by the help of a box oflucifers. Mary Flaw always assumed the place of honour, on theleft extremity of the front bench, immediately opposite myFather. Miss Marks and Mary Grace, with me ensconced and almostburied between them, occupied the right of the same bench. Whilethe lighting proceeded, Miss Flaw used to direct it from herseat, silently, by pointing out to Moxhay, who took no notice, what groups of candles he should light next. She did this just asthe clown in the circus directs the grooms how to move thefurniture, and Moxhay paid no more attention to her than thegrooms do to the clown. Miss Flaw had another peculiarity: shesilently went through a service exactly similar to ours, but muchbriefer. The course of our evening service was this: My Fatherprayed, and we all knelt down; then he gave out a hymn and mostof us stood up to sing; then he preached for about an hour, whilewe sat and listened; then a hymn again; then prayer and thevalediction. 

Mary Flaw went through this ritual, but on a smaller scale. Weall knelt down together, but when we rose from our knees, MissFlaw was already standing up, and was pretending, without asound, to sing a hymn; in the midst of our hymn, she sat down, opened her Bible, found a text, and then leaned back, her eyesfixed in space, listening to an imaginary sermon which our ownreal one soon caught up, and coincided with for about three-quarters of an hour. Then, while our sermon went peacefully on, Miss Flaw would rise, and sing in silence (if I am permitted touse such an expression) her own visionary hymn; then she wouldkneel down and pray, then rise, collect her belongings, andsweep, in fairy majesty, out of the chapel, my Father stillrounding his periods from the pulpit. Nobody ever thought ofpreventing these movements, or of checking the poor creature inher innocent flightiness, until the evening of the great event. 

It was all my own fault. Mary Flaw had finished her imaginaryservice earlier than usual. She had stood up alone with her hymn-book before her; she had flung herself on her knees alone, in theattitude of devotion; she had risen; she had seated herself for amoment to put on her gloves, and to collect her Bible, her hymn-book and her pocket-handkerchief in her reticule. She was readyto start, and she looked around her with a pleasant air; myFather, all undisturbed, booming away meanwhile over our heads. Iknow not why the manoeuvres of Miss Flaw especially attracted methat evening, but I leaned out across Miss Marks and I caughtMiss Flaw's eye. She nodded, I nodded; and the amazing deed wasdone, I hardly know how. Miss Flaw, with incredible swiftness, flew along the line, plucked me by the coat-collar from betweenmy paralysed protectresses, darted with me down the chapel andout into the dark, before anyone had time to say 'Jack Robinson'. 

My Father gazed from the pulpit and the stream of exhortationwithered on his lips. No one in the body of the audience stirred;no one but himself had clearly seen what had happened. Vague rowsof 'saints' with gaping countenances stared up at him, while heshouted, 'Will nobody stop them? as we whisked out through thedoorway. Forth into the moist night we went, and up the lamplessvillage, where, a few minutes later, the swiftest of thecongregation, with my Father at their head, found us sitting onthe doorstep of the butcher's shop. My captor was now quitequiet, and made no objection to my quitting her, --'without asingle kiss or a goodbye', as the poet says. 

Although I had scarcely felt frightened at the time, doubtless mynerves were shaken by this escapade, and it may have hadsomething to do with the recurrence of the distressing visionsfrom which I had suffered as a very little child. These cameback, with a force and expansion due to my increased maturity. Ihad hardly laid my head down on the pillow, than, as it seemed tome, I was taking part in a mad gallop through space. Some force, which had tight hold of me, so that I felt myself an atom in itsgrasp, was hurrying me on over an endless slender bridge, underwhich on either side a loud torrent rushed at a vertiginous depthbelow. At first our helpless flight, --for I was bound hand andfoot like Mazeppa, --proceeded in a straight line, but presentlyit began to curve, and we raced and roared along, in whatgradually became a monstrous vortex, reverberant with noises, loud with light, while, as we proceeded, enormous concentriccircles engulfed us, and wheeled above and about us. It seemed asif we, --I, that is, and the undefined force which carried me, --were pushing feverishly on towards a goal which our wholeconcentrated energies were bent on reaching, but which a frenzieddespair in my heart told me we never could reach, yet theattainment of which alone could save us from destruction. Faraway, in the pulsation of the great luminous whorls, I could justsee that goal, a ruby-coloured point waxing and waning, and itbore, or to be exact it consisted of the letters of the wordCARMINE. 

This agitating vision recurred night after night, and filled mewith inexpressible distress. The details of it altered verylittle, and I knew what I had to expect when I crept into bed. Iknew that for a few minutes I should be battling with the chillof the linen sheets, and trying to keep awake, but that then, without a pause, I should slip into that terrible realm of stormand stress in which I was bound hand and foot, and sent gallopingthrough infinity. Often have I wakened, with unutterable joy, tofind my Father and Miss Marks, whom my screams had disturbed, standing one on each side of my bed. They could release me frommy nightmare, which seldom assailed me twice a night--but how topreserve me from its original attack passed their understanding. My Father, in his tenderness, thought to exorcize the demon byprayer. He would appear in the bedroom, just as I was firstslipping into bed, and he would kneel at my side. The light froma candle on the mantel-shelf streamed down upon his dark head ofhair while his face was buried in the coverlid, from which a loudvoice came up, a little muffled, begging that I might bepreserved against all the evil spirits that walk in darkness andthat the deep might not swallow me up. 

This little ceremony gave a distraction to my thoughts, and mayhave been useful in that way. But it led to an unfortunatecircumstance. My Father began to enjoy these orisons at mybedside, and to prolong them. Perhaps they lasted a little toolong, but I contrived to keep awake through them, sometimes by agreat effort. On one unhappy night, however, I gave even worseoffense than slumber would have given. My Father was prayingaloud, in the attitude I have described, and I was half sitting, half lying in bed, with the clothes sloping from my chin. Suddenly a rather large insect--dark and flat, with more legsthan a self-respecting insect ought to need--appeared at thebottom of the counterpane, and slowly advanced. I think it wasnothing worse than a beetle. It walked successfully past myFather's sleek black ball of a head, and climbed straight up atme, nearer, nearer, until it seemed all a twinkle of horns andjoints. I bore it in silent fascination until it almost tickledmy chin, and then I screamed 'Papa! Papa!' My Father rose ingreat dudgeon, removed the insect (what were insects to him!) andthen gave me a tremendous lecture. 

The sense of desperation which this incident produced I shall noteasily forget. Life seemed really to be very harassing when tovisions within and beetles without there was joined theconsciousness of having grievously offended God by an act ofdisrespect. It is difficult for me to justify to myself theviolent jobation which my Father gave me in consequence of myscream, except by attributing to him something of the humanweakness of vanity. I cannot help thinking that he liked to hearhimself speak to God in the presence of an admiring listener. Heprayed with fervour and animation, in pure Johnsonian English, and I hope I am not undutiful if I add my impression that he wasnot displeased with the sound of his own devotions. My cry forhelp had needlessly, as he thought, broken in upon this holy andseemly performance. 'You, the child of a naturalist, ' he remarkedin awesome tones, '_you_ to pretend to feel terror at the advanceof an insect?' It could but be a pretext, he declared, foravoiding the testimony of faith in prayer. 'If your heart werefixed, if it panted after the Lord, it would take more than themovements of a beetle to make you disturb oral supplication atHis footstool. Beware! for God is a jealous God and He consumesthem in wrath who make a noise like a dog. '

My Father took at all times a singular pleasure in repeating that'our God is a jealous God'. He liked the word, which I suppose heused in an antiquated sense. He was accustomed to tell the'saints' at the Room, --in a very genial manner, and smiling atthem as he said it, --'I am jealous over you, my beloved brothersand sisters, with a godly jealousy. ' I know that this wasinterpreted by some of the saints, --for I heard Mary Grace say soto Miss Marks--as meaning that my Father was resentful becausesome of them attended the service at the Wesleyan chapel onThursday evenings. But my Father was utterly incapable of suchlittleness as this, and when he talked of 'jealousy' he meant alofty solicitude, a careful watchfulness. He meant that theirspiritual honour was a matter of anxiety to him. No doubt when heused to tell me to remember that our God is a jealous God, hemeant that my sins and shortcomings were not matters ofindifference to the Divine Being. But I think, looking back, thatit was very extraordinary for a man, so instructed and sointelligent as he, to dwell so much on the possible anger of theLord, rather than on his pity and love. The theory of extremePuritanism can surely offer no quainter example of its fallacythan this idea that the omnipotent Jehovah--could be seriouslyoffended, and could stoop to revenge, because a little, nervouschild of nine had disturbed a prayer by being frightened at abeetle. 

The fact that the word 'Carmine' appeared as the goal of myvisionary pursuits is not so inexplicable as it may seem. MyFather was at this time producing numerous water-colour drawingsof minute and even of microscopic forms of life. These heexecuted in the manner of miniature, with an amazing fidelity ofform and with a brilliancy of colour which remains unfaded afterfifty years. By far the most costly of his pigments was theintense crimson which is manufactured out of the very spirit and, essence of cochineal. I had lately become a fervent imitator ofhis works of art, and I was allowed to use all of his colours, except one; I was strictly forbidden to let a hair of my paint-brush touch the little broken mass of carmine which was all thathe possessed. We believed, but I do not know whether this couldbe the fact, that carmine of this superlative quality was sold ata guinea a cake. 'Carmine', therefore, became my shibboleth ofself-indulgence; it was a symbol of all that taste and art andwealth could combine to produce. I imagined, for instance, thatat Belshazzar's feast, the loftiest epergne of gold, surroundedby flowers and jewels, carried the monarch's proudest possession, a cake of carmine. I knew of no object in the world of luxurymore desirable than this, and its obsession in my waking hours isquite enough, I think, to account for 'carmine' having been thetorment of my dreams. 

The little incident of the beetle displays my Father's mood atthis period in its worst light. His severity was not verycreditable, perhaps, to his good sense, but without a word ofexplanation it may seem even more unreasonable than it was. MyFather might have been less stern to my lapses from high conduct, and my own mind at the same time less armoured against hisarrows, if our relations had been those which exist in anordinary religious family. He would have been more indulgent, andmy own affections might nevertheless have been more easilyalienated, if I had been treated by him as a commonplace child, standing as yet outside the pale of conscious Christianity. Buthe had formed the idea, and cultivated it assiduously, that I wasan _ame d'elite_, a being to whom the mysteries of salvation hadbeen divinely revealed and by whom they had been accepted. I was, to his partial fancy, one in whom the Holy Ghost had alreadyperformed a real and permanent work. Hence, I was inside thepale; I had attained that inner position which divided, as weused to say, the Sheep from the Goats. Another little boy mightbe very well-behaved, but if he had not consciously 'laid hold onChrist', his good deeds, so far, were absolutely useless. WhereasI might be a very naughty boy, and require much chastisement fromGod and man, but nothing--so my Father thought--could invalidatemy election, and sooner or later, perhaps even after manystripes, I must inevitably be brought back to a state of grace. 

The paradox between this unquestionable sanctification by faithand my equally unquestionable naughtiness, occupied my Fathergreatly at this time. He made it a frequent subject ofintercession at family prayers, not caring to hide from theservants misdemeanours of mine, which he spread out with amelancholy unction before the Lord. He cultivated the belief thatall my little ailments, all my aches and pains, were sent tocorrect my faults. He carried this persuasion very far, evenputting this exhortation before, instead of after, an instantrelief of my sufferings. If I burned my finger with a sulphurmatch, or pinched the end of my nose in the door (to mention buttwo sorrows that recur to my memory), my Father would solemnlyejaculate: 'Oh may these afflictions be much sanctified to him!'before offering any remedy for my pain. So that I almost longed, under the pressure of these pangs, to be a godless child, who hadnever known the privileges of saving grace, since I argued thatsuch a child would be subjected to none of the sufferings whichseemed to assail my path. 

What the ideas or conduct of 'another child' might be I had, however, at this time no idea, for, strange as it may sound, Ihad not, until my tenth year was far advanced, made acquaintancewith any such creature. The 'saints' had children, but I was notcalled upon to cultivate their company, and I had not theslightest wish to do so. But early in 1859 I was allowed, atlast, to associate with a child of my own age. I do not recallthat this permission gave me any rapture; I accepted itphilosophically but without that delighted eagerness which Imight have been expected to show. My earliest companion, then, was a little boy of almost exactly my own age. His name wasBenny, which no doubt was short for Benjamin. His surname wasJeffries; his mother--I think he had no father--was a solemn andshadowy lady of means who lived in a villa, which was older andmuch larger than ours, on the opposite side of the road. Going to'play with Benny' involved a small public excursion, and this Iwas now allowed to make by myself--an immense source of self-respect. 

Everything in my little memories seems to run askew; obviously Iought to have been extremely stirred and broadened by thisearliest association with a boy of my own age! Yet I cannot trulysay that it was so. Benny's mother possessed what seemed to me avast domain, with lawns winding among broad shrubberies, and akitchen-garden, with aged fruit-trees in it. The ripeness of thisplace, mossed and leafy, was gratifying to my senses, on whichthe rawness of our own bald garden jarred. There was an old brickwall between the two divisions, upon which it was possible for usto climb up, and from this we gained Pisgah-views which were aprodigious pleasure. But I had not the faintest idea how to'play'; I had never learned, had never heard of any 'games'. Ithink Benny must have lacked initiative almost as much as I did. We walked about, and shook the bushes, and climbed along thewall; I think that was almost all we ever did do. And, sadlyenough, I cannot recover a phrase from Benny's lips, nor anaction, nor a gesture, although I remember quite clearly how somegrown-up people of that time looked, and the very words theysaid. 

For example, I recollect Miss Wilkes very distinctly, since Istudied her with great deliberation, and with a suspiciouswatchfulness that was above my years. In Miss Wilkes a type thathad hitherto been absolutely unfamiliar to us obtruded upon ourexperience. In our Eveless Eden, Woman, if not exactly _hirsuta ethorrida_, had always been 'of a certain age'. But Miss Wilkes wasa comparatively young thing, and she advanced not by any meansunconscious of her charms. All was feminine, all was impulsive, about Miss Wilkes; every gesture seemed eloquent with girlishinnocence and the playful dawn of life. In actual years I fancyshe was not so extremely youthful, since she was the responsibleand trusted headmistress of a large boarding-school for girls, but in her heart the joy of life ran high. Miss Wilkes had asmall, round face, with melting eyes, and when she lifted herhead, her ringlets seemed to vibrate and shiver like the bells ofa pagoda. She had a charming way of clasping her hands, andholding them against her bodice, while she said, 'Oh, but--reallynow?' in a manner inexpressibly engaging. She was very earnest, and she had a pleading way of calling out: 'O, but aren't youteasing me?' which would have brought a tiger fawning to hercrinoline. 

After we had spent a full year without any social distractions, it seems that our circle of acquaintances had now begun toextend, in spite of my Father's unwillingness to visit hisneighbours. He was a fortress that required to be stormed, butthere was considerable local curiosity about him, so that by-and-by escalading parties were formed, some of which were partlysuccessful. In the first place, Charles Kingsley had neverhesitated to come, from the beginning, ever since our arrival. Hehad reason to visit our neighbouring town rather frequently, andon such occasions he always marched up and attacked us. It wasextraordinary how persistent he was, for my Father must have beena very trying friend. I vividly recollect that a sort of cross-examination of would-be communicants was going on in our half-furnished drawing-room one weekday morning, when Mr. Kingsley wasannounced; my Father, in stentorian tones, replied: 'Tell Mr. Kingsley that I am engaged in examining Scripture with certain ofthe Lord's children. ' And I, a little later, kneeling at thewindow, while the candidates were being dismissed with prayer, watched the author of _Hypatia_ nervously careening about thegarden, very restless and impatient, yet preferring this ignominyto the chance of losing my Father's company altogether. Kingsley, a daring spirit, used sometimes to drag us out trawling with himin Torbay, and although his hawk's beak and rattling voicefrightened me a little, his was always a jolly presence thatbrought some refreshment to our seriousness. 

But the other visitors who came in Kingsley's wake and withouthis excuse--how they disturbed us! We used to be seated, myFather at his microscope, I with my map or book, in the down-stairs room we called the study. There would be a hush around usin which you could hear a sea-anemone sigh. Then, abruptly, wouldcome a ring at the front door; my Father would bend at me acorrugated brow, and murmur, under his breath, 'What's that?' andthen, at the sound of footsteps, would bolt into the verandah, and around the garden into the potting-shed. If it was no visitormore serious than the postman or the tax-gatherer, I used to goforth and coax the timid wanderer home. If it was a caller, aboveall a female caller, it was my privilege to prevaricate, remarking innocently that 'Papa is out!'

Into a paradise so carefully guarded, I know not how that serpentMiss Wilkes could penetrate, but there she was. She 'broke bread'with the Brethren at the adjacent town, from which she carried onstrategical movements, which were, up to a certain point, highlysuccessful. She professed herself deeply interested inmicroscopy, and desired that some of her young ladies shouldstudy it also. She came attended by an unimportant man, and bypupils to whom I had sometimes, very unwillingly, to show our'natural objects'. They would invade us, and all our quietnesswith chattering noise; I could bear none of them, and I wassingularly drawn to Miss Marks by finding that she disliked themtoo. 

By whatever arts she worked, Miss Wilkes certainly achieved acertain ascendancy. When the knocks came at the front door, I wasnow instructed to see whether the visitor were not she, before myFather bolted to the potting-shed. She was an untiring listener, and my Father had a genius for instruction. Miss Wilkes was neverweary of expressing what a revelation of the wonderful works ofGod in creation her acquaintance with us had been. She would gazethrough the microscope at awful forms, and would persevere untilthe silver rim which marked the confines of the drop of waterunder inspection would ripple inwards with a flash of light andvanish, because the drop itself had evaporated. 'Well, I can onlysay, how marvellous are Thy doings!' was a frequent ejaculationof Miss Wilkes, and one that was very well received. She learnedthe Latin names of many of the species, and it seems quitepathetic to me, looking back, to realize how much trouble thepoor woman took. She 'hung', as the expression is, upon myFather's every word, and one instance of this led to a certainrevelation. 

My Father, who had an extraordinary way of saying anything whatCame into his mind, stated one day, --the fashions, I must suppose, being under discussion, --that he thought white the only becomingcolour for a lady's stockings. The stockings of Miss Wilkes hadup to that hour been of a deep violet, but she wore white ones infuture whenever she came to our house. This delicacy would havebeen beyond my unaided infant observation, but I heard Miss Marksmention the matter, in terms which they supposed to be secret, toher confidante, and I verified it at the ankles of the lady. MissMarks continued by saying, in confidence, and 'quite as betweenyou and me, dear Mary Grace', that Miss Wilkes was a 'minx'. Ihad the greatest curiosity about words, and as this was a newone, I looked it up in our large 'English Dictionary'. But therethe definition of the term was this:--'Minx: the female ofminnock; a pert wanton. ' I was as much in the dark as ever. 

Whether she was the female of a minnock (whatever that may be) orwhether she was only a very well-meaning schoolmistress desirousof enlivening a monotonous existence, Miss Wilkes certainly tookus out of ourselves a good deal. Did my Father know what dangerhe ran? It was the opinion of Miss Marks and of Mary Grace thathe did not, and in the back-kitchen, a room which served thoseladies as a private oratory in the summer-time, much prayer wasoffered up that his eyes might be opened ere it was too late. ButI am inclined to think that they were open all the time, that, atall events, they were what the French call 'entr'ouvert', thatenough light for practical purposes came sifted in through hiseyelashes. At a later time, being reminded of Miss Wilkes, hesaid with a certain complaisance, 'Ah, yes! she proffered muchentertainment during my widowed years!' He used to go down to herboarding-school, the garden of which had been the scene of amurder, and was romantically situated on the edge of a quarriedcliff; he always took me with him, and kept me at his side allthrough these visits, notwithstanding Miss Wilkes' solicitude thatthe fatigue and excitement would be too much for the dear child'sstrength, unless I rested a little on the parlour sofa. 

About this time, the question of my education came up fordiscussion in the household, as indeed it well might. Miss Markshad long proved practically inadequate in this respect, herslender acquirements evaporating, I suppose, like the drops ofwater under the microscope, while the field of her general dutiesbecame wider. The subjects in which I took pleasure, and uponwhich I possessed books, I sedulously taught myself; the othersubjects, which formed the vast majority, I did not learn at all. Like Aurora Leigh, I brushed with extreme flounce The circle of the universe, especially zoology, botany and astronomy, but with the explicitexception of geology, which my Father regarded as tendingdirectly to the encouragement of infidelity. I copied a greatquantity of maps, and read all the books of travels that I couldfind. But I acquired no mathematics, no languages, no history, sothat I was in danger of gross illiteracy in these importantdepartments. 

My Father grudged the time, but he felt it a duty to do somethingto fill up these deficiencies, and we now started Latin, in alittle eighteenth-century reading-book, out of which myGrandfather had been taught. It consisted of strings of words, and of grim arrangements of conjunction and declension, presentedin a manner appallingly unattractive. I used to be set down inthe study, under my Father's eye, to learn a solid page of thiscompilation, while he wrote or painted. The window would be openin summer, and my seat was close to it. Outside, a bee wasshaking the clematis-blossom, or a red-admiral butterfly wasopening and shutting his wings on the hot concrete of theverandah, or a blackbird was racing across the lawn. It wasalmost more than human nature could bear to have to sit holdingup to my face the dreary little Latin book, with its sheepskincover that smelt of mildewed paste. 

But out of this strength there came an unexpected suddensweetness. The exercise of hearing me repeat my strings of nounsand verbs had revived in my Father his memories of the classics. In the old solitary years, a long time ago, by the shores ofCanadian rapids, on the edge of West Indian swamps, his Virgil hadbeen an inestimable solace to him. To extremely devout persons, there is something objectionable in most of the great writers ofantiquity. Horace, Lucretius, Terence, Catullus, Juvenal, --ineach there is one quality or another definitely repulsive to areader who is determined to know nothing but Christ and himcrucified. From time immemorial, however, it has been recognizedin the Christian church that this objection does not apply toVirgil. He is the most evangelical of the classics; he is the onewho can be enjoyed with least to explain away and least toexcuse. One evening my Father took down his Virgil from an uppershelf, and his thoughts wandered away from surrounding things; hetravelled in the past again. The book was a Delphin edition of1798, which had followed him in all his wanderings; there was agreat scratch on the sheep-skin cover that a thorn had made in aforest of Alabama. And then, in the twilight, as he shut thevolume at last, oblivious of my presence, he began to murmur andto chant the adorable verses by memory. 

 Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi, he warbled; and I stopped my play, and listened as if to anightingale, until he reached

 tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvan. 

'Oh Papa, what is that?' I could not prevent myself from asking. He translated the verses, he explained their meaning, but hisexposition gave me little interest. What to me was beautifulAmaryllis? She and her love-sick Tityrus awakened no imagewhatever in my mind. 

But a miracle had been revealed to me, the incalculable, theamazing beauty which could exist in the sound of verses. Myprosodical instinct was awakened quite suddenly that dim evening, as my Father and I sat alone in the breakfast-room after tea, serenely accepting the hour, for once, with no idea ofexhortation or profit. Verse, 'a breeze mid blossoms playing', asColeridge says, descended from the roses as a moth might havedone, and the magic of it took hold of my heart forever. Ipersuaded my Father, who was a little astonished at myinsistence, to repeat the lines over and over again. At last mybrain caught them, and as I walked in Benny's garden, or as Ihung over the tidal pools at the edge of the sea, all my innerbeing used to ring out with the sound of

 Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvan. 

CHAPTER VIII

IN the previous chapter I have dwelt on some of the lighterconditions of our life at this time; I must now turn to it in aless frivolous aspect. As my tenth year advanced, the developmentof my character gave my Father, I will not say anxiety, butmatter for serious reflection. My intelligence was now perceivedto be taking a sudden start; visitors drew my Father's attentionto the fact that I was 'coming out so much'. I grew rapidly instature, having been a little shrimp of a thing up to that time, and I no longer appeared much younger than my years. Lookingback, I do not think that there was any sudden mentaldevelopment, but that the change was mainly a social one. I hadbeen reserved, timid and taciturn; I had disliked the company ofstrangers. But with my tenth year, I certainly unfolded, so faras to become sociable and talkative, and perhaps I struck thosearound me as grown 'clever', because I said the things which Ihad previously only thought. There was a change, no doubt, yet Ibelieve that it was mainly physical, rather than mental. Myexcessive fragility--or apparent fragility, for I must have beenalways wiry--decreased; I slept better, and therefore, grew lessnervous; I ate better, and therefore put on flesh. If I preserveda delicate look--people still used to say in my presence, 'Thatdear child is not long for this world!'--it was in consequence ofa sort of habit into which my body had grown; it was atransparency which did not speak of what was in store for me, butof what I had already passed through. 

The increased activity of my intellectual system now showeditself in what I behove to be a very healthy form, directimitation. The rage for what is called 'originality' is pushed tosuch a length in these days that even children are not consideredpromising, unless they attempt things preposterous andunparalleled. From his earliest hour, the ambitious person istold that to make a road where none has walked before, to doeasily what it is impossible for others to do at all, to createnew forms of thought and expression, are the only recipes forgenius; and in trying to escape on all sides from everyresemblance to his predecessors, he adopts at once an air ofeccentricity and pretentiousness. This continues to be theaccepted view of originality; but, in spite of this conventionalopinion, I hold that the healthy sign of an activity of mind inearly youth is not to be striving after unheard-of miracles, butto imitate closely and carefully what is being said and done inthe vicinity. The child of a great sculptor will hang about thestudio, and will try to hammer a head out of a waste piece ofmarble with a nail; it does not follow that he too will be asculptor. The child of a politician will sit in committee with arow of empty chairs, and will harangue an imaginary senate frombehind the curtains. I, the son of a man who looked through amicroscope and painted what he saw there, would fair observe formyself, and paint my observations. It did not follow, alas! thatI was built to be a miniature-painter or a savant, but theactivity of a childish intelligence was shown by my desire tocopy the results of such energy as I saw nearest at hand. 

In the secular direction, this now took the form of my preparinglittle monographs on seaside creatures, which were arranged, tabulated and divided as exactly as possible on the pattern ofthose which my Father was composing for his _ActinologiaBritannica_. I wrote these out upon sheets of paper of the samesize as his printed page, and I adorned them with water-colourplates, meant to emulate his precise and exquisite illustrations. One or two of these ludicrous pastiches are still preserved, andin glancing at them now I wonder, not at any skill that theypossess, but at the perseverance and the patience, the evidenceof close and persistent labour. I was not set to these tasks bymy Father, who, in fact, did not much approve of them. He wastouched, too, with the 'originality' heresy, and exhorted me notto copy him, but to go out into the garden or the shore anddescribe something new, in a new way. That was quite impossible;I possessed no initiative. But I can now well understand why myFather, very indulgently and good-temperedly, deprecated theseexercises of mine. They took up, and, as he might well think, wasted, an enormous quantity of time; and they were, moreover, parodies, rather than imitations, of his writings, for I inventednew species, with sapphire spots and crimson tentacles and amberbands, which were close enough to his real species to bedisconcerting. He came from conscientiously shepherding theflocks of ocean, and I do not wonder that my ring-straked, speckled and spotted varieties put him out of countenance. If Ihad not been so innocent and solemn, he might have fancied I wasmocking him. 

These extraordinary excursions into science, falsely so called, occupied a large part of my time. There was a little spare roomat the back of our house, dedicated to lumber and to emptyportmanteaux. There was a table in it already, and I added astool; this cheerless apartment now became my study. I spent somany hours here, in solitude and without making a sound, that myFather's curiosity, if not his suspicion, was occasionallyaroused, and he would make a sudden raid on me. I was alwaysdiscovered, doubled up over the table, with my pen and ink, orelse my box of colours and tumbler of turbid water by my hand, working away like a Chinese student shut up in his matriculatingbox. 

It might have been done for a wager, if anything so simple hadever been dreamed of in our pious household. The apparatus wasslow and laboured. In order to keep my uncouth handwriting inbounds, I was obliged to rule not lines only, but borders to mypages. The subject did not lend itself to any flow of language, and I was obliged incessantly to borrow sentences, word for word, from my Father's published books. Discouraged by everyone aroundme, daunted by the laborious effort needful to carry out thescheme, it seems odd to me now that I persisted in so strange andwearisome an employment, but it became an absorbing passion, andwas indulged in to the neglect of other lessons and otherpleasures. 

My Father, as the spring advanced, used to come up to theBoxroom, as my retreat was called, and hunt me out into thesunshine. But I soon crept back to my mania. It gave him muchtrouble, and Miss Marks, who thought it sheer idleness, wasvociferous in objection. She would gladly have torn up all mywritings and paintings, and have set me to a useful task. MyFather, with his strong natural individualism, could not takethis view. He was interested in this strange freak of mine, andhe could not wholly condemn it. But he must have thought is alittle crazy, and it is evident to me now that it led to therevolution in domestic policy by which he began to encourage anyacquaintance with other young people as much as he had previouslydiscouraged it. He saw that I could not be allowed to spend mywhole time in a little stuffy room making solemn and ridiculousimitations of Papers read before the Linnaean Society. He wasgrieved, moreover, at the badness of my pictures, for I had nonative skill; and he tried to teach me his own system ofminiature-painting as applied to natural history. I was forced, in deep depression of spirits, to turn from my grotesquemonographs, and paint under my Father's eye, and, from a finisheddrawing of his, a gorgeous tropic bird in flight. Aided by myhabit of imitation, I did at length produce some thing whichmight have shown promise, if it had not been wrung from me, touchby touch, pigment by pigment, under the orders of a task-master. 

All this had its absurd side, but I seem to perceive that it hadalso its value. It is, surely, a mistake to look too near at handfor the benefits of education. What is actually taught in earlychildhood is often that part of training which makes leastimpression on the character, and is of the least permanentimportance. My labours failed to make me a zoologist, and themultitude of my designs and my descriptions have left mehelplessly ignorant of the anatomy of a sea-anemone. Yet I cannotlook upon the mental discipline as useless. It taught me toconcentrate my attention, to define the nature of distinctions, to see accurately, and to name what I saw. Moreover, it gave methe habit of going on with any piece of work I had in hand, notflagging because the interest or picturesqueness of the theme haddeclined, but pushing forth towards a definite goal, wellforeseen and limited beforehand. For almost any intellectualemployment in later life, it seems to me that this discipline wasvaluable. I am, however, not the less conscious how ludicrous wasthe mode in which, in my tenth year, I obtained it. 

My spiritual condition occupied my Father's thoughts veryinsistently at this time. Closing, as he did, most of the doorsof worldly pleasure and energy upon his conscience, he hadcontinued to pursue his scientific investigations without anysense of sin. Most fortunate it was, that the collecting ofmarine animals in the tidal pools, and the description of them inpages which were addressed to the wide scientific public, at notime occurred to him as in any way inconsistent with his holycalling. His conscience was so delicate, and often so morbid inits delicacy, that if that had occurred to him, he wouldcertainly have abandoned his investigations, and have been leftwithout an employment. But happily he justified his investigationby regarding it as a glorification of God's created works. In theintroduction of his _Actinologia Britannica_, written at the timewhich I have now reached in this narrative, he sent forth hislabours with a phrase which I should think unparalleled inconnection with a learned and technical biological treatise. Hestated, concerning that book, that he published it 'as one moretribute humbly offered to the glory of the Triune God, who iswonderful in counsel, and excellent in working'. Scientificinvestigation sincerely carried out in that spirit became a kindof weekday interpretation of the current creed of Sundays. 

The development of my faculties, of which I have spoken, extendedto the religious sphere no less than to the secular, Here, also, as I look back, I see that I was extremely imitative. I expandedin the warmth of my Father's fervour, and, on the whole, in amanner that was satisfactory to him. He observed the richer holdthat I was now taking on life; he saw my faculties branching inmany directions, and he became very anxious to secure mymaintenance in grace. In earlier years, certain sides of mycharacter had offered a sort of passive resistance to his ideas. I had let what I did not care to welcome pass over my mind in thecurious density that children adopt in order to avoid receivingimpressions--blankly, dumbly, achieving by stupidity what theycannot achieve by argument. I think that I had frequently donethis; that he had been brought up against a dead wall; althoughon other sides of my nature I had been responsive and docile. Butnow, in my tenth year, the imitative faculty got the upper hand, and nothing seemed so attractive as to be what I was expected tobe. If there was a doubt now, it lay in the other direction; itseemed hardly normal that so young a child should appear soreceptive and so apt. 

My Father believed himself justified, at this juncture, in makinga tremendous effort. He wished to secure me finally, exhaustively, before the age of puberty could dawn, before mysoul was fettered with the love of carnal things. He thought thatif I could now be identified with the 'saints', and could standon exactly their footing, a habit of conformity would be secured. I should meet the paganizing tendencies of advancing years withsecurity if I could be forearmed with all the weapons of asanctified life. He wished me, in short, to be received into thecommunity of the Brethren on the terms of an adult. There weredifficulties in the way of carrying out this scheme, and theywere urged upon him, more or less courageously, by the elders ofthe church. But he overbore them. What the difficulties were, andwhat were the arguments which he used to sweep those difficultiesaway, I must now explain, for in this lay the centre of ourfuture relations as father and son. 

In dealing with the peasants around him, among whom he wasengaged in an active propaganda, my Father always insisted on thenecessity of conversion. There must be a new birth and being, afresh creation in God. This crisis he was accustomed to regard asmanifesting itself in a sudden and definite upheaval. There mighthave been prolonged practical piety, deep and true contrition forsin, but these, although the natural and suitable prologue toconversion, were not conversion itself. People hung on at theconfines of regeneration, often for a very long time; my Fatherdealt earnestly with them, the elders ministered to them, withexplanation, exhortation and prayer. Such persons were in agracious state, but they were not in a state of grace. If theyshould suddenly die, they would pass away in an unconvertedcondition, and all that could be said in their favour was a vagueexpression of hope that they would benefit from God'suncovenanted mercies. 

But on some day, at some hour and minute, if life was spared tothem, the way of salvation would be revealed to these persons insuch an aspect that they would be enabled instantaneously toaccept it. They would take it consciously, as one takes a giftfrom the hand that offers it. This act of taking was the processof conversion, and the person who so accepted was a child of Godnow, although a single minute ago he had been a child of wrath. The very root of human nature had to be changed, and, in themajority of cases, this change was sudden, patent, and palpable. 

I have just said, 'in the majority of cases', because my Fatheradmitted the possibility of exceptions. The formula was, 'If anyman hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. ' As a rule, no one could possess the Spirit of Christ, without a consciousand full abandonment of the soul, and this, however carefully ledup to, and prepared for with tears and renunciations, was not, could not, be made, except at a set moment of time. Faith, in anesoteric and almost symbolic sense, was necessary, and could notbe a result of argument, but was a state of heart. In theseopinions my Father departed in no ways from the strictevangelical doctrine of the Protestant churches, but he held itin a mode and with a severity peculiar to himself. Now, it isplain that this state of heart, this voluntary deed ofacceptance, presupposed a full and rational consciousness of therelations of things. It might be clearly achieved by a person ofhumble cultivation, but only by one who was fully capable ofindependent thought, in other words by a more or less adultperson, The man or woman claiming the privileges of conversionmust be able to understand and to grasp what his religiouseducation was aiming at. 

It is extraordinary what trouble it often gave my Father to knowwhether he was justified in admitting to the communion people ofvery limited powers of expression. A harmless, humble labouringman would come with a request--to be allowed to 'break bread'. Itwas only by the use of strong leading questions that he could beinduced to mention Christ as the ground of his trust at all. Irecollect an elderly agricultural labourer being closeted for along time with my Father, who came out at last, in a sort ofdazed condition, and replied to our inquiries, --with a shrug ofhis shoulders as he said it, --'I was obliged to put the Name andBlood and Work of Jesus into his very mouth. It is true that heassented cordially at last, but I confess I was grievouslydaunted by the poor intelligence!'

But there was, or there might be, another class of persona, whomearly training, separation from the world, and the care of godlyparents had so early familiarized with the acceptable calling ofChrist that their conversion had occurred, unperceived andtherefore unrecorded, at an extraordinarily earl age. It would bein vain to look for a repetition of the phenomenon in thosecases. The heavenly fire must not be expected to descend a secondtime; the lips are touched with the burning coal once, and onceonly. If, accordingly, these precociously selected spirits are tobe excluded because no new birth is observed in them at a matureage, they must continue outside in the cold, since the phenomenoncannot be repeated. When, therefore, there is not possible anyfurther doubt of their being in possession of salvation, longerdelay is useless, and worse than useless. The fact of conversion, though not recorded nor even recollected, must be accepted on theevidence of confession of faith, and as soon as the intelligenceis evidently developed, the person not merely may, but should beaccepted into communion, although still immature in body, although in years still even a child. This my Father believed tobe my case, and in this rare class did he fondly persuade himselfto station me. 

As I have said, the congregation, --although docile and timid, andlittle able, as units, to hold their own against their minister--behind his back were faintly hostile to this plan. None of theirown children had ever been so much as suggested for membership, and each of themselves, in ripe years, had been subjected tosevere cross-examination. I think it was rather a bitter pill forsome of them to swallow that a pert little boy of ten should beadmitted, as a grown-up person, to all the hard-won privileges oftheir order. Mary Grace Burmington came back from her visits tothe cottagers, reporting disaffection here and there, grumblingsin the rank and file. But quite as many, especially of the women, enthusiastically supported my Father's wish, gloried aloud in themanifestations of my early piety, and professed to see in itsomething of miraculous promise. The expression 'another InfantSamuel' was widely used. I became quite a subject of contention. A war of the sexes threatened to break out over me; I was adisturbing element at cottage breakfasts. I was mentioned atpublic prayer-meetings, not indeed by name but, in theextraordinary allusive way customary in our devotions, as 'oneamongst us of tender years' or as 'a sapling in the Lord'svineyard'. 

To all this my Father put a stop in his own high-handed fashion. After the morning meeting, one Sunday in the autumn of 1859, hedesired the attention of the Saints to a personal matter whichwas, perhaps, not unfamiliar to them by rumour. That was, heexplained, the question of the admission of his, beloved littleson to the communion of saints in the breaking of bread. Heallowed--and I sat there in evidence, palely smiling at theaudience, my feet scarcely touching the ground--that I was notwhat is styled adult; I was not, he frankly admitted, a grown-upperson. But I was adult in a knowledge of the Lord; I possessedan insight into the plan of salvation which many a hoary headmight envy for its fullness, its clearness, its conformity withScripture doctrine. This was a palpable hit at more than onestumbler and fumbler after the truth, and several hoary headswere bowed. 

My Father then went on to explain very fully the position which Ihave already attempted to define. He admitted the absence in mycase of a sudden, apparent act of conversion resulting uponconviction of sin. But he stated the grounds of his belief that Ihad, in still earlier infancy, been converted, and he declaredthat if so, I ought no longer to be excluded from the privilegesof communion. He said, moreover, that he was willing on thisoccasion to waive his own privilege as a minister, and that hewould rather call on Brother Fawkes and Brother Bere, the leadingelders, to examine the candidate in his stead. This was a master-stroke, for Brothers Fawkes and Bere had been suspected ofleading the disaffection, and this threw all the burden ofresponsibility on them. The meeting broke up in great amiability, and my Father and I went home together in the very highest ofspirits. I, indeed, in my pride, crossed the verge ofindiscretion by saying: 'When I have been admitted to fellowship, Papa, shall I be allowed to call you "beloved Brother"?' MyFather was too well pleased with the morning's work to becritical. He laughed, and answered: 'That, my Love, thoughstrictly correct, would hardly, I fear, be thought judicious!'

It was suggested that my tenth birthday, which followed thispublic announcement by a few days, would be a capital occasionfor me to go through the ordeal. Accordingly, after dark (for ournew lamp was lighted for the first time in honour of the event), I withdrew alone into our drawing-room, which had just, atlength, been furnished, and which looked, I thought, very smart. Hither came to me, first Brother Fawkes, by himself; then BrotherBere, by himself; and then both together, so that you may say, ifyou are pedanticaly inclined, that I underwent three successiveinterviews. My Father, out of sight somewhere, was, of course, playing the part of stage manager. 

I felt not at all shy, but so highly strung that my whole natureseemed to throb with excitement. My first examiner, on the otherhand, was extremely confused. Fawkes, who was a builder in asmall business of his own, was short and fat; his complexion, which wore a deeper and more uniform rose-colour than usual, Iobserved to be starred with dew-drops of nervous emotion, whichhe wiped away at intervals with a large bandana handkerchief. Hewas so long in coming to the point, that I was obliged to leadhim to it myself, and I sat up on the sofa in the full lamplight, and testified my faith in the atonement with a fluency thatsurprised myself. Before I had done, Fawkes, a middle-aged manwith the reputation of being a very stiff employer of labour, wasweeping like a child. 

Bere, the carpenter, a long, thin and dry man, with a curiouslyimmobile eye, did not fall so easily a prey to my fascinations. He put me through my paces very sharply, for he had something ofthe temper of an attorney mingled with his religiousness. However, I was equal to him, and he, too, though he held his ownhead higher, was not less impressed than Fawkes had been, by thesurroundings of the occasion. Neither of them had ever been inour drawing-room since it was furnished, and I thought that eachof them noticed how smart the wallpaper was. Indeed, I believe Idrew their attention to it. After the two solitary examinationswere over, the elders came in again, as I have said, and theyprayed for a long time. We all three knelt at the sofa, I betweenthem. But by this time, to my great exaltation of spirits therehad succeeded an equally dismal depression. It was my turn now toweep, and I dimly remember any Father coming into the room, andmy being carried up to bed, in a state of collapse and fatigue, by the silent and kindly Miss Marks. 

On the following Sunday morning, I was the principal subjectwhich occupied an unusually crowded meeting. My Father, lookingwhiter and yet darker than usual, called upon Brother Fawkes andBrother Bere to state to the assembled saints what theirexperiences had been in connexion with their visits to 'one' whodesired to be admitted to the breaking of bread. It wastremendously exciting to me to hear myself spoken of with thisimpersonal publicity, and I had no fear of the result. 

Events showed that I had no need of fear. Fawkes and Bere weresometimes accused of a rivalry, which indeed broke out a fewyears later, and gave my Father much anxiety and pain. But onthis occasion their unanimity was wonderful. Each strove toexceed the other in the tributes which they paid to any piety. Myanswers had been so full and clear, my humility (save the mark!)had been so sweet, my acquaintance with Scripture so amazing, mytestimony to all the leading principles of salvation so distinctand exhaustive, that they could only say that they had feltconfounded, and yet deeply cheered and led far along their ownheavenly path, by hearing such accents fall from the lips of ababe and a suckling. I did not like being described as asuckling, but every lot has its crumpled rose-leaf, and in allother respects the report of the elders was a triumph. My Fatherthen clenched the whole matter by rising and announcing that Ihad expressed an independent desire to confess the Lord by theact of public baptism, immediately after which I should beadmitted to communion 'as an adult'. Emotion ran so high at this, that a large portion of the congregation insisted on walking withus back to our garden-gate, to the stupefaction of the rest ofthe villagers. 

My public baptism was the central event of my whole childhood. Everything, since the earliest dawn of consciousness, seemed tohave been leading up to it. Everything, afterwards, seemed to beleading down and away from it. The practice of immersingcommunicants on the sea-beach at Oddicombe had now beencompletely abandoned, but we possessed as yet no tank for abaptismal purpose in our own Room. The Room in the adjoiningtown, however, was really quite a large chapel, and it was amplyprovided with the needful conveniences. It was our practice, therefore, at this time, to claim the hospitality of ourneighbours. Baptisms were made an occasion for friendly relationsbetween the two congregations, and led to pleasant socialintercourse. I believe that the ministers and elders of the twomeetings arranged to combine their forces at these times, and tobaptize communicants from both congregations. 

The minister of the town meeting was Mr. S. , a very handsome oldgentleman, of venerable and powerful appearance. He had snowyhair and a long white beard, but from under shaggy eyebrows thereblazed out great black eyes which warned the beholder that thesnow was an ornament and not a sign of decrepitude. The eve of mybaptism at length drew near; it was fixed for October 12, almostexactly three weeks after my tenth birthday. I was dressed in oldclothes, and a suit of smarter things was packed up in a carpet-bag. After nightfall, this carpet-bag, accompanied by my Father, myself, Miss Marks and Mary Grace, was put in a four-wheeled cab, and driven, a long way in the dark, to the chapel of our friends. There we were received, in a blaze of lights, with a pressure ofhands, with a murmur of voices, with ejaculations and even withtears, and were conducted, amid unspeakable emotion, to places ofhonour in the front row of the congregation. 

The scene was one which would have been impressive, not merely tosuch hermits as we were, but even to worldly persons accustomedto life and to its curious and variegated experiences. To me itwas dazzling beyond words, inexpressibly exciting, an initiationto every kind of publicity and glory. There were many candidates, but the rest of them, --mere grownup men and women, --gave thanksaloud that it was their privilege to follow where I led. I wasthe acknowledged hero of the hour. Those were days when newspaperenterprise was scarcely in its infancy, and the event owednothing to journalistic effort; in spite of that, the news ofthis remarkable ceremony, the immersion of a little boy of tenyears old 'as an adult', had spread far and wide through thecounty in the course of three weeks. The chapel of our hosts was, as I have said, very large; it was commonly too large for theirneeds, but on this night it was crowded to the ceiling, and thecrowd had come--as every soft murmur assured me--to see _me_. 

There were people there who had travelled from Exeter, fromDartmouth, from Totnes, to witness so extraordinary a ceremony. There was one old woman of eighty-five who had come, myneighbours whispered to me, all the way from Moreton-Hampstead, on purpose to see me baptized. I looked at her crumpledcountenance with amazement, for there was no curiosity, nointerest visible in it. She sat there perfectly listless, lookingat nothing, but chewing between her toothless gums what appearedto be a jujube. 

In the centre of the chapel-floor a number of planks had beentaken up and revealed a pool which might have been supposed to bea small swimming-bath. We gazed down into this dark square ofmysterious waters, from the tepid surface of which faint swirlsof vapour rose. The whole congregation was arranged, tier abovetier, about the four straight sides of this pool; every personwas able to see what happened in it without any unseemlystruggling or standing on forms. Mr. S. Now rose, an impressivehieratic figure, commanding attention and imploring perfectsilence. He held a small book in his hand, and he was preparingto give out the number of a hymn, when an astounding incidenttook place. 

There was a great splash, and a tall young woman was perceived tobe in the baptismal pool, her arms waving above her head, and herfigure held upright in the water by the inflation of the airunderneath her crinoline which was blown out like a bladder, asin some extravagant old fashion-plate. Whether her feet touchedthe bottom of the font I cannot say, but I suppose they did so. An indescribable turmoil of shrieks and cries followed on thisextraordinary apparition. A great many people excitedly calledupon other people to be calm, and an instance was given of theremark of James Smith that

 He who, in quest of quiet, 'Silence!' hoots Is apt to make the hubbub he imputes. 

The young woman, in a more or less fainting condition, waspresently removed from the water, and taken into the sort of tentwhich was prepared for candidates. It was found that she herselfhad wished to be a candidate and had earnestly desired to bebaptized, but that this had been forbidden by her parents. On thesupposition that she fell in by accident, a pious coincidence wasdetected in this affair; the Lord had pre-ordained that sheshould be baptized in spite of all opposition. But my Father, inhis shrewd way, doubted. He pointed out to us, next morning, that, in the first place, she had not, in any sense, beenbaptized, as her head had not been immersed; and that, in thesecond place, she must have deliberately jumped in, since, hadshe stumbled and fallen forward, her hands and face would havestruck the water, whereas they remained quite dry. She belonged, however, to the neighbour congregation, and we had noresponsibility to pursue the inquiry any further. 

Decorum being again secured, Mr. S. , with unimpaired dignity, proposed to the congregation a hymn, which was long enough tooccupy them during the preparations for the actual baptism. Hethen retired to the vestry, and I (for I was to be the first totestify) was led by Miss Marks and Mary Grace into the species oftent of which I have just spoken. Its pale sides seemed to shakewith the jubilant singing of the saints outside, while part of myclothing was removed and I was prepared for immersion. A suddencessation of the hymn warned us that to Minister was now ready, and we emerged into the glare of lights and faces to find Mr. S. Already standing in the water up to his knees. Feeling as smallas one of our microscopical specimens, almost infinitesimallytiny as I descended into his Titanic arms, I was handed down thesteps to him. He was dressed in a kind of long surplice, underneath which--as I could not, even in that moment, helpobserving--the air gathered in long bubbles which he strove toflatten out. The end of his noble beard he had tucked away; hisshirt-sleeves were turned up at the wrist. 

The entire congregation was now silent, so silent that theuncertain splashing of my feet as I descended seemed to deafenone. Mr. S. , a little embarrassed by my short stature, succeededat length in securing me with one palm on my chest and the otherbetween my shoulders. He said, slowly, in a loud, sonorous voicethat seemed to enter my brain and empty it, 'I baptize thee, myBrother, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the HolyGhost!' Having intoned this formula, he then gently flung mebackwards until I was wholly under the water, and then--as hebrought me up again, and tenderly steadied my feet on the stepsof the font, and delivered me, dripping and spluttering, into theanxious hands of the women, who hurried me to the tent--the wholeassembly broke forth in a thunder of song, a paean of praise toGod for this manifestation of his marvellous goodness and mercy. So great was the enthusiasm, that it could hardly be restrainedso as to allow the other candidates, the humdrum adults whofollowed in my wet and glorious footsteps, to undergo a ritualabout which, in their case, no one in the congregation pretendedto be able to take even the most languid interest. 

My Father's happiness during the next few weeks it is notpathetic to me to look back upon. His sternness melted into auniversal complaisance. He laughed and smiled, he paid to myopinions the tribute of the gravest considerations, he indulged--utterly unlike his wont--in shy and furtive caresses. I couldexpress no wish that he did not attempt to fulfill, and the onlywarning which he cared to give me was one, very gently expressed, against spiritual pride. 

This was certainly required, for I was puffed out with a sense ofmy own holiness. I was religiously confidential with my Father, condescending with Miss Marks (who I think had given up trying tomake it all out), haughty with the servants, and insufferablypatronizing with those young companions of my own age with whom Iwas now beginning to associate. 

I would fain close this remarkable episode on a key of solemnity, but alas! If I am to be loyal to the truth, I must record thatsome of the other little boys presently complained to Mary Gracethat I put out my tongue at them in mockery, during the servicein the Room, to remind them that I now broke bread as one of theSaints and that they did not. 

CHAPTER IX

THE result of my being admitted into the communion of the'Saints' was that, as soon as the nine days' wonder of the thingpassed by, my position became, if anything, more harassing andpressed than ever. It is true that freedom was permitted to me incertain directions; I was allowed to act a little more on my ownresponsibility, and was not so incessantly informed what 'theLord's will' might be in this matter and in that, because it wasnow conceived that, in such dilemmas, I could command privateintelligence of my own. But there was no relaxation of our rigidmanner of life, and I think I now began, by comparing it with thehabits of others, to perceive how very strict it was. 

The main difference in my lot as a communicant from that of amere dweller in the tents of righteousness was that I wasexpected to respond with instant fervour to every appeal ofconscience. When I did not do this, my position was almost worsethan it had been before, because of the livelier nature of theresponsibility which weighed upon me. My little faults ofconduct, too, assumed shapes of terrible importance, since theyproceeded from one so signally enlightened. My Father was nevertired of reminding me that, now that I was a professingChristian, I must remember, in everything I did, that I was anexample to others. He used to draw dreadful pictures ofsupposititious little boys who were secretly watching me fromafar, and whose whole career, in time and in eternity, might bedisastrously affected if I did not keep my lamp burning. 

The year which followed upon my baptism did not open very happilyat the Room. Considerable changes had now taken place in thecommunity. My Father's impressive services, a certain prestige inhis preaching, the mere fact that so vigorous a person was at thehead of affairs, had induced a large increase in the attendance. By this time, if my memory does not fail me as to dates, we hadleft the dismal loft over the stables, and had built ourselves aperfectly plain, but commodious and well-arranged chapel in thecentre of the village. This greatly added to the prosperity ofthe meeting. Everything had combined to make our servicespopular, and had attracted to us a new element of younger people. Numbers of youthful masons and carpenters, shop-girls anddomestic servants, found the Room a pleasant trysting-place, andwere more or less superficially induced to accept salvation as itwas offered to them in my Father's searching addresses. My Fatherwas very shrewd in dealing with mere curiosity or idle motive, and sharply packed off any youths who simply came to make eyes atthe girls, or any 'maids' whose only object was to display theirnew bonnet-strings. But he was powerless against a temporarysincerity, the simulacrum of a true change of heart. I have oftenheard him say, --of some young fellow who had attended ourservices with fervour for a little while, and then had turnedcold and left us, --'and I thought that the Holy Ghost had wroughtin him!' Such disappointments grievously depress an evangelist. 

Religious bodies are liable to strange and unaccountablefluctuations. At the beginning of the third year since ourarrival, the congregation seemed to be in a very prosperousstate, as regards attendance, conversions and other outward signsof activity. Yet it was quite soon after this that my Fatherbegan to be harassed by all sorts of troubles, and the spring of1860 was a critical moment in the history of the community. Although he loved to take a very high tone about the Saints, andinvolved them sometimes in a cloud of laudatory metaphysics, thetruth was that they were nothing more than peasants of a somewhatprimitive type, not well instructed in the rules of conduct andliable to exactly the same weaknesses as invade the ruralcharacter in every country and latitude. That they were exhortedto behave as 'children of light', and that the majority of themsincerely desired to do credit to their high calling, could notprevent their being beset by the sins which had affected theirforebears for generations past. 

The addition of so many young persons of each sex to thecommunion led to an entirely new class of embarrassment. Nowthere arose endless difficulties about 'engagements', aboutyouthful brethren who 'went out walking' with even more youthfulsisters. Glancing over my Father's notes, I observe the ceaselessrepetition of cases in which So-and-So is 'courting' Such-an-one, followed by the melancholy record that he has 'deserted' her. Inmy Father's stern language, 'desertion' would very often mean nomore than that the amatory pair had blamelessly changed theirminds; but in some cases it meant more and worse than this. Itwas a very great distress to him that sometimes the young men andwomen who showed the most lively interest in Scripture, and whohad apparently accepted the way of salvation with the fullestintelligence, were precisely those who seemed to struggle withleast success against a temptation to unchastity. He put thisdown to the concentrated malignity of Satan, who directed hismost poisoned darts against the fairest of the flock. 

In addition to these troubles, there came recriminations, mutualcharges of drunkenness in private, all sorts of petty jealousyand scandal. There were frequent definite acts of 'back-sliding'on the part of members, who had in consequence to be 'put away'. No one of these cases might be in itself extremely serious, butwhen many of them came together they seemed to indicate that thechurch was in an unhealthy condition. The particulars of many ofthese scandals were concealed from me, but I was an adroit littlepitcher, and had cultivated the art of seeming to be interestedin something else, a book or a flower, while my elders weretalking confidentially. As a rule, while I would fain haveacquired more details, I was fairly well-informed about theerrors of the Saints, although I was often quaintly ignorant ofthe real nature of those errors. 

Not infrequently, persons who had fallen into sin repented of itunder my Father's penetrating ministrations. They were apt intheir penitence to use strange symbolic expressions. I rememberMrs. Pewings, our washerwoman, who had been accused ofintemperance and had been suspended from communion, reappearingwith a face that shone with soap and sanctification, and sayingto me, 'Oh! blessed Child, you're wonderin' to zee old Pewingshere again, but He have rolled away my mountain!' For once, I wasabsolutely at a loss, but she meant that the Lord had removed theload of her sins, and restored her to a state of grace. 

It was in consequence of these backslidings, which had becomealarmingly frequent, that early in 1860 my Father determined onproclaiming a solemn fast. He delivered one Sunday what seemed tome an awe-inspiring address, calling upon us all closely toexamine our consciences, and reminding us of the appalling fateof the church of Laodicea. He said that it was not enough to havemade a satisfactory confession of faith, nor even to have sealedthat confession in baptism, if we did not live up to ourprotestations. Salvation, he told us, must indeed precedeholiness of life, yet both are essential. It was a dark and rainywinter morning when he made this terrible address, whichfrightened the congregation extremely. When the marrow wascongealed within our bones, and when the bowed heads before him, and the faintly audible sobs of the women in the background, toldhim that his lesson had gone home, he pronounced the keeping of aday in the following week as a fast of contrition. 'Those of youwho have to pursue your daily occupations will pursue them, butsustained only by the bread of affliction and by the water ofaffliction. '

His influence over these gentle peasant people was certainlyremarkable, for no effort was made to resist his exhortation. Itwas his customary plan to stay a little while, after the morningmeeting was over, and in a very affable fashion to shake handswith the Saints. But on this occasion he stalked forth without aword, holding my hand tight until we had swept out into thestreet. 

How the rest of the congregation kept this fast I do not know. But it was a dreadful day for us. I was awakened in the pitchynight to go off with my Father to the Room, where a scantygathering held a penitential prayer-meeting. We came home, asdawn was breaking, and in process of time sat down to breakfast, which consisted--at that dismal hour--of slices of dry bread anda tumbler of cold water each. During the morning, I was notallowed to paint, or write, or withdraw to my study in the box-room. We sat, in a state of depression not to be described, inthe breakfast-room, reading books of a devotional character, withoccasional wailing of some very doleful hymn. Our midday dinnercame at last; the meal was strictly confined, as before, to dryslices of the loaf and a tumbler of water. 

The afternoon would have been spent as the morning was, and so myFather spent it. But Miss Marks, seeing my white cheeks and thedark rings around my eyes, besought leave to take me out for awalk. This was permitted, with a pledge that I should be given nospecies of refreshment. Although I told Miss Marks, in the courseof the walk, that I was feeling 'so leer' (our Devonshire phrasefor hungry), she dared not break her word. Our last meal was ofthe former character, and the day ended by our trapesing throughthe wet to another prayer-meeting, whence I returned in a statebordering on collapse and was put to bed without furthernourishment. There was no great hardship in all this, I daresay, but it was certainly rigorous. My Father took pains to see thatwhat he had said about the bread and water of affliction wascarried out in the bosom of his own family, and by no one moreunflinchingly than by himself. 

My attitude to other people's souls when I was out of my Father'ssight was now a constant anxiety to me. In our tattling world ofsmall things he had extraordinary opportunities of learning how Ibehaved when I was away from home; I did not realize this, and Iused to think his acquaintance with my deeds and words savouredalmost of wizardry. He was accustomed to urge upon me thenecessity of 'speaking for Jesus in season and out of season', and he so worked upon my feelings that I would start forth likeSt. Teresa, wild for the Moors and martyrdom. But any actualimpact with persons marvelously cooled my zeal, and I shouldhardly ever have 'spoken' at all if it had not been for thatunfortunate phrase 'out of season'. It really seemed that onemust talk of nothing else, since if an occasion was not in seasonit was out of season; there was no alternative, no close time forsouls. 

My Father was very generous. He used to magnify any little effortthat I made, with stammering tongue, to sanctify a visit; andpeople, I now see, were accustomed to give me a friendly lead inthis direction, so that they might please him by reporting that Ihad 'testified' in the Lord's service. The whole thing, however, was artificial, and was part of my Father's restless inability tolet well alone. It was not in harshness or in ill-nature that heworried me so much; on the contrary, it was all part of his too-anxious love. He was in a hurry to see me become a shining light, everything that he had himself desired to be, yet with none ofhis shortcomings. 

It was about this time that he harrowed my whole soul intopainful agitation by a phrase that he let fall, without, Ibelieve, attaching any particular importance to it at the time. He was occupied, as he so often was, in polishing and burnishingmy faith, and he was led to speak of the day when I should ascendthe pulpit to preach my first sermon. 'Oh! if I may be there, outof sight, and hear the gospel message proclaimed from your lips, then I shall say, "My poor work is done. Oh! Lord Jesus, receivemy spirit". ' I cannot express the dismay which this aspirationgave me, the horror with which I anticipated such a nuncdimittis. I felt like a small and solitary bird, caught and hungout hopelessly and endlessly in a great glittering cage. Theclearness of the personal image affected me as all the texts andprayers and predictions had failed to do. I saw myself imprisonedfor ever in the religious system which had caught me and wouldwhirl my helpless spirit as in the concentric wheels of mynightly vision. I did not struggle against it, because I believedthat it was inevitable, and that there was no other way of makingpeace with the terrible and ever-watchful 'God who is a jealousGod'. But I looked forward to my fate without zeal and withoutexhilaration, and the fear of the Lord altogether swallowed upand cancelled any notion of the love of Him. 

I should do myself an injustice, however, if I described myattitude to faith at this time as wanting in candour. I did veryearnestly desire to follow where my Father led. That passion forimitation, which I have already discussed, was strongly developedat this time, and it induced me to repeat the language of piousbooks in godly ejaculations which greatly edified my grown-upcompanions, and were, so far as I can judge, perfectly sincere. Iwished extremely to be good and holy, and I had no doubt in mymind of the absolute infallibility of my Father as a guide inheavenly things. But I am perfectly sure that there never was amoment in which my heart truly responded, with native ardour, tothe words which flowed so readily, in such a stream of unction, from my anointed lips. I cannot recall anything but anintellectual surrender; there was never joy in the act ofresignation, never the mystic's rapture at feeling his phantomself, his own threadbare soul, suffused, thrilled through, robedagain in glory by a fire which burns up everything personal andindividual about him. 

Through thick and thin I clung to a hard nut of individuality, deep down in my childish nature. To the pressure from without Iresigned everything else, my thoughts, my words, myanticipations, my assurances, but there was something which Inever resigned, my innate and persistent self. Meek as I seemed, and gently respondent, I was always conscious of that innermostquality which I had learned to recognize in my earlier days inIslington, that existence of two in the depths who could speak toone another in inviolable secrecy. 

'This a natural man may discourse of, and that very knowingly, andgive a kind of natural credit to it, as to a history that may betrue; but firmly to believe that there is divine truth in allthese things, and to have a persuasion of it stronger than of thevery thing we see with our eyes; such an assent as this is thepeculiar work of the Spirit of God, and is certainly savingfaith. '

This passage is not to be found in the writings of anyextravagant Plymouth Brother, but in one of the most solidclassics of the Church, in Archbishop Leighton's _Commentary onthe First Epistle of Peter_. I quote it because it defines, moreexactly than words of my own could hope to do, the differencewhich already existed, and in secrecy began forthwith to be moreand more acutely accentuated between my Father and myself. He didindeed possess this saving faith, which could move mountains ofevidence, and suffer no diminution under the action of failure ordisappointment. I, on the other hand--as I began to feel dimlythen, and see luminously now--had only acquired the habit ofgiving what the Archbishop means by 'a kind of natural credit' tothe doctrine so persistently impressed upon my conscience. Fromits very nature this could not but be molten in the dews andexhaled in the sunshine of life and thought and experience. 

My Father, by an indulgent act for the caprice of which I cannotwholly account, presently let in a flood of imaginative lightwhich was certainly hostile to my heavenly calling. Myinstinctive interest in geography has already been mentioned. This was the one branch of knowledge in which I needed noinstruction, geographical information seeming to soak into thecells of my brain without an effort. At the age of eleven, I knewa great deal more of maps, and of the mutual relation oflocalities all over the globe, than most grown-up people do. Itwas almost a mechanical acquirement. I was now greatly taken withthe geography of the West Indies, of every part of which I hadmade MS. Maps. There was something powerfully attractive to myfancy in the great chain of the Antilles, lying on the sea likean open bracelet, with its big jewels and little jewels strung onan invisible thread. I liked to shut my eyes and see it all, in amental panorama, stretched from Cape Sant' Antonio to theSerpent's Mouth. Several of these lovely islands, these emeraldsand amethysts set on the Caribbean Sea, my Father had known wellin his youth, and I was importunate in questioning him aboutthem. One day, as I multiplied inquiries, he rose in hisimpetuous way, and climbing to the top of a bookcase, broughtdown a thick volume and presented it to me. 'You'll find allabout the Antilles there, ' he said, and left me with _TomCringle's Log_ in my possession. 

The embargo laid upon every species of fiction by my Mother'spowerful scruple had never been raised, although she had beendead four years. As I have said in an earlier chapter, this was apoint on which I believe that my Father had never entirely agreedwith her. He had, however, yielded to her prejudice; and no workof romance, no fictitious story, had ever come in my way. It isremarkable that among our books, which amounted to many hundreds, I had never discovered a single work of fiction until my Fatherhimself revealed the existence of Michael Scott's wildmasterpiece. So little did I understand what was allowable in theway of literary invention that I began the story without a doubtthat it was true, and I think it was my Father himself who, inanswer to an inquiry, explained to me that it was 'all made up'. He advised me to read the descriptions of the sea, and of themountains of Jamaica, and 'skip' the pages which gave imaginaryadventures and conversations. But I did not take his counsel;these latter were the flower of the book to me. I had never read, never dreamed of anything like them, and they filled my wholehorizon with glory and with joy. 

I suppose that when my Father was a younger man, and lesspietistic, he had read _Tom Cringle's Log_ with pleasure, becauseit recalled familiar scenes to him. Much was explained by thefact that the frontispiece of this edition was a delicate line-engraving of Blewfields, the great lonely house in a garden ofJamaican all-spice where for eighteen months he had worked as anaturalist. He could not look at this print without recallingexquisite memories and airs that blew from a terrestrialparadise. But Michael Scott's noisy amorous novel of adventurewas an extraordinary book to put in the hands of a child who hadnever been allowed to glance at the mildest and most febrifugalstory-book. 

It was like giving a glass of brandy neat to someone who hadnever been weaned from a milk diet. I have not read _Tom Cringle'sLog_ from that day to this, and I think that I should be unwillingnow to break the charm of memory, which may be largely illusion. But I remember a great deal of the plot and not a little of thelanguage, and, while I am sure it is enchantingly spirited, I amquite as sure that the persons it describes were far from beingunspotted by the world. The scenes at night in the streets ofSpanish Town surpassed not merely my experience, but, thankgoodness, my imagination. The nautical personages used, in theirconversations, what is called 'a class of language', and thereran, if I am not mistaken, a glow and gust of life through theromance from beginning to end which was nothing if it was notresolutely pagan. 

There were certain scenes and images in _Tom Cringle's Log_ whichmade not merely a lasting impression upon my mind, but tinged myoutlook upon life. The long adventures, fightings and escapes, sudden storms without, and mutinies within, drawn forth as theywere, surely with great skill, upon the fiery blue of theboundless tropical ocean, produced on my inner mind a sort ofglimmering hope, very vaguely felt at first, slowly developing, long stationary and faint, but always tending towards a beliefthat I should escape at last from the narrowness of the life weled at home, from this bondage to the Law and the Prophets. 

I must not define too clearly, nor endeavour too formally toinsist on the blind movements of a childish mind. But of this Iam quite sure, that the reading and re-reading of _Tom Cringle'sLog_ did more than anything else, in this critical eleventh yearof my life, to give fortitude to my individuality, which was ingreat danger--as I now see--of succumbing to the pressure myFather brought to bear upon it from all sides. My soul was shutup, like Fatima, in a tower to which no external influences couldcome, and it might really have been starved to death, or havelost the power of recovery and rebound, if my captor, by somefreak not yet perfectly accounted for, had not gratuitouslyopened a little window in it and added a powerful telescope. Thedaring chapters of Michael Scott's picaresque romance of thetropics were that telescope and that window. 

In the spring of this year, I began to walk about the village andeven proceed for considerable distances into the country bymyself, and after reading _Tom Cringle's Log_ those expeditionswere accompanied by a constant hope of meeting with someadventures. I did not court events, however, except in fancy, forI was very shy of real people, and would break off some gallantdream of prowess on the high seas to bolt into a field and hidebehind the hedge, while a couple of labouring men went by. Sometimes, however, the wave of a great purpose would bear me on, as when once, but certainly at an earlier date than I have nowreached, hearing the dangers of a persistent drought much dweltupon, I carried my small red watering pot, full of water, up tothe top of the village, and then all the way down Petittor Lane, and discharged its contents in a cornfield, hoping by this act toimprove the prospects of the harvest. A more eventful excursionmust be described, because of the moral impression it leftindelibly upon me. 

I have described the sequestered and beautiful hamlet of Barton, to which I was so often taken visiting by Mary Grace Burmington. At Barton there lived a couple who were objects of peculiarinterest to me, because of the rather odd fact that having come, out of pure curiosity, to see me baptized, they had been then andthere deeply convinced of their spiritual danger. These were JohnBrooks, an Irish quarryman, and his wife, Ann Brooks. Thesepeople had not merely been hitherto unconverted, but they hadopenly treated the Brethren with anger and contempt. They came, indeed, to my baptism to mock, but they went away impressed. 

Next morning, when Mrs. Brooks was at the wash tub, as she toldus, Hell opened at her feet, and the Devil came out holding along scroll on which the list of her sins was written. She was somuch excited, that the motion brought about a miscarriage and shewas seriously ill. Meanwhile, her husband, who had been equallymoved at the baptism, was also converted, and as soon as she waswell enough, they were baptized together, and then 'broke bread'with us. The case of the Brookses was much talked about, and wasattributed, in a distant sense, to me; that is to say, if I hadnot been an object of public curiosity, the Brookses might haveremained in the bond of iniquity. I, therefore, took a veryparticular interest in them, and as I presently heard that theywere extremely poor, I was filled with a fervent longing tominister to their necessities. 

Somebody had lately given me a present of money, and I beggedlittle sums here and there until I reached the very considerablefigure of seven shillings and sixpence. With these coins safe ina little linen bag, I started one Sunday afternoon, withoutsaying anything to anyone, and I arrived at the Brookses' cottagein Barton. John Brooks was a heavy dirty man, with a pock-markedface and two left legs; his broad and red face carried smallside-whiskers in the manner of that day, but was otherwiseshaved. When I reached the cottage, husband and wife were athome, doing nothing at all in the approved Sunday style. I wasreceived by them with some surprise, but I quickly explained mymission, and produced my linen bag. To my disgust, all JohnBrooks said was, 'I know'd the Lord would provide, ' and afteremptying my little bag into the palm of an enormous hand, heswept the contents into his trousers pocket, and slapped his leg. He said not one single word of thanks or appreciation, and I wasabsolutely cut to the heart. 

I think that in the course of a long life I have neverexperienced a bitterer disappointment. The woman, who wasquicker, and more sensitive, doubtless saw my embarrassment, butthe form of comfort which she chose was even more wounding to mypride. 'Never mind, little master, ' she said, 'you shall come andsee me feed the pigs. ' But there is a limit to endurance, andwith a sense of having been cruelly torn by the tooth ofingratitude, I fled from the threshold of the Brookses, never toreturn. 

At tea that afternoon, I was very much downcast, and under cross-examination from Miss Marks, all my little story came out. MyFather, who had been floating away in a meditation, as he veryoften did, caught a word that interested him and descended toconsciousness. I had to tell my tale over again, this time verysadly, and with a fear that I should be reprimanded. But on thecontrary, both my Father and Miss Marks were attentive and mostsympathetic, and I was much comforted. 'We must remember they arethe Lord's children, ' said my Father. 'Even the Lord can't make asilk purse out of a sow's ear, ' said Miss Marks, who wasconsiderably ruffled. 'Alas! alas!' replied my Father, waving hishand with a deprecating gesture. 'The dear child!' said MissMarks, bristling with indignation, and patting my hand across thetea-table. 'The Lord will reward your zealous loving care of hispoor, even if they have neither the grace nor the knowledge tothank you, ' said my Father, and rested his brown eyes meltinglyupon me. 'Brutes!' said Miss Marks, thinking of John and AnnBrooks. 'Oh no! no!' replied my Father, 'but hewers of wood anddrawers of water! We must bear with the limited intelligence. 'All this was an emollient to my wounds, and I became consoled. But the springs of benevolence were dried up within me, and tothis day I have never entirely recovered from the shock of JohnBrooks's coarse leer and his 'I know'd the Lord would provide. 'The infant plant of philanthropy was burned in my bosom as if byquick-lime. 

In the course of the summer, a young schoolmaster called on myFather to announce to him that he had just opened a day-schoolfor the sons of gentlemen in our vicinity, and he begged for thefavour of a visit. My Father returned his call; he lived in oneof the small white villas, buried in laurels, which gave adiscreet animation to our neighbourhood. Mr. M. Was frank andmodest, deferential to my Father's opinions and yet capable ofdefending his own. His school and he produced an excellentimpression, and in August I began to be one of his pupils. Theschool was very informal; it was held in the two principaldwelling-rooms on the ground-floor of the villa, and I do notremember that Mr. M. Had any help from an usher. 

There were perhaps twenty boys in the school at most, and oftenfewer. I made the excursion between home and school four times aday; if I walked fast, the transit might take five minutes, and, as there were several objects of interest in the way, it might bespread over an hour. In fine weather the going to and from schoolwas very delightful, and small as the scope of it was, it couldbe varied almost indefinitely. I would sometimes meet with aschoolfellow proceeding in the same direction, and my Father, observing us over the wall one morning, was amused to notice thatI always progressed by dancing along the curbstone sideways, myface turned inwards and my arms beating against my legs, conversing loudly all the time. This was a case of pure heredity, for so he used to go to his school, forty years before, along thestreets of Poole. 

One day when fortunately I was alone, I was accosted by an oldgentleman, dressed as a dissenting minister. He was pleased withmy replies, and he presently made it a habit to be taking hisconstitutional when I was likely to be on the high road. Webecame great friends, and he took me at last to his house, a verymodest place, where to my great amazement, there hung in thedining-room, two large portraits, one of a man, the other of awoman, in extravagant fancy-dress. My old friend told me that theformer was a picture of himself as he had appeared, 'long ago, inmy unconverted days, on the stage'. 

I was so ignorant as not to have the slightest conception of whatwas meant by the stage, and he explained to me that he had beenan actor and a poet, before the Lord had opened his eyes tobetter things. I knew nothing about actors, but poets werealready the objects of my veneration. My friend was the firstpoet I had ever seen. He was no less a person than James SheridanKnowles, the famous author of _Virginius_ and _The Hunchback_, whohad become a Baptist minister in his old age. When, at home, Imentioned this acquaintance, it awakened no interest. I believethat my Father had never heard, or never noticed, the name of onewho had been by far the most eminent English playwright of thatage. 

It was from Sheridan Knowles' lips that I first heard fall thename of Shakespeare. He was surprised, I fancy, to find me socuriously advanced in some branches of knowledge, and so utterlyignorant of others. He could hardly credit that the names ofHamlet and Falstaff and Prospero meant nothing to a little boywho knew so much theology and geography as I did. Mr. Knowlessuggested that I should ask my schoolmaster to read some of theplays of Shakespeare with the boys, and he proposed _The Merchantof Venice_ as particularly well-suited for this purpose. Irepeated what my aged friend (Mr. Sheridan Knowles must have beennearly eighty at that time) had said, and Mr. M. Accepted theidea with promptitude. (All my memories of this my earliestschoolmaster present him to me as intelligent, amiable and quick, although I think not very soundly prepared for his profession. )

Accordingly, it was announced that the reading of Shakespearewould be one of our lessons, and on the following afternoon webegan _The Merchant of Venice_. There was one large volume, and itwas handed about the class; I was permitted to read the part ofBassanio, and I set forth, with ecstatic pipe, how

 In Belmont is a lady richly left, And she is fair, and fairer than that word!

Mr. M. Must have had some fondness for the stage himself; hispleasure in the Shakespeare scenes was obvious, and nothing elsethat he taught me made so much impression on me as what he saidabout a proper emphasis in reading aloud. I was in the seventhheaven of delight, but alas! we had only reached the second actof the play, when the readings mysteriously stopped. I never knewthe cause, but I suspect that it was at my Father's desire. Heprided himself on never having read a page of Shakespeare, and onnever having entered a theatre but once. I think I must havespoken at home about the readings, and that he must have giventhe schoolmaster a hint to return to the ordinary schoolcurriculum. 

The fact that I was 'a believer', as it was our custom to callone who had been admitted to the arcana of our religion, and thattherefore, in all commerce with 'unbelievers', it was my duty tobe 'testifying for my Lord, in season and out of season'--thisprevented my forming any intimate friendships at my first school. I shrank from the toilsome and embarrassing act of button-holinga schoolfellow as he rushed out of class, and of pressing uponhim the probably unintelligible question 'Have you found Jesus?'It was simpler to avoid him, to slip like a lizard though thelaurels and emerge into solitude. 

The boys had a way of plunging out into the road in front of theschool-villa when afternoon school was over; it was a pleasantrural road lined with high hedges and shadowed by elm-trees. Here, especially towards the summer twilight, they used to lingerand play vague games, swooping and whirling in the decliningsunshine, and I was glad to join these bat-like sports. But mycompany, though not avoided, was not greatly sought for. I thinkthat something of my curious history was known, and that I was, not unkindly but instinctively, avoided, as an animal of adifferent species, not allied to the herd. The conventionality oflittle boys is constant; the colour of their traditions isuniform. At the same time, although I made no friends, I found noenemies. In class, except in my extraordinary aptitude forgeography, which was looked upon as incomprehensible and almostuncanny, I was rather behind than in front of the others. I, therefore, awakened no jealousies, and, intent on my own dreams, I think my little shadowy presence escaped the notice of most ofmy schoolfellows. 

By the side of the road I have mentioned, between the school andmy home, there was a large horse-pond. The hedge folded aroundthree sides of it, while ancient pollard elms bent over it, andchequered with their foliage in it the reflection of the sky. Theroadside edge of this pond was my favourite station; it consistedof a hard clay which could be moulded into fairly tenaciousforms. Here I created a maritime empire--islands, a seaboard withharbours, light-houses, fortifications. My geographicalimitativeness had its full swing. Sometimes, while I wascreating, a cart would be driven roughly into the pond, and ahorse would drink deep of my ocean, his hooves trampling myarchipelagoes and shattering my ports with what was worse than atyphoon. But I immediately set to work, as soon as the cart wasgone and the mud had settled, to tidy up my coastline again andto scoop out anew my harbours. 

My pleasure in this sport was endless, and what I was able tosee, in my mind's eye, was not the edge of a morass of mud, but asplendid line of coast, and gulfs of the type of Tor Bay. I donot recollect a sharper double humiliation than when old SamLamble, the blacksmith, who was one of the 'saints', being askedby my Father whether he had met me, replied 'Yes, I zeed 'un up-long, making mud pies in the ro-ad!' What a position for one whohad been received into communion 'as an adult'! What a blot onthe scutcheon of a would-be Columbus! 'Mud-pies', indeed!

Yet I had an appreciator. One afternoon, as I was busy on mygeographical operations, a good-looking middle-aged lady, with asoft pink cheek and a sparkling hazel eye, paused and asked me ifmy name was not what it was. I had seen her before; a stranger toour parts, with a voice without a trace in it of the Devonshiredrawl. I knew, dimly, that she came sometimes to the meeting, that she was lodging at Upton with some friends of ours whoaccepted paying guests in an old house that was simply a basketof roses. She was Miss Brightwen, and I now conversed with herfor the first time. 

Her interest in my harbours and islands was marked; she did notsmile; she asked questions about my peninsulas which wereintelligent and pertinent. I was even persuaded at last to leavemy creations and to walk with her towards the village. I waspleased with her voice, her refinements, her dress, which wasmore delicate, and her manners, which were more easy, than what Iwas accustomed to, We had some very pleasant conversation, andwhen we parted I had the satisfaction of feeling that ourintercourse had been both agreeable to me and instructive to her. I told her that I should be glad to tell her more on a futureoccasion; she thanked me very gravely, and then she laughed alittle. I confess I did not see that there was anything to laughat. We parted on warm terms of mutual esteem, but I littlethought that this sympathetic Quakerish lady was to become mymother. 

CHAPTER X

I SLEPT in a little bed in a corner of the room, and my Father inthe ancestral four-poster nearer to the door. Very early onebright September morning at the close of my eleventh year, myFather called me over to him. I climbed up, and was snuglywrapped in the coverlid; and then we held a momentousconversation. It began abruptly by his asking me whether I shouldlike to have a new mamma. I was never a sentimentalist, and Itherefore answered, cannily, that that would depend on who shewas. He parried this, and announced that, anyway, a new mamma wascoming; I was sure to like her. Still in a noncommittal mood, Iasked: 'Will she go with me to the back of the lime-kiln?' Thisquestion caused my Father a great bewilderment. I had to explainthat the ambition of my life was to go up behind the lime-kiln onthe top of the hill that hung over Barton, a spot which wasforbidden ground, being locally held one of extreme danger. 'Oh!I daresay she will, ' my Father then said, 'but you must guess whoshe is. ' I guessed one or two of the less comely of the female'saints', and, this embarrassing my Father, --since the second Imentioned was a married woman who kept a sweet-shop in thevillage, --he cut my inquiries short by saying, 'It is MissBrightwen. '

So far so good, and I was well pleased. But unfortunately Iremembered that it was my duty to testify 'in season and out ofseason'. I therefore asked, with much earnestness, 'But, Papa, isshe one of the Lord's children?' He replied, with gravity, thatshe was. 'Has she taken up her cross in baptism?' I went on, forthis was my own strong point as a believer. My Father looked alittle shame-faced, and replied: 'Well, she has not as yet seenthe necessity of that, but we must pray that the Lord may makeher way clear before her. You see, she has been brought up, hitherto, in the so-called Church of England. ' Our positions werenow curiously changed. It seemed as if it were I who was thejealous monitor, and my Father the deprecating penitent. I sat upin the coverlid, and I shook a finger at him. 'Papa, ' I said, 'don't tell me that she's a pedobaptist?' I had lately acquiredthat valuable word, and I seized this remarkable opportunity ofusing it. It affected my Father painfully, but he repeated hisassurance that if we united our prayers, and set the Scriptureplan plainly before Miss Brightwen, there could be no doubt thatshe would see her way to accepting the doctrine of adult baptism. And he said we must judge not, lest we ourselves bejudged. I hadjust enough tact to let that pass, but I was quite aware that ourwhole system was one of judging, and that we had no intentionwhatever of being judged ourselves. Yet even at the age of elevenone sees that on certain occasions to press home the truth is notconvenient. 

Just before Christmas, on a piercing night of frost, my Fatherbrought to us his bride. The smartening up of the house, the newfurniture, the removal of my own possessions to a privatebedroom, the wedding-gifts of the 'saints', all these thingspaled in interest before the fact that Miss Marks had 'made ascene', in the course of the afternoon. I was dancing about thedrawing-room, and was saying: 'Oh! I am so glad my new Mamma iscoming, ' when Miss Marks called out, in an unnatural voice, 'Oh!you cruel child. ' I stopped in amazement and stared at her, whereupon she threw prudence to the winds, and moaned: 'I oncethought I should be your dear mamma. ' I was simply stupefied, andI expressed my horror in terms that were clear and strong. Thereupon Miss Marks had a wild fit of hysterics, while I lookedon, wholly unsympathetic and still deeply affronted. She wasright; I was cruel, alas! but then, what a silly woman she hadbeen! The consequence was that she withdrew in a moist andquivering condition to her boudoir, where she had locked herselfin when I, all smiles and caresses, was welcoming the bride andbridegroom on the doorstep as politely as if I had been a valuedold family retainer. 

My stepmother immediately became a great ally of mine. She wasnever a tower of strength to me, but at least she was always alodge in my garden of cucumbers. She was a very well-meaningpious lady, but she was not a fanatic, and her mind did notnaturally revel in spiritual aspirations. Almost her only socialfault was that she was sometimes a little fretful; this was theway in which her bruised individuality asserted itself. But shewas affectionate, serene, and above all refined. Her refinementwas extraordinarily pleasant to my nerves, on which much else inour surroundings jarred. 

How life may have jarred, poor insulated lady, on her during herfirst experience of our life at the Room, I know not, but I thinkshe was a philosopher. She had, with surprising rashness, and inopposition to the wishes of every member of her own family, takenher cake, and now she recognized that she must eat it, to thelast crumb. Over her wishes and prejudices my Father exercised aconstant, cheerful and quiet pressure. He was never unkind orabrupt, but he went on adding avoirdupois until her will gave wayunder the sheer weight. Even to public immersion, which, as wasnatural in a shy and sensitive lady of advancing years, sheregarded with a horror which was long insurmountable, --even tobaptism she yielded, and my Father had the joy to announce to theSaints one Sunday morning at the breaking of bread that 'mybeloved wife has been able at length to see the Lord's Will inthe matter of baptism, and will testify to the faith which is inher on Thursday evening next. ' No wonder my stepmother wassometimes fretful. 

On the physical side, I owe her an endless debt of gratitude. Herrelations, who objected strongly to her marriage, had told her, among other pleasant prophecies, that 'the first thing you willhave to do will be to bury that poor child'. Under the old-worldsway of Miss Marks, I had slept beneath a load of blankets, hadnever gone out save weighted with great coat and comforter, andhad been protected from fresh air as if from a pestilence. Withreal courage my stepmother reversed all this. My bedroom windowstood wide open all night long, wraps were done away with, orexchanged for flannel garments next the skin, and I was urged tobe out and about as much as possible. 

All the quidnuncs among the 'saints' shook their heads; MaryGrace Burmington, a little embittered by the downfall of herMarks, made a solemn remonstrance to my Father, who, however, allowed my stepmother to carry out her excellent plan. My healthresponded rapidly to this change of regime, but increase ofhealth did not bring increase of spirituality. My Father, fullyoccupied with moulding the will and inflaming the piety of mystepmother, left me now, to a degree not precedented, in undisturbed possession of my own devices. I did not lose myfaith, but many other things took a prominent place in my mind. 

It will, I suppose, be admitted that there is no greater proof ofcomplete religious sincerity than fervour in private prayer. Ifan individual, alone by the side of his bed, prolongs hisintercessions, lingers wrestling with his divine Companion, andwill not leave off until he has what he believes to be evidenceof a reply to his entreaties--then, no matter what the characterof his public protestations, or what the frailty of his actions, it is absolutely certain that he believes in what he professes. 

My Father prayed in private in what I may almost call a spirit ofviolence. He entreated for spiritual guidance with nothing lessthan importunity. It might be said that he stormed the citadelsof God's grace, refusing to be baffled, urging his intercessionswithout mercy upon a Deity who sometimes struck me as inattentiveto his prayers or wearied by them. My Father's acts ofsupplication, as I used to witness them at night, when I wassupposed to be asleep, were accompanied by stretchings out of thehands, by crackings of the joints of the fingers, by deepbreathings, by murmurous sounds which seemed just breaking out ofsilence, like Virgil's bees out of the hive, 'magnis clamoribus'. My Father fortified his religious life by prayer as an athletedoes his physical life by lung-gymnastics and vigorous rubbings. 

It was a trouble to my conscience that I could not emulate thisfervour. The poverty of my prayers had now long been a source ofdistress to me, but I could not discover how to enrich them. MyFather used to warn us very solemnly against 'lip-service', bywhich he meant singing hymns of experience and joining inministrations in which our hearts took no vital or personal part. This was an outward act, the tendency of which I could wellappreciate, but there was a 'lip-service' even more deadly thanthat, against which it never occurred to him to warn me. Itassailed me when I had come alone by my bedside, and had blownout the candle, and had sunken on my knees in my night-gown. Thenit was that my deadness made itself felt, in the mechanicaladdress I put up, the emptiness of my language, the absence ofall real unction. 

I never could contrive to ask God for spiritual gifts in the samevoice and spirit in which I could ask a human being for objectswhich I knew he could give me and which I earnestly desired topossess. That sense of the reality of intercession was for everdenied me, and it was, I now see, the stigma of my want of faith. But at the time, of course, I suspected nothing of the kind, andI tried to keep up my zeal by a desperate mental flogging, as ifmy soul had been a peg-top. 

In nothing did I gain from the advent of my stepmother more thanin the encouragement she gave to my friendships with a group ofboys of my own age, of whom I had now lately formed theacquaintance. These friendships she not merely tolerated, butfostered; it was even due to her kind arrangements that they tooka certain set form, that our excursions started from this houseor from that on regular days. I hardly know by what stages Iceased to be a lonely little creature of mock-monographs and mud-pies, and became a member of a sort of club of eight or tenactive boys. The long summer holidays of 1861 were set in anenchanting brightness. 

Looking back, I cannot see a cloud on the terrestrial horizon--Isee nothing but a blaze of sunshine; descents of slippery grassto moons of snow-white shingle, cold to the bare flesh; redpromontories running out into a sea that was like sapphire; andour happy clan climbing, bathing, boating, lounging, chattering, all the hot day through. Once more I have to record the fact, which I think is not without interest, that precisely as my lifeceases to be solitary, it ceases to be distinct. I have nodifficulty in recalling, with the minuteness of a photograph, scenes in which my Father and I were the sole actors within thefour walls of a room, but of the glorious life among wild boys onthe margin of the sea I have nothing but vague and brokenimpressions, delicious and illusive. 

It was a remarkable proof of my Father's temporary lapse intoindulgence that he made no effort to thwart my intimacy withthese my new companions. He was in an unusually humane moodhimself. His marriage was one proof of it; another was thecomposition at this time of the most picturesque, easy andgraceful of all his writings, _The Romance of Natural History_, even now a sort of classic. Everything combined to make himbelieve that the blessing of the Lord was upon him, and to clothethe darkness of the world with at least a mist of rose-colour. Ido not recollect that ever at this time he bethought him, when Istarted in the morning for a long day with my friends on the edgeof the sea, to remind me that I must speak to them, in season andout of season, of the Blood of Jesus. And I, young coward that Iwas, let sleeping dogmas lie. 

My companions were not all of them the sons of saints in ourcommunion; their parents belonged to that professional classwhich we were only now beginning to attract to our services. Theywere brought up in religious, but not in fanatical, families, andI was the only 'converted' one among them. Mrs. Paget, of whom Ishall have presently to speak, characteristically said that itgrieved her to see 'one lamb among so many kids'. But 'kid' is aword of varied significance and the symbol did not seem to useffectively applied. As a matter of fact, we made what I stillfeel was an excellent tacit compromise. My young companions neverjeered at me for being 'in communion with the saints', and I, onmy part, never urged the Atonement upon them. I began, in fact, more and more to keep my own religion for use on Sundays. 

It will, I hope, have been observed that among the very curiousgrown-up people into whose company I was thrown, although manywere frail and some were foolish, none, so far as I can discern, were hypocritical. I am not one of those who believe thathypocrisy is a vice that grows on every bush. Of course, inreligious more than in any other matters, there is a perpetualcontradiction between our thoughts and our deeds which isinevitable to our social order, and is bound to lead to _cettetromperie mutuelle_ of which Pascal speaks. But I have oftenwondered, while admiring the splendid portrait of Tartuffe, whether such a monster ever, or at least often, has walked thestage of life; whether Moliere observed, or only invented him. 

To adopt a scheme of religious pretension, with no beliefwhatever in its being true, merely for sensuous advantage, openlyacknowledging to one's inner self the brazen system of deceit, --such a course may, and doubtless has been, trodden, yet surelymuch less frequently than cynics love to suggest. But at thejuncture which I have now reached in my narrative, I had theadvantage of knowing a person who was branded before the wholeworld, and punished by the law of his country, as a felonioushypocrite. My Father himself could only sigh and admit thecharge. And yet--I doubt. 

About half-way between our village and the town there lay acomfortable villa inhabited by a retired solicitor, or perhapsattorney, whom I shall name Mr. Dormant. We often called at hishalf-way house, and, although he was a member of the town-meeting, he not unfrequently came up to us for 'the breaking ofbread'. Mr. Dormant was a solid, pink man, of a cosy habit. Hehad beautiful white hair, a very soft voice, and a welcoming, wheedling manner; he was extremely fluent and zealous in usingthe pious phraseology of the sect. My Father had never been verymuch attracted to him, but the man professed, and I think felt, an overwhelming admiration for my Father. Mr. Dormant was notvery well off, and in the previous year he had persuaded an agedgentleman of wealth to come and board with him. When, in thecourse of the winter, this gentleman died, much surprise was feltat the report that he had left almost his entire fortune, whichwas not inconsiderable, to Mr. Dormant. 

Much surprise--for the old gentleman had a son to whom he hadalways been warmly attached, who was far away, I think in SouthAmerica, practising a perfectly respectable profession of whichhis father entirely approved. My own Father always preserved adelicacy and a sense of honour about money which could not havebeen more sensitive if he had been an ungodly man, and I am verymuch pleased to remember that when the legacy was first spokenof, he regretted that Mr. Dormant should have allowed the oldgentleman to make this will. If he knew the intention, my Fathersaid, it would have shown a more proper sense of hisresponsibility if he had dissuaded the testator from sounbecoming a disposition. That was long before any legal questionarose; and now Mr. Dormant came into his fortune, and began tomake handsome gifts to missionary societies, and to his ownmeeting in the town. If I do not mistake, he gave, unsolicited, asum to our building fund, which my Father afterwards returned. But in process of time we heard that the son had come back fromthe Antipodes, and was making investigations. Before we knewwhere we were, the news burst upon us, like a bomb-shell, thatMr. Dormant had been arrested on a criminal charge and was now injail at Exeter. 

Sympathy was at first much extended amongst us to the prisoner. But it was lessened when we understood that the old gentleman hadbeen 'converted' while under Dormant's roof, and had given thefact that his son was 'an unbeliever' as a reason fordisinheriting him. All doubt was set aside when it was divulged, under pressure, by the nurse who attended on the old gentleman, herself one of the 'saints', that Dormant had traced thesignature to the will by drawing the fingers of the testator overthe document when he was already and finally comatose. 

My Father, setting aside by a strong effort of will therepugnance which he felt, visited the prisoner in gaol beforethis final evidence had been extracted. When he returned he saidthat Dormant appeared to be enjoying a perfect confidence ofheart, and had expressed a sense of his joy and peace in theLord; my Father regretted that he had not been able to persuadehim to admit any error, even of judgement. But the prisoner'sattitude in the dock, when the facts were proved, and not by himdenied, was still more extraordinary. He could be induced toexhibit no species of remorse, and, to the obvious anger of thejudge himself, stated that he had only done his duty as aChristian, in preventing this wealth from coming into the handsof an ungodly man, who would have spent it in the service of theflesh and of the devil. Sternly reprimanded by the judge, he madethe final statement that at that very moment he was conscious ofhis Lord's presence, in the dock at his side, whispering to him'Well done, thou good and faithful servant!' In this frame ofconscience, and with a glowing countenance, he was hurried awayto penal servitude. 

This was a very painful incident, and it is easy to see howcompromising, how cruel, it was in its effect upon our communion;what occasion it gave to our enemies to blaspheme. No one, ineither meeting, could or would raise a voice to defend Mr. Dormant. We had to bow our heads when we met our enemies in thegate. The blow fell more heavily on the meeting of which he hadbeen a prominent and communicating member, but it fell on us too, and my Father felt it severely. For many years he would nevermention the man's name, and he refused all discussion of theincident. 

Yet I was never sure, and I am not sure now, that the wretchedbeing was a hypocrite. There are as many vulgar fanatics as thereare distinguished ones, and I am not convinced that Dormant, coarse and narrow as he was, may not have sincerely believed thatit was better for the money to be used in religious propagandathan in the pleasures of the world, of which he doubtless formeda very vague idea. On this affair I meditated much, and itawakened in my mind, for the first time, a doubt whether ourexclusive system of ethics was an entirely salutary one, if itcould lead the conscience of a believer to tolerate such acts asthese, acts which my Father himself had denounced asdishonourable and disgraceful. 

My stepmother brought with her a little library of such books aswe had not previously seen, but which yet were known to all theworld except us. Prominent among these was a set of the poems ofWalter Scott, and in his unwonted geniality and provisionalspirit of compromise, my Father must do no less than read theseworks aloud to my stepmother in the quiet spring evenings. Thiswas a sort of aftermath of courtship, a tribute of song to hisbride, very sentimental and pretty. She would sit, sedately, ather workbox, while he, facing her, poured forth the verses at herlike a blackbird. I was not considered in this arrangement, whichwas wholly matrimonial, but I was present, and the exercise mademore impression upon me than it did upon either of the principalagents. My Father read the verse admirably, with a full, --somepeople (but not I) might say with a too full--perception of themetre as well as of the rhythm, rolling out the rhymes, andglorying in the proper names. He began, and it was a happychoice, with 'The Lady of the Lake'. It gave me singular pleasureto hear his large voice do justice to 'Duncrannon' and 'Cambus-Kenneth', and wake the echoes with 'Rhoderigh Vich Alphine dhu, ho! ieroe!' I almost gasped with excitement, while a shudderfloated down my backbone, when we came to:

 A sharp and shrieking echo gave, Coir-Uriskin, thy goblin cave! And the grey pass where birches wave, On Beala-nam-bo, a passage which seemed to me to achieve the ideal of sublimeromance. My thoughts were occupied all day long with theadventures of Fitzjames and the denizens of Ellen's Isle. Itbecame an obsession, and when I was asked whether I rememberedthe name of the cottage where the minister of the BibleChristians lodged, I answered, dreamily, 'Yes, --Beala-nambo. '

Seeing me so much fascinated, thrown indeed into a temporaryfrenzy, by the epic poetry of Sir Walter Scott, my stepmotherasked my Father whether I might not start reading the WaverleyNovels. But he refused to permit this, on the ground that thosetales gave false and disturbing pictures of life, and would leadaway my attention from heavenly things. I do not fully apprehendwhat distinction he drew between the poems, which he permitted, and the novels, which he refused. But I suppose he regarded awork in verse as more artificial, and therefore less likely tomake a realistic impression, than one in prose. There issomething quaint in the conscientious scruple which allows _TheLord of the Isles_ and excludes _Rob Roy_. 

But stranger still, and amounting almost to a whim, was hissudden decision that, although I might not touch the novels ofScott, I was free to read those of Dickens. I recollect that mystepmother showed some surprise at this, and that my Fatherexplained to her that Dickens 'exposes the passion of love in aridiculous light. ' She did not seem to follow thisrecommendation, which indeed tends to the ultra-subtle, but sheprocured for me a copy of _Pickwick_, by which I was instantly andgloriously enslaved. My shouts of laughing at the richer passageswere almost scandalous, and led to my being reproved fordisturbing my Father while engaged, in an upper room, in thestudy of God's Word. I must have expended months on the perusalof _Pickwick_, for I used to rush through a chapter, and then readit over again very slowly, word for word, and then shut my eyesto realize the figures and the action. 

I suppose no child will ever again enjoy that rapture ofunresisting humorous appreciation of 'Pickwick'. I felt myself tobe in the company of a gentleman so extremely funny that I beganto laugh before he began to speak; no sooner did he remark 'thesky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, ' than I was infits of hilarity. My retirement in our sequestered corner of lifemade me, perhaps, even in this matter, somewhat old-fashioned, and possibly I was the latest of the generation who accepted Mr. Pickwick with an unquestioning and hysterical abandonment. Certainly few young people now seem sensitive, as I was, and asthousands before me had been, to the quality of his fascination. 

It was curious that living in a household where a certaindelicate art of painting was diligently cultivated, I had yetnever seen a real picture, and was scarcely familiar with thedesign of one in engraving. My stepmother, however, brought aflavour of the fine arts with her; a kind of aesthetic odour, like that of lavender, clung to her as she moved. She had knownauthentic artists in her youth; she had watched Old Cromepainting, and had taken a course of drawing-lessons from no lessa person than Cotman. She painted small watercolour landscapesherself, with a delicate economy of means and a graceful Norwichconvention; her sketch-books were filled with abbeys gentlywashed in, river-banks in sepia by which the elect might be dimlyreminded of _Liber Studiorum_, and woodland scenes over which theghost of Creswick had faintly breathed. It was not exciting art, but it was, so far as it went, in its lady-like reserve, the realthing. Our sea-anemones, our tropic birds, our bits of spongyrock filled and sprayed with corallines, had been veryconscientious and skilful, but, essentially, so far as art wasconcerned, the wrong thing. 

Thus I began to acquire, without understanding the value of it, some conception of the elegant phases of early Englishwatercolour painting, and there was one singular piece of amarble well brimming with water, and a greyish-blue sky over it, and dark-green poplars, shaped like wet brooms, menacing themiddle distance, which Cotman himself had painted; and thisseemed beautiful and curious to me in its dim, flat frame, whenit was hoisted to a place on our drawing-room wall. 

But still I had never seen a subject-picture, although mystepmother used to talk of the joys of the Royal Academy, and itwas therefore with a considerable sense of excitement that Iwent, with my Father, to examine Mr. Holman Hunt's 'Finding ofChrist in the Temple' which at this time was announced to be onpublic show at our neighbouring town. We paid our shillings andascended with others to an upper room, bare of every disturbingobject, in which a strong top-light raked the large anduncompromising picture. We looked at it for some time in silence, and then my Father pointed out to me various details, such as thephylacteries and the mitres, and the robes which distinguishedthe high priest. 

Some of the other visitors, as I recollect, expressedastonishment and dislike of what they called the 'Preraphaelite'treatment, but we were not affected by that. Indeed, if anything, the exact, minute and hard execution of Mr. Hunt was in sympathywith the methods we ourselves were in the habit of using when wepainted butterflies and seaweeds, placing perfectly pure pigmentsside by side, without any nonsense about chiaroscuro. This large, bright, comprehensive picture made a very deep impression uponme, not exactly as a work of art, but as a brilliant naturalspecimen. I was pleased to have seen it, as I was pleased to haveseen the comet, and the whale which was brought to our front dooron a truck. It was a prominent addition to my experience. 

The slender expansions of my interest which were now buddinghither and thither do not seem to have alarmed my Father at all. His views were short; if I appeared to be contented and obedient, if I responded pleasantly when he appealed to me, he was notconcerned to discover the source of my cheerfulness. He put itdown to my happy sense of joy in Christ, a reflection of thesunshine of grace beaming upon me through no intervening cloudsof sin or doubt. The 'saints' were, as a rule, very easy tocomprehend; their emotions lay upon the surface. If they weregay, it was because they had no burden on their consciences, while, if they were depressed, the symptom might be depended uponas showing that their consciences were troubling them, and ifthey were indifferent and cold, it was certain that they werelosing their faith and becoming hostile to godliness. It wasalmost a mechanical matter with these simple souls. But, althoughI was so much younger, I was more complex and more crafty thanthe peasant 'saints'. My Father, not a very subtle psychologist, applied to me the same formulas which served him well at thechapel, but in my case the results were less uniformlysuccessful. 

The excitement of school-life and the enlargement of my circle ofinterests, combined to make Sunday, by contrast, a very tediousoccasion. The absence of every species of recreation on theLord's Day grew to be a burden which might scarcely be borne. Ihave said that my freedom during the week had now becomeconsiderable; if I was at home punctually at meal times, the restof my leisure was not challenged. But this liberty, which in thesummer holidays came to surpass that of 'fishes that tipple inthe deep', was put into more and more painful contrast with theunbroken servitude of Sunday. 

My Father objected very strongly to the expression Sabbath-day, as it is commonly used by Presbyterians and others. He said, quite justly, that it was an inaccurate modern innovation, thatSabbath was Saturday, the Seventh day of the week, not the first, a Jewish festival and not a Christian commemoration. Yet hisexaggerated view with regard to the observance of the First Day, namely, that it must be exclusively occupied with public andprivate exercises of divine worship, was based much more upon aJewish than upon a Christian law. In fact, I do not remember thatmy Father ever produced a definite argument from the NewTestament in support of his excessive passivity on the Lord'sDay. He followed the early Puritan practice, except that he didnot extend his observance, as I believe the old Puritans did, from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday. 

The observance of the Lord's Day has already become universallyso lax that I think there may be some value in preserving anaccurate record of how our Sundays were spent five and fortyyears ago. We came down to breakfast at the usual time. My Fatherprayed briefly before we began the meal; after it, the bell wasrung, and, before the breakfast was cleared away, we had alengthy service of exposition and prayer with the servants. Ifthe weather was fine, we then walked about the garden, doingnothing, for about half an hour. We then sat, each in a separateroom, with our Bibles open and some commentary on the text besideus, and prepared our minds for the morning service. A littlebefore 11 a. M. We sallied forth, carrying our Bibles and hymn-books, and went through the morning-service of two hours at theRoom; this was the central event of Sunday. 

We then came back to dinner, --curiously enough to a hot dinner, always, with a joint, vegetables and puddings, so that the cookat least must have been busily at work, --and after it my Fatherand my stepmother took a nap, each in a different room, while Islipped out into the garden for a little while, but neverventuring farther afield. In the middle of the afternoon, mystepmother and I proceeded up the village to Sunday School, whereI was early promoted to the tuition of a few very little boys. Wereturned in time for tea, immediately after which we all marchedforth, again armed as in the morning, with Bibles and hymn-books, and we went though the evening-service, at which my Fatherpreached. The hour was now already past my weekday bedtime, butwe had another service to attend, the Believers' Prayer Meeting, which commonly occupied forty minutes more. Then we used to creephome, I often so tired that the weariness was like physical pain, and I was permitted, without further 'worship', to slip upstairsto bed. 

What made these Sundays, the observance of which was absolutelyuniform, so peculiarly trying was that I was not permitted theindulgence of any secular respite. I might not open a scientificbook, nor make a drawing, nor examine a specimen. I was notallowed to go into the road, except to proceed with my parents tothe Room, nor to discuss worldly subjects at meals, nor to enterthe little chamber where I kept my treasures. I was hotly andtightly dressed in black, all day long, as though ready at anymoment to attend a funeral with decorum. Sometimes, towardsevening, I used to feel the monotony and weariness of my positionto be almost unendurable, but at this time I was meek, and Ibowed to what I supposed to be the order of the universe. 

CHAPTER XI

As my mental horizon widened, my Father followed the direction ofmy spiritual eyes with some bewilderment, and knew not at what Igazed. Nor could I have put into words, nor can I even nowdefine, the visions which held my vague and timid attention. As achild develops, those who regard it with tenderness or impatienceare seldom even approximately correct in their analysis of itsintellectual movements, largely because, if there is anything torecord, it defies adult definition. One curious freak ofmentality I must now mention, because it took a considerable partin the enfranchisement of my mind, or rather in the formation ofmy thinking habits. But neither my Father nor my stepmother knewwhat to make of it, and to tell the truth I hardly know what tomake of it myself. 

Among the books which my new mother had brought with her werecertain editions of the poets, an odd assortment. Campbell wasthere, and Burns, and Keats, and the 'Tales' of Byron. Each ofthese might have been expected to appeal to me; but my emotionwas too young, and I did not listen to them yet. Their imperativevoices called me later. By the side of these romantic classicsstood a small, thick volume, bound in black morocco, andcomprising four reprinted works of the eighteenth century, gloomy, funereal poems of an order as wholly out of date as arethe crossbones and ruffled cherubim on the gravestones in acountry churchyard. The four--and in this order, as I never shallforget--were 'The Last Day' of Dr Young, Blair's 'Grave', 'Death'by Bishop Beilby Porteus, and 'The Deity' of Samuel Boyse. Theselugubrious effusions, all in blank verse or in the heroiccouplet, represented, in its most redundant form, the artistictheology of the middle of the eighteenth century. They weresteeped in such vengeful and hortatory sentiments as passed forelegant piety in the reign of George II. 

How I came to open this solemn volume is explained by theoppressive exclusiveness of our Sundays. On the afternoon of theLord's Day, as I have already explained, I might neither walk, nor talk, nor explore our scientific library, nor indulge infurious feats of water-colour painting. The Plymouth-Brothertheology which alone was open to me produced, at length, andparticularly on hot afternoons, a faint physical nausea, a kindof secret headache. But, hitting one day upon the doleful book ofverses, and observing its religious character, I asked 'May Iread that?' and after a brief, astonished glance at the contents, received 'Oh certainly--if you can!'

The lawn sloped directly from a verandah at our drawing-roomwindow, and it contained two immense elm trees, which hadoriginally formed part of the hedge of a meadow. In our trim andpolished garden they then remained--they were soon afterwards cutdown--rude and obtuse, with something primeval about them, something autochthonous; they were like two peasant ancestorssurviving in a family that had advanced to gentility. They roseeach out of a steep turfed hillock, and the root of one of themwas long my favourite summer reading-desk; for I could liestretched on the lawn, with my head and shoulders supported bythe elm-tree hillock, and the book in a fissure of the roughturf. Thither then I escaped with my graveyard poets, and whoshall explain the rapture with which I followed their austeremorality?

Whether I really read consecutively in my black-bound volume Ican no longer be sure, but it became a companion whose society Ivalued, and at worst it was a thousand times more congenial to methan Jukes' 'On the Pentateuch' or than a perfectly excruciatingwork ambiguously styled 'The Javelin of Phineas', which laysmouldering in a dull red cover on the drawing-room table. Idipped my bucket here and there into my poets, and I brought upstrange things. I brought up out of the depths of 'The Last Day'the following ejaculation of a soul roused by the trump ofresurrection:

 Father of mercies! Why from silent earth Didst thou awake, and curse me into birth? Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, And make a thankless present of thy light? Push into being a reverse of thee, And animate a clod with misery?

I read these lines with a shiver of excitement, and in a sense Isuppose little intended by the sanctimonious rector of Welwyn. Ialso read in the same piece the surprising description of how

 Now charnels rattle, scattered limbs, and all The various bones, obsequious to the call, Self-mov'd, advance--the neck perhaps to meet The distant head, the distant legs the feet, but rejected it as not wholly supported by the testimony ofScripture. I think that the rhetoric and vigorous advance ofYoung's verse were pleasant to me. Beilby Porteus I discardedfrom the first as impenetrable. In 'The Deity', --I knew nothingthen of the life of its extravagant and preposterous author, --Itook a kind of persistent, penitential pleasure, but it wasBlair's 'Grave' that really delighted me, and I frightened myselfwith its melodious doleful images in earnest. 

About this time there was a great flow of tea-table hospitalityin the village, and my friends and their friends used to be askedout, by respective parents and by more than one amiable spinster, to faint little entertainments where those sang who wereambitious to sing, and where all played post and forfeits after arich tea. My Father was constantly exercised in mind as towhether I should or should not accept these glitteringinvitations. There hovered before him a painful sense of dangerin resigning the soul to pleasures which savoured of 'the world'. These, though apparently innocent in themselves, might give anappetite for yet more subversive dissipations. I remember, on oneoccasion, --when the Browns, a family of Baptists who kept a largehaberdashery shop in the neighbouring town, asked for thepleasure of my company 'to tea and games', and carriedcomplacency so far as to offer to send that local vehicle, 'themidge', to fetch me and bring me back, --my Father's consciencewas so painfully perplexed, that he desired me to come up withhim to the now-deserted 'boudoir' of the departed Marks, that wemight 'lay the matter before the Lord'. We did so, kneeling sideby side, with our backs to the window and our foreheads pressedupon the horsehair cover of the small, coffin-like sofa. MyFather prayed aloud, with great fervour, that it might berevealed to me, by the voice of God, whether it was or was notthe Lord's will that I should attend the Browns' party. MyFather's attitude seemed to me to be hardly fair, since he didnot scruple to remind the Deity of various objections to a lifeof pleasure and of the snakes that lie hidden in the grass ofevening parties. It would have been more scrupulous, I thought, to give no sort of hint of the kind of answer he desired andexpected. 

It will be justly said that my life was made up of very triflingthings, since I have to confess that this incident of the Browns'invitation was one of its landmarks. As I knelt, feeling verysmall, by the immense bulk of my Father, there gushed though myveins like a wine the determination to rebel. Never before, inall these years of my vocation, had I felt my resistance takeprecisely this definite form. We rose presently from the sofa, myforehead and the backs of my hands still chafed by the texture ofthe horsehair, and we faced one another in the dreary light. MyFather, perfectly confident in the success of what had reallybeen a sort of incantation, asked me in a loud wheedling voice, 'Well, and what is the answer which our Lord vouchsafes?' I saidnothing, and so my Father, more sharply, continued, 'We haveasked Him to direct you to a true knowledge of His will. We havedesired Him to let you know whether it is, or is not, inaccordance with His wishes that you should accept this invitationfrom the Browns. ' He positively beamed down at me; he had nodoubt of the reply. He was already, I believe, planning somelittle treat to make up to me for the material deprivation. Butmy answer came, in the high-piping accents of despair: 'The Lordsays I may go to the Browns. ' My Father gazed at me in speechlesshorror. He was caught in his own trap, and though he was certainthat the Lord had said nothing of the kind, there was no roadopen for him but just sheer retreat. Yet surely it was an errorin tactics to slam the door. 

It was at this party at the Browns--to which I duly went, although in sore disgrace--that my charnel poets played me a meantrick. It was proposed that 'our young friends' should give theirelders the treat of repeating any pretty pieces that they knew byheart. Accordingly a little girl recited 'Casabianca', andanother little girl 'We are Seven', and various children wereinduced to repeat hymns, 'some rather long', as Calverley says, but all very mild and innocuously evangelical. I was then askedby Mrs. Brown's maiden sister, a gushing lady in corkscrew curls, who led the revels, whether I also would not indulge them 'byrepeating some sweet stanzas'. No one more ready than I. Withouta moment's hesitation, I stood forth, and in a loud voice I beganone of my favourite passages from Blair's 'Grave':

 If death were nothing, and nought after death-- If when men died at once they ceased to be, -- Returning to the barren Womb of Nothing Whence first they sprung, then might the debauchee. .. 

'Thank you, dear, that will do nicely!' interrupted the lady withthe curls. 'But that's only the beginning of it, ' I cried. 'Yes. Dear, but that will quite do! We won't ask you to repeat any moreof it, ' and I withdrew to the borders of the company inbewilderment. Nor did the Browns or their visitors ever learnwhat it was the debauchee might have said or done in morefavourable circumstances. 

The growing eagerness which I displayed for the society ofselected schoolfellows and for such gentle dissipations as werewithin my reach exercised my Father greatly. His fancy rushedforward with the pace of a steam-engine, and saw me the life andsoul of a gambling club, or flaunting it at the Mabille. He hadno confidence in the action of moderating powers, and he was fondof repeating that the downward path is easy. If one fretted to bebathing with one's companions on the shingle, and preferred thisexercise to the study of God's Word, it was a symbol of aterrible decline, the angle of which would grow steeper andsteeper, until one plunged into perdition. He was, himself, timidand reclusive, and he shrank from all avoidable companionshipwith others, except on the footing of a master and teacher. Mystepmother and I, who neither taught nor ruled, yearned for alooser chain and lighter relationships. With regard to myself, myFather about this time hit on a plan from which he hoped much, but from which little resulted. He looked to George to supplywhat my temperament seemed to require of congenial juvenilecompanionship. 

If I have not mentioned 'George' until now, it is not that he wasa new acquaintance. When we first came down into the country, oursympathy had been called forth by an accident to a little boy, who was knocked over by a horse, and whose thigh was broken. Somebody (I suppose Mary Grace, since my Father could rarelybring himself to pay these public visits) went to see the childin the infirmary, and accidentally discovered that he was exactlythe same age that I was. This, and the fact that he was ameditative and sober little boy, attracted us all still furtherto George, who became converted under one of my Father's sermons. He attended my public baptism, and was so much moved by thisceremony that he passionately desired to be baptized also, andwas in fact so immersed, a few months later, slightly to mychagrin, since I thereupon ceased to be the only infant prodigyin communion. When we were both in our thirteenth year, Georgebecame an outdoor servant to us, and did odd jobs under thegardener. My Father, finding him, as he said, 'docile, obedientand engaging', petted George a good deal, and taught him a littlebotany. He called George, by a curious contortion of thought, my'spiritual foster-brother', and anticipated for him, I think, acareer, like mine, in the Ministry. 

Our garden suffered from an incursion of slugs, which laid theverbenas in the dust, and shore off the carnations as if withpairs of scissors. To cope with this plague we invested in adrake and a duck, who were christened Philemon and Baucis. Everynight large cabbage-leaves, containing the lees of beer, werespread about the flower-beds as traps, and at dawn these hadbecome green parlours crammed with intoxicated slugs. One ofGeorge's earliest morning duties was to free Philemon and Baucisfrom their coop, and, armed with a small wand, to guide theirfootsteps to the feast in one cabbage-leaf after another. MyFather used to watch this performance from an upper window, and, in moments of high facetiousness, he was wont to parody the poetGray:

 How jocund doth George drive his team afield!

This is all, or almost all, that I remember about George'soccupations, but he was singularly blameless. 

My Father's plan now was that I should form a close intimacy withGeorge, as a boy of my own age, of my own faith, of my ownfuture. My stepmother, still in bondage to the socialconventions, was passionately troubled at this, and urged thebarrier of class-differences. My Father replied that such anintimacy would keep me 'lowly', and that from so good a boy asGeorge I could learn nothing undesirable. 'He will encourage himnot to wipe his boots when he comes into the house, ' said mystepmother, and my Father sighed to think how narrow is thehorizon of Woman's view of heavenly things. 

In this caprice, if I may call it so, I think that my Father hadbefore him the fine republican example of 'Sandford and Merton', some parts of which book he admired extremely. Accordingly Georgeand I were sent out to take walks together, and as we started, myFather, with an air of great benevolence, would suggest somepassage of Scripture, or 'some aspect of God's bountiful schemein creation, on which you may profitably meditate together. 'George and I never pursued the discussion of the text with whichmy Father started us for more than a minute or two; then we fellinto silence, or investigated current scenes and rustic topics. 

As is natural among the children of the poor, George wasprecocious where I was infantile, and undeveloped where I waselaborate. Our minds could hardly find a point at which to touch. He gave me, however, under cross-examination, interesting hintsabout rural matters, and I liked him, although I felt his companyto be insipid. Sometimes he carried my books by my side to thelarger and more distant school which I now attended, but I wasalways in a fever of dread lest my schoolfellows should seehim, and should accuse me of having to be 'brought' to school. Toexplain to them that the companionship of this wholesome andrather blunt young peasant was part of my spiritual disciplinewould have been all beyond my powers. 

It was soon after this that my stepmother made her one vaineffort to break though the stillness of our lives. My Father'senergy seemed to decline, to become more fitful, to takeunseasonable directions. My mother instinctively felt that hispeculiarities were growing upon him; he would scarcely stir fromhis microscope, except to go to the chapel, and he was visible tofewer and fewer visitors. She had taken a pleasure in hisliterary eminence, and she was aware that this, too, would slipfrom him; that, so persistently kept out of sight, he must soonbe out of mind. I know not how she gathered courage for hertremendous effort, but she took me, I recollect, into hercounsels. We were to unite to oblige my Father to start to hisfeet and face the world. Alas! we might as well have attempted torouse the summit of Yes Tor into volcanic action. To my mother'sarguments, my Father--with that baffling smile of his--replied:'I esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than thetreasures of Egypt!' and that this answer was indirect made itnone the less conclusive. My mother wished him to give lectures, to go to London, to read papers before the Royal Society, toenter into controversy with foreign savants, to conduct classesof outdoor zoology at fashionable watering-places. I held mybreath with admiration as she poured forth her scheme, so daring, so brilliant, so sure to cover our great man with glory. Helistened to her with an ambiguous smile, and shook his head atus, and resumed the reading of his Bible. 

At the date of which I write these pages, the arts ofillustration are so universally diffused that it is difficult torealize the darkness in which a remote English village wasplunged half a century ago. No opportunity was offered to usdwellers in remote places of realizing the outward appearances ofunfamiliar persons, scenes or things. Although ours was perhapsthe most cultivated household in the parish, I had never seen somuch as a representation of a work of sculpture until I wasthirteen. My mother then received from her earlier home certainvolumes, among which was a gaudy gift-book of some kind, containing a few steel engravings of statues. 

These attracted me violently, and here for the first time I gazedon Apollo with his proud gesture, Venus in her undulations, thekirtled shape of Diana, and Jupiter voluminously bearded. Verylittle information, and that tome not intelligible, was given inthe text, but these were said to be figures of the old Greekgods. I asked my Father to tell me about these 'old Greek gods'. His answer was direct and disconcerting. He said--how I recollectthe place and time, early in the morning, as I stood beside thewindow in our garish breakfast-room--he said that the so-calledgods of the Greeks were the shadows cast by the vices of theheathen, and reflected their infamous lives; 'it was for suchthings as these that God poured down brimstone and fire on theCities of the Plain, and there is nothing in the legends of thesegods, or rather devils, that it is not better for a Christian notto know. ' His face blazed white with Puritan fury as he saidthis--I see him now in my mind's eye, in his violent emotion. Youmight have thought that he had himself escaped with horror fromsome Hellenic hippodrome. 

My Father's prestige was by this time considerably lessened in mymind, and though I loved and admired him, I had now long ceasedto hold him infallible. I did not accept his condemnation of theGreeks, although I bowed to it. In private I returned to examinemy steel engravings of the statues, and I reflected that theywere too beautiful to be so wicked as my Father thought theywere. The dangerous and pagan notion that beauty palliates evilbudded in my mind, without any external suggestion, and by thisreflection alone I was still further sundered from the faith inwhich I had been trained. I gathered very diligently all I couldpick up about the Greek gods and their statues; it was not much, it was indeed ludicrously little and false, but it was a germ. And at this aesthetic juncture I was drawn into what was reallyrather an extraordinary circle of incidents. 

Among the 'Saints' in our village there lived a shoemaker and hiswife, who had one daughter, Susan Flood. She was a flighty, excited young creature, and lately, during the passage of someitinerary revivalists, she had been 'converted' in the noisiestway, with sobs, gasps and gurglings. When this crisis passed, shecame with her parents to our meetings, and was received quietlyenough to the breaking of bread. But about the time I speak of, Susan Flood went up to London to pay a visit to an unconverteduncle and aunt. It was first whispered amongst us, and thenopenly stated, that these relatives had taken her to the CrystalPalace, where, in passing through the Sculpture Gallery, Susan'ssense of decency had been so grievously affronted, that she hadsmashed the naked figures with the handle of her parasol, beforeher horrified companions could stop her. She had, in fact, runamok among the statuary, and had, to the intense chagrin of heruncle and aunt, very worthy persons, been arrested and broughtbefore a magistrate, who dismissed her with a warning to herrelations that she had better be sent home to Devonshire and'looked after'. Susan Flood's return to us, however, was atriumph; she had no sense of having acted injudiciously orunbecomingly; she was ready to recount to every one, in vague andveiled language, how she had been able to testify for the Lord'in the very temple of Belial', for so she poetically describedthe Crystal Palace. She was, of course, in a state of unbridledhysteria, but such physical explanations were not encouragedamongst us, and the case of Susan Flood awakened a great deal ofsympathy. 

There was held a meeting of the elders in our drawing-room todiscuss it, and I contrived to be present, though out ofobservation. My Father, while he recognized the purity of SusanFlood's zeal, questioned its wisdom. He noted that the statuarywas not her property, but that of the Crystal Palace. Of theother communicants, none, I think, had the very slightest notionwhat the objects were that Susan had smashed, or tried to smash, and frankly maintained that they thought her conduct magnificent. As for me, I had gathered by persistent inquiry enoughinformation to know that what her sacrilegious parasol hadattacked were bodies of my mysterious friends, the Greek gods, and if all the rest of the village applauded iconoclastic Susan, I at least would be ardent on the other side. 

But I was conscious that there was nobody in the world to whom Icould go for sympathy. If I had ever read 'Hellas' I should havemurmured

 Apollo, Pan and Love, And even Olympian Jove, Grew weak, when killing Susan glared on them. 

On the day in question, I was unable to endure the drawing-roommeeting to its close, but, clutching my volume of the FunerealPoets, I made a dash for the garden. In the midst of a mass oflaurels, a clearing had been hollowed out, where ferns were grownand a garden-seat was placed. There was no regular path to thisasylum; one dived under the snake-like boughs of the laurel andcame up again in absolute seclusion. 

Into this haunt I now fled to meditate about the savage godlinessof that vandal, Susan Flood. So extremely ignorant was I that Isupposed her to have destroyed the originals of the statues, marble and unique. I knew nothing about plaster casts, and Ithought the damage (it is possible that there had really been nodamage whatever) was of an irreparable character. I sank into theseat, with the great wall of laurels whispering around me, and Iburst into tears. There was something, surely, quaint andpathetic in the figure of a little Plymouth Brother sitting inthat advanced year of grace, weeping bitterly for indignitiesdone to Hermes and to Aphrodite. Then I opened my book forconsolation, and I read a great block of pompous verse out of'The Deity', in the midst of which exercise, yielding to thesoftness of the hot and aromatic air, I fell fast asleep. 

Among those who applauded the zeal of Susan Flood's parasol, thePagets were prominent. These were a retired Baptist minister andhis wife, from Exmouth, who had lately settled amongst us, andjoined in the breaking of bread. Mr. Paget was a fat old man, whose round pale face was clean-shaven, and who carried a fullcrop of loose white hair above it; his large lips were alwaysmoving, whether he spoke or not. He resembled, as I now perceive, the portraits of S. T. Coleridge in age, but with all theintellect left out of them. He lived in a sort of trance ofsolemn religious despondency. He had thrown up his cure of souls, because he became convinced that he had committed the Sin againstthe Holy Ghost. His wife was younger than he, very small, verytight, very active, with black eyes like pin-pricks at the baseof an extremely high and narrow forehead, bordered with glossyringlets. He was very cross to her, and it was murmured that'dear Mrs. Paget had often had to pass through the waters ofaffliction'. They were very poor, but rigidly genteel, and shewas careful, so far as she could, to conceal from the world thecaprices of her poor lunatic husband. 

In our circle, it was never for a moment admitted that Mr. Pagetwas a lunatic. It was said that he had gravely sinned, and wasunder the Lord's displeasure; prayers were abundantly offered upthat he might be led back into the pathway of light, and that theSmiling Face might be drawn forth for him from behind theFrowning Providence. When the man had an epileptic seizure in theHigh Street, he was not taken to a hospital, but we repeated toone another, with shaken heads, that Satan, that crooked Serpent, had been unloosed for a season. Mr. Paget was fond of talking, inprivate and in public, of his dreadful spiritual condition and hewould drop his voice while he spoke of having committed theUnpardonable Sin, with a sort of shuddering exultation, such aspeople sometimes feel in the possession of a very unusualdisease. 

It might be thought that the position held in any community bypersons so afflicted and eccentric as the Pagets would be veryprecarious. But it was not so with us; on the contrary, they tooka prominent place at once. Mr. Paget, in spite of his spiritualbankruptcy, was only too anxious to help my Father in hisministrations, and used to beg to be allowed to pray and exhort. In the latter case he took the tone of a wounded veteran, who, though fallen on the bloody field himself, could still encourageyounger warriors to march forward to victory. Everybody longed toknow what the exact nature had been of that sin against the HolyGhost which had deprived Mr. Paget of every glimmer of hope fortime or for eternity. It was whispered that even my Fatherhimself was not precisely acquainted with the character of it. 

This mysterious disability clothed Mr. Paget for us with a kind ofromance. We watched him as the women watched Dante in Verona, whispering:

 Behold him how Hell's reek Has crisped his hair and singed his cheek!

His person lacked, it is true, something of the dignity ofDante's, for it was his caprice to walk up and down the HighStreet at noonday with one of those cascades of coloured paperwhich were known as 'ornaments for your fireplace' slung over theback and another over the front of his body. These hemanufactured for sale, and he adopted the quaint practice ofwearing the exuberant objects as a means for their advertisement. 

Mrs. Paget had been accustomed to rule in the little ministryfrom which Mr. Paget's celebrated Sin had banished them, and shewas inclined to clutch at the sceptre now. She was the onlyperson I ever met with who was not afraid of the displeasure ofmy Father. She would fix her viper-coloured eyes on his, and saywith a kind of gimlet firmness, 'I hardly think that is the trueinterpretation, Brother G. ', or, 'But let us turn to Colossians, and see what the Holy Ghost says there upon this matter. ' Shefascinated my Father, who was not accustomed to this kind ofinterruption, and as she was not to be softened by any flattery(such as:--'Marvellous indeed, Sister, is your acquaintance withthe means of grace!') she became almost a terror to him. 

She abused her powers by taking great liberties, which culminatedin her drawing his attention to the fact that my poor stepmotherdisplayed 'an overweening love of dress'. The accusation wasperfectly false; my stepmother was, if rather richly, always, plainly dressed, in the sober Quaker mode; almost her onlyornament was a large carnelian brooch, set in flowered flat gold. To this the envenomed Paget drew my Father's attention as 'likelyto lead "the little ones of the flock" into temptation'. My poorFather felt it his duty, thus directly admonished, to speak to mymother. 'Do you not think, my Love, that you should, as one whosets an example to others, discard the wearing of that gaudybrooch?' 'One must fasten one's collar with something, I suppose?''Well, but how does Sister Paget fasten her collar?' 'SisterPaget, ' replied my Mother, stung at last into rejoinder, 'fastensher collar with a pin, --and that is a thing which I would ratherdie than do!'

Nor did I escape the attentions of this zealous reformer. Mrs. Paget was good enough to take a great interest in me, and she wasnot satisfied with the way in which I was being brought up. Herpresence seemed to pervade the village, and I could neither comein nor go out without seeing her hard bonnet and her pursed-uplips. She would hasten to report to my Father that she saw melaughing and talking 'with a lot of unconverted boys', thesebeing the companions with whom I had full permission to bathe andboat. She urged my Father to complete my holy vocation by somedefinite step, by which he would dedicate me completely to theLord's service. Further schooling she thought needless, andmerely likely to foster intellectual pride. Mr. Paget, sheremarked, had troubled very little in his youth about worldlyknowledge, and yet how blessed he had been in the conversion ofsouls until he had incurred the displeasure of the Holy Ghost!

I do not know exactly what she wanted my Father to do with me;perhaps she did not know herself; she was meddlesome, ignorantand fanatical, and she liked to fancy that she was exercisinginfluence. But the wonderful, the inexplicable thing is that myFather, --who, with all his limitations, was so distinguished andhigh-minded, --should listen to her for a moment, and still morewonderful is it that he really allowed her, grim vixen that shewas, to disturb his plans and retard his purposes. I think theexplanation lay in the perfectly logical position she took up. MyFather found himself brought face to face at last, not with adisciple, but with a trained expert in his own peculiar scheme ofreligion. At every point she was armed with arguments the sourceof which he knew and the validity of which he recognized. Hetrembled before Mrs. Paget as a man in a dream may tremble beforea parody of his own central self, and he could not blame herwithout laying himself open somewhere to censure. 

But my stepmother's instincts were more primitive and her actionsless wire-drawn than my Father's. She disliked Mrs. Paget as muchas one earnest believer can bring herself to dislike a sister inthe Lord. My stepmother had quietly devoted herself to what shethought the best way of bringing me up, and she did not proposenow to be thwarted by the wife of a lunatic Baptist. At this timeI was a mixture of childishness and priggishness, of curiousknowledge and dense ignorance. Certain portions of my intellectwere growing with unwholesome activity, while others werestunted, or had never stirred at all. I was like a plant on whicha pot has been placed, with the effect that the centre is crushedand arrested, while shoots are straggling up to the light on allsides. My Father himself was aware of this, and in a spasmodicway he wished to regulate my thoughts. But all he did was to tryto straighten the shoots, without removing the pot which keptthem resolutely down. 

It was my stepmother who decided that I was now old enough to goto boarding-school, and my Father, having discovered that anelderly couple of Plymouth Brethren kept an 'academy for younggentlemen' in a neighbouring seaport town, --in the prospectus ofwhich the knowledge and love of the Lord were mentioned asoccupying the attention of the head--master and his assistantsfar more closely than any mere considerations of worldlytuition, --was persuaded to entrust me to its care. He stipulated, however, that I should always come home from Saturday night toMonday morning, not, as he said, that I might receive any carnalindulgence, but that there might be no cessation of my communionas a believer with the Saints in our village on Sundays. To thisschool, therefore, I presently departed, gawky and homesick, andthe rift between my soul and that of my Father widened a littlemore. 

CHAPTER XII

LITTLE boys from quiet, pious households, commonly found, inthose days, a chasm yawning at the feet of their inexperiencewhen they arrived at Boarding-school. But the fact that I stillslept at home on Saturday and Sunday nights preserved me, Ifancy, from many surprises. There was a crisis, but it was broadand slow for me. On the other hand, for my Father I am inclinedto think that it was definite and sharp. Permission for me todesert the parental hearth, even for five days in certain weeks, was tantamount, in his mind, to admitting that the great scheme, so long caressed, so passionately fostered, must in its primitivebigness be now dropped. 

The Great Scheme (I cannot resist giving it the mortuary ofcapital letters) had been, as my readers know, that I should beexclusively and consecutively dedicated through the whole of mylife, 'to the manifest and uninterrupted and uncompromisedservice of the Lord'. That had been the aspiration of my Mother, and at her death she had bequeathed that desire to my Father, like a dream of the Promised Land. In their ecstasy, my parentshad taken me, as Elkanah and Hannah had long ago taken Samuel, from their mountain-home of Ramathaim-Zophim down to sacrifice tothe Lord of Hosts in Shiloh. They had girt me about with a linenephod, and had hoped to leave me there; 'as long as he liveth, 'they had said, 'he shall be lent unto the Lord. '

Doubtless in the course of these fourteen years it hadoccasionally flashed upon my Father, as he overheard some speechof mine, or detected some idiosyncrasy, that I was not one ofthose whose temperament points them out as ultimately fitted foran austere life of religion. What he hoped, however, was thatwhen the little roughnesses of childhood were rubbed away, therewould pass a deep mellowness over my soul. He had a touching wayof condoning my faults of conduct, directly after reproving them, and he would softly deprecate my frailty, saying, in a tone ofharrowing tenderness, 'Are you not the child of many prayers?' Hecontinued to think that prayer, such passionate importunateprayer as his, must prevail. Faith could move mountains; shouldit not be able to mould the little ductile heart of a child, since he was sure that his own faith was unfaltering? He hadyearned and waited for a son who should be totally without humanaudacities, who should be humble, pure, not troubled by worldlyagitations, a son whose life should be cleansed and straightenedfrom above, _in custodiendo sermones Dei_; in whom everythingshould be sacrificed except the one thing needful to salvation. 

How such a marvel of lowly piety was to earn a living had never, I think, occurred to him. My Father was singularly indifferentabout money. Perhaps his notion was that, totally devoid ofambitions as I was to be, I should quietly become adult, andcontinue his ministrations among the poor of the Christian flock. He had some dim dream, I think, of there being just enough for usall without my having to take up any business or trade. I believeit was immediately after my first term at boarding-school, that Iwas a silent but indignant witness of a conversation between myFather and Mr. Thomas Brightwen, my stepmother's brother, who wasa banker in one of the Eastern Counties. 

This question, 'What is he to be?' in a worldly sense, was beingdiscussed, and I am sure that it was for the first time, at allevents in my presence. Mr. Brightwen, I fancy, had been workedupon by my stepmother, whose affection for me was always on theincrease, to suggest, or faintly to stir the air in theneighbourhood of suggesting, a query about my future. He waschildless and so was she, and I think a kind impulse led them to'feel the way', as it is called. I believe he said that thebanking business, wisely and honourably conducted, sometimes led, as we know that it is apt to lead, to affluence. To my horror, myFather, with rising emphasis, replied that 'if there were offeredto his beloved child what is called "an opening" that would leadto an income of L10, 000 a year, and that would divert histhoughts and interest from the Lord's work he would reject it onhis child's behalf. ' Mr. Brightwen, a precise and polishedgentleman who evidently never made an exaggerated statement inhis life, was, I think, faintly scandalized; he soon left us, andI do not recollect his paying us a second visit. 

For my silent part, I felt very much like Gehazi, and I wouldfain have followed after the banker if I had dared to do so, intothe night. I would have excused to him the ardour of my Elisha, and I would have reminded him of the sons of the prophets--'Giveme, I pray thee, ' I would have said, 'a talent of silver and twochanges of garments. ' It seemed to me very hard that my Fathershould dispose of my possibilities of wealth in so summary afashion, but the fact that I did resent it, and regretted what Isupposed to be my 'chance', shows how far apart we had alreadyswung. My Father, I am convinced, thought that he gave words tomy inward instincts when he repudiated the very mild andinconclusive benevolence of his brother-in-law. But he certainlydid not do so. I was conscious of a sharp and instinctivedisappointment at having had, as I fancied, wealth so near mygrasp, and at seeing it all cast violently into the sea of myFather's scruples. 

Not one of my village friends attended the boarding-school towhich I was now attached, and I arrived there without anacquaintance. I should soon, however, have found a corner of myown if my Father had not unluckily stipulated that I was not tosleep in the dormitory with the boys of my own age, but in theroom occupied by the two elder sons of a prominent PlymouthBrother whom he knew. From a social point of view this was anunfortunate arrangement, since these youths were some years olderand many years riper than I; the eldest, in fact, was soon toleave; they had enjoyed their independence, and they now greatlyresented being saddled with the presence of an unknown urchin. The supposition had been that they would protect and foster myreligious practices; would encourage me, indeed, as my Father putit, to approach the Throne of Grace with them at morning andevening prayer. They made no pretence, however, to be consideredgodly; they looked upon me as an intruder; and after a while theyounger, and ruder, of them openly let me know that they believedI had been put into their room to 'spy upon' them; it had been aplot, they knew, between their father and mine: and he darklywarned me that I should suffer if 'anything got out'. I had, however, no wish to trouble them, nor any faint interest in theiraffairs. I soon discovered that they were absorbed in a sillykind of amorous correspondence with the girls of a neighbouringacademy, but 'what were all such toys to me?'

These young fellows, who ought long before to have left theschool, did nothing overtly unkind to me, but they condemned meto silence. They ceased to address me except with an occasionalcommand. By reason of my youth, I was in bed and asleep before mycompanions arrived upstairs, and in the morning I was alwaysrouted up and packed about my business while they still weredrowsing. But the fact that I had been cut off from my coevals bynight, cut me off from them also by day--so that I was nothing tothem, neither a boarder nor a day-scholar, neither flesh, fishnor fowl. The loneliness of my life was extreme, and that Ialways went home on Saturday afternoon and returned on Mondaymorning still further checked my companionships at school. For along time, round the outskirts of that busy throng of openinglives, I 'wandered lonely as a cloud', and sometimes I was moreunhappy than I had ever been before. No one, however, bullied me, and though I was dimly and indefinably witness to acts ofuncleanness and cruelty, I was the victim of no such acts and therecipient of no dangerous confidences. I suppose that my queerreputation for sanctity, half dreadful, half ridiculous, surrounded me with a non-conducting atmosphere. 

We are the victims of hallowed proverbs, and one of the mostclassic of these tells us that 'the child is father of the man'. But in my case I cannot think that this was true. In mature yearsI have always been gregarious, a lover of my kind, dependent uponthe company of friends for the very pulse of moral life. To bemarooned, to be shut up in a solitary cell, to inhabit alighthouse, or to camp alone in a forest, these have alwaysseemed to me afflictions too heavy to be borne, even inimagination. A state in which conversation exists not, is for mean air too empty of oxygen for my lungs to breathe it. 

Yet when I look back upon my days at boarding-school, I seemyself unattracted by any of the human beings around me. Mygrown-up years are made luminous to me in memory by the ardentfaces of my friends, but I can scarce recall so much as the namesof more than two or three of my schoolfellows. There is not oneof them whose mind or whose character made any lasting impressionupon me. In later life, I have been impatient of solitude, andafraid of it; at school, I asked for no more than to slip out ofthe hurly-burly and be alone with my reflections and my fancies. That magnetism of humanity which has been the agony of matureyears, of this I had not a trace when I was a boy. Of thosefragile loves to which most men look back with tenderness andpassion, emotions to be explained only as Montaigne explainedthem, _parceque c'etait lui, parceque c'etait moi_, I knew nothing. I, to whom friendship has since been like sunlight and likesleep, left school unbrightened and unrefreshed by commerce witha single friend. 

If I had been clever, I should doubtless have attracted thejealousy of my fellows, but I was spared this by the mediocrityof my success in the classes. One little fact I may mention, because it exemplifies the advance in observation which has beenmade in forty years. I was extremely nearsighted, and inconsequence was placed at a gross disadvantage, by being unableto see the slate or the black-board on which our tasks wereexplained. It seems almost incredible, when one reflects upon it, but during the whole of my school life, this fact was nevercommented upon or taken into account by a single person, untilthe Polish lady who taught us the elements of German and Frenchdrew someone's attention to it in my sixteenth year. I was notquick, but I passed for being denser than I was because of themyopic haze that enveloped me. But this is not an autobiography, and with the cold and shrouded details of my uninteresting schoollife I will not fatigue the reader. 

I was not content, however, to be the cipher that I found myself, and when I had been at school for about a year, I 'broke out', greatly, I think, to my own surprise, in a popular act. We had ayoung usher whom we disliked. I suppose, poor half-starvedphthisic lad, that he was the most miserable of us all. He was, Ithink, unfitted for the task which had been forced upon him; hewas fretful, unsympathetic, agitated. The school-house, an oldrambling place, possessed a long cellar-like room that openedfrom our general corridor and was lighted by deep windows, carefully barred, which looked into an inner garden. This vaultwas devoted to us and to our play-boxes: by a tacit law, nomaster entered it. One evening, just at dusk, a great number ofus were here when the bell for night-school rang, and many of usdawdled at the summons. Mr. B. , tactless in his anger, bustled inamong us, scolding in a shrill voice, and proceeded to drive usforth. I was the latest to emerge, and as he turned away to seeif any other truant might not be hiding, I determined uponaction. With a quick movement, I drew the door behind me andbolted it, just in time to hear the imprisoned usher scream withvexation. We boys all trooped upstairs and it is characteristicof my isolation that I had not one 'chum' to whom I could confidemy feat. 

That Mr. B. Had been shut in became, however, almost instantlyknown, and the night-class, usually so unruly, was awed by theevent into exemplary decorum. There, with no master near us, in asilence rarely broken by a giggle or a catcall, we sat diligentlyworking, or pretending to work. Through my brain, as I hung overmy book a thousand new thoughts began to surge. I was theliberator, the tyrannicide; I had freed all my fellows from theodious oppressor. Surely, when they learned that it was I, theywould cluster round me; surely, now, I should be somebody in theschool-life, no longer a mere trotting shadow or invisiblepresence. The interval seemed long; at length Mr. B. Was releasedby a servant, and he came up into the school-room to find us inthat ominous condition of suspense. 

At first he said nothing. He sank upon a chair in a half-faintingattitude, while he pressed his hand to his side; his distress andsilence redoubled the boys' surprise, and filled me withsomething like remorse. For the first time, I reflected that hewas human, that perhaps he suffered. He rose presently and took aslate, upon which he wrote two questions: 'Did you do it?' 'Doyou know who did?' and these he propounded to each boy inrotation. The prompt, redoubled 'No' in every case seemed to pileup his despair. 

One of the last to whom he held, in silence, the trembling slatewas the perpetrator. As I saw the moment approach, an unspeakabletimidity swept over me. I reflected that no one had seen me, thatno one could accuse me. Nothing could be easier or safer than todeny, nothing more perplexing to the enemy, nothing less perilousfor the culprit. A flood of plausible reasons invaded my brain; Iseemed to see this to be a case in which to tell the truth wouldbe not merely foolish, it would be wrong. Yet when the usherstood before me, holding the slate out in his white and shakinghand, I seized the pencil, and, ignoring the first question, Iwrote 'Yes' firmly against the second. I suppose that theambiguity of this action puzzled Mr. B. He pressed me to answer:'Did you do it?' but to that I was obstinately dumb; and away Iwas hurried to an empty bed-room, where for the whole of thatnight and the next day I was held a prisoner, visited atintervals by the headmaster and other inquisitorial persons, until I was gradually persuaded to make a full confession andapology. 

This absurd little incident had one effect, it revealed me to myschoolfellows as an existence. From that time forth I lay nolonger under the stigma of invisibility; I had produced mymaterial shape and had thrown my shadow for a moment into alegend. But, in other respects, things went on much as before. 

Curiously uninfluenced by my surroundings, I in my turn failed toexercise influence, and my practical isolation was no less thanit had been before. It was thus that it came about that my socialmemories of my boarding-school life are monotonous and vague. Itwas a period during which, as it appears to me now on lookingback, the stream of my spiritual nature spread out into a shallowpool which was almost stagnant. I was labouring to gain thoseelements of conventional knowledge, which had, in many cases, upto that time been singularly lacking. But my brain was starved, and my intellectual perceptions were veiled. Elder persons who inlater years would speak to me frankly of my school-days assuredme that, while I had often struck them as a smart and quaint andeven interesting child, all promise seemed to fade out of me as aschoolboy, and that those who were most inclined to be indulgentgave up the hope that I should prove a man in a way remarkable. This was particularly the case with the most indulgent of myprotectors, my refined and gentle stepmother. 

As this record can, however, have no value that is not based onits rigorous adhesion to the truth, I am bound to say that thedreariness and sterility of my school-life were more apparentthan real. I was pursuing certain lines of moral and mentaldevelopment all the time, and since my schoolmasters and myschoolfellows combined in thinking me so dull, I will display atardy touch of 'proper spirit' and ask whether it may not partlyhave been because they were themselves so commonplace. I thinkthat if some drops of sympathy, that magic dew of Paradise, hadfallen upon my desert, it might have blossomed like the rose, or, at all events, like that chimerical flower, the Rose of Jericho. As it was, the conventionality around me, the intellectualdrought, gave me no opportunity of outward growth. They did notdestroy, but they cooped up, and rendered slow and inefficient, that internal life which continued, as I have said, to live onunseen. This took the form of dreams and speculations, in thecourse of which I went through many tortuous processes of themind, the actual aims of which were futile, although themovements themselves were useful. If I may more minutely definemy meaning, I would say that in my schooldays, without possessingthoughts, I yet prepared my mind for thinking, and learned how tothink. 

The great subject of my curiosity at this time was words, asinstruments of expression. I was incessant in adding to myvocabulary, and in finding accurate and individual terms forthings. Here, too, the exercise preceded the employment, since Iwas busy providing myself with words before I had any ideas toexpress with them. When I read Shakespeare and came upon thepassage in which Prospero tells Caliban that he had no thoughtsuntil his master taught him words, I remember starting withamazement at the poet's intuition, for such a Caliban had I been:

 I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other, when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble, like A thing most brutish; I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them know. 

For my Prosperos I sought vaguely in such books as I had accessto, and I was conscious that as the inevitable word seized holdof me, with it out of the darkness into strong light came theimage and the idea. 

My Father possessed a copy of Bailey's 'Etymological Dictionary', abook published early in the eighteenth century. Over this I wouldpore for hours, playing with the words in a fashion which I canno longer reconstruct, and delighting in the savour of the rich, old-fashioned country phrases. My Father finding me thusemployed, fell to wondering at the nature of my pursuit, and Icould offer him, indeed, no very intelligible explanation of it. He urged me to give up such idleness, and to make practical useof language. For this purpose he conceived an exercise which heobliged me to adopt, although it was hateful to me. He sent meforth, it might be, up the lane to Warbury Hill and round home bythe copses; or else down one chine to the sea and along theshingle to the next cutting in the cliff, and so back by way ofthe village; and he desired me to put down, in language as fullas I could, all that I had seen in each excursion. As I havesaid, this practice was detestable and irksome to me, but, as Ilook back, I am inclined to believe it to have been the mostsalutary, the most practical piece of training which my Fatherever gave me. It forced me to observe sharply and clearly, toform visual impressions, to retain them in the brain, and toclothe them in punctilious and accurate language. 

It was in my fifteenth year that I became again, this timeintelligently, acquainted with Shakespeare. I got hold of asingle play, _The Tempest_, in a school edition, prepared, Isuppose, for one of the university examinations which were thenbeing instituted in the provinces. This I read through andthrough, not disdaining the help of the notes, and revelling inthe glossary. I studied _The Tempest_ as I had hitherto studied noclassic work, and it filled my whole being with music andromance. This book was my own hoarded possession; the rest ofShakespeare's works were beyond my hopes. But gradually Icontrived to borrow a volume here and a volume there. I completed_The Merchant of Venice_, read _Cymbeline_, _Julius Caesar_ and _MuchAdo_; most of the others, I think, remained closed to me for along time. But these were enough to steep my horizon with all thecolours of sunrise. It was due, no doubt, to my bringing up, thatthe plays never appealed to me as bounded by the exigencies of astage or played by actors. The images they raised in my mind wereof real people moving in the open air, and uttering, in thenatural play of life, sentiments that were clothed in the mostlovely, and yet, as it seemed to me, the most obvious and themost inevitable language. 

It was while I was thus under the full spell of the Shakespeareannecromancy that a significant event occurred. My Father took meup to London for the first time since my infancy. Our visit wasone of a few days only, and its purpose was that we might takepart in some enormous Evangelical conference. We stayed in a darkhotel off the Strand, where I found the noise by day and nightvery afflicting. When we were not at the conference, I spent longhours, among crumbs and bluebottle flies, in the coffee-room ofthis hotel, my Father being busy at the British Museum and theRoyal Society. The conference was held in an immense hall, somewhere in the north of London. I remember my short-sightedsense of the terrible vastness of the crowd, with rings on ringsof dim white faces fading in the fog. My Father, as a privilegedvisitor, was obliged with seats on the platform, and we were inthe heart of the first really large assemblage of persons that Ihad ever seen. 

The interminable ritual of prayers, hymns and addresses left noimpression on my memory, but my attention was suddenly stung intolife by a remark. An elderly man, fat and greasy, with a voicelike a bassoon, and an imperturbable assurance, was denouncingthe spread of infidelity, and the lukewarmness of professingChristians, who refrained from battling with the wickedness attheir doors. They were like the Laodiceans, whom the angel of theApocalypse spewed out of his mouth. For instance, who, the oratorasked, is now rising to check the outburst of idolatry in ourmidst? 'At this very moment, ' he went on, 'there is proceeding, unreproved, a blasphemous celebration of the birth ofShakespeare, a lost soul now suffering for his sins in hell!' Mysensation was that of one who has suddenly been struck on thehead; stars and sparks beat around me. If some person I loved hadbeen grossly insulted in my presence, I could not have felt morepowerless in anguish. No one in that vast audience raised a wordof protest, and my spirits fell to their nadir. This, be itremarked, was the earliest intimation that had reached me of thetercentenary of the Birth at Stratford, and I had not the leastidea what could have provoked the outburst of outraged godliness. 

But Shakespeare was certainly in the air. When we returned to thehotel that noon, my Father of his own accord reverted to thesubject. I held my breath, prepared to endure fresh torment. Whathe said, however, surprised and relieved me. 'Brother So and So, 'he remarked, 'was not, in my judgement, justified in saying whathe did. The uncovenanted mercies of God are not revealed to us. Before so rashly speaking of Shakespeare as "a lost soul inhell", he should have remembered how little we know of the poet'shistory. The light of salvation was widely disseminated in theland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and we cannot know thatShakespeare did not accept the atonement of Christ in simplefaith before he came to die. ' The concession will today seemmeagre to gay and worldly spirits, but words cannot express howcomfortable it was to me. I gazed at my Father with loving eyesacross the cheese and celery, and if the waiter had not beenpresent I believe I might have hugged him in my arms. 

This anecdote may serve to illustrate the attitude of myconscience, at this time, with regard to theology. I was notconsciously in any revolt against the strict faith in which I hadbeen brought up, but I could not fail to be aware of the factthat literature tempted me to stray up innumerable paths whichmeandered in directions at right angles to that direct strait waywhich leadeth to salvation. I fancied, if I may pursue the image, that I was still safe up these pleasant lanes if I did not strayfar enough to lose sight of the main road. If, for instance, ithad been quite certain that Shakespeare had been irrecoverablydamnable and damned, it would scarcely have been possible for meto have justified myself in going on reading _Cymbeline_. One whobroke bread with the Saints every Sunday morning, who 'took aclass' at Sunday school, who made, as my Father loved to remindme, a public weekly confession of his willingness to bear theCross of Christ, such an one could hardly, however bewilderingand torturing the thought, continue to admire a lost soul. Butthat happy possibility of an ultimate repentance, how it easedme! I could always console myself with the belief that whenShakespeare wrote any passage of intoxicating beauty, it was justthen that he was beginning to breathe the rapture that faith inChrist brings to the anointed soul. And it was with a likecasuistry that I condoned my other intellectual and personalpleasures. 

My Father continued to be under the impression that my boarding-school, which he never again visited after originally leaving methere, was conducted upon the same principles as his ownhousehold. I was frequently tempted to enlighten him, but I neverfound the courage to do so. As a matter of fact the piety of theestablishment, which collected to it the sons of a large numberof evangelically minded parents throughout that part of thecountry, resided mainly in the prospectus. It proceeded nofurther than the practice of reading the Bible aloud, each boy insuccessive order one verse, in the early morning beforebreakfast. There was no selection and no exposition; where thelast boy sat, there the day's reading ended, even if it were inthe middle of a sentence, and there it began next morning. 

Such reading of 'the chapter' was followed by a long dry prayer. I do not know that this morning service would appear moreperfunctory than usual to other boys, but it astounded anddisgusted me, accustomed as I was to the ministrations at home, where my Father read 'the word of God' in a loud passionatevoice, with dramatic emphasis, pausing for commentary andparaphrase, and treating every phrase as if it were part of apersonal message or of thrilling family history. At school, 'morning prayer' was a dreary, unintelligible exercise, and withthis piece of mumbo-jumbo, religion for the day began and ended. The discretion of little boys is extraordinary. I am quitecertain no one of us ever revealed this fact to our godly parentsat home. 

If any one was to do this, it was of course I who should first ofall have 'testified'. But I had grown cautious about makingconfidences. One never knew how awkwardly they might develop orto what disturbing excesses of zeal they might precipitouslylead. I was on my guard against my Father, who was, all the time, only too openly yearning that I should approach him for help, forcomfort, for ghostly counsel. Still 'delicate', though steadilygaining in solidity of constitution, I was liable to severechills and to fugitive neuralgic pangs. My Father was, almostmaddeningly, desirous that these afflictions should be sanctifiedto me, and it was in my bed, often when I was much bowed inspirit by indisposition, that he used to triumph over me mostpitilessly. He retained the singular superstition, amazing in aman of scientific knowledge and long human experience, that allpains and ailments were directly sent by the Lord in chastisementfor some definite fault, and not in relation to any physicalcause. The result was sometimes quite startling, and inparticular I recollect that my stepmother and I exchangedimpressions of astonishment at my Father's action when Mrs. Goodyer, who was one of the 'Saints' and the wife of a youngjourneyman cobbler, broke her leg. My Father, puzzled for aninstant as to the meaning of this accident, since Mrs. Goodyerwas the gentlest and most inoffensive of our church members, decided that it must be because she had made an idol of herhusband, and he reduced the poor thing to tears by standing ather bed-side and imploring the Holy Spirit to bring this sin hometo her conscience. 

When, therefore, I was ill at home with one of my triflingdisorders, the problem of my spiritual state always pressedviolently upon my Father, and this caused me no little mentaluneasiness. He would appear at my bedside, with solemnsolicitude, and sinking on his knees would earnestly pray aloudthat the purpose of the Lord in sending me this affliction mightgraciously be made plain to me; and then, rising, and standing bymy pillow, he would put me through a searching spiritual inquiryas to the fault which was thus divinely indicated to me asobserved and reprobated on high. 

It was not on points of moral behaviour that he thus cross-examined me; I think he disdained such ignoble game as that. Butuncertainties of doctrine, relinquishment of faith in the purityof this dogma or of that, lukewarm zeal in 'taking up the crossof Christ', growth of intellectual pride, --such were theinsidious offences in consequence of which, as he supposed, thecold in the head or the toothache had been sent as heavenlymessengers to recall my straggling conscience to its plain pathof duty. 

What made me very uncomfortable on these occasions was myconsciousness that confinement to bed was hardly an affliction atall. It kept me from the boredom of school, in a fire-lit bedroomat home, with my pretty, smiling stepmother lavishing luxuriousattendance upon me, and it gave me long, unbroken days forreading. I was awkwardly aware that I simply had not theeffrontery to 'approach the Throne of Grace' with a request toknow for what sin I was condemned to such a very pleasantdisposition of my hours. 

The current of my life ran, during my schooldays, most merrilyand fully in the holidays, when I resumed my outdoor exerciseswith those friends in the village of whom I have spoken earlier. I think they were more refined and better bred than any of myschoolfellows, at all events it was among these homely companionsalone that I continued to form congenial and sympatheticrelations. In one of these boys, --one of whom I have heard orseen nothing now for nearly a generation, --I found tastessingularly parallel to my own, and we scoured the horizon insearch of books in prose and verse, but particularly in verse. 

As I grew stronger in muscle, I was capable of addingconsiderably to my income by an exercise of my legs. I wasallowed money for the railway ticket between the town where theschool lay and the station nearest to my home. But, if I chose towalk six or seven miles along the coast, thus more than halvingthe distance by rail from school house to home, I might spend aspocket money the railway fare I thus saved. Such considerablesums I fostered in order to buy with them editions of the poets. These were not in those days, as they are now, at the beck andcall of every purse, and the attainment of each littlemasterpiece was a separate triumph. In particular I shall neverforget the excitement of reaching at length the exorbitant pricethe bookseller asked for the only, although imperfect, edition ofthe poems of S. T. Coleridge. At last I could meet his demand, and my friend and I went down to consummate the solemn purchase. Coming away with our treasure, we read aloud from the orangecoloured volume, in turns, as we strolled along, until at last wesat down on the bulging root of an elm tree in a secluded lane. Here we stayed, in a sort of poetical nirvana, reading, reading, forgetting the passage of time, until the hour of our neglectedmid-day meal was a long while past, and we had to hurry home tobread and cheese and a scolding. 

There was occasionally some trouble about my reading, but now notmuch nor often. I was rather adroit, and careful not to bringprominently into sight anything of a literary kind which couldbecome a stone of stumbling. But, when I was nearly sixteen, Imade a purchase which brought me into sad trouble, and was thecause of a permanent wound to my self-respect. I had long covetedin the bookshop window a volume in which the poetical works ofBen Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were said to be combined. ThisI bought at length, and I carried it with me to devour as I trodthe desolate road that brought me along the edge of the cliff onSaturday afternoons. Of Ben Jonson I could make nothing, but whenI turned to 'Hero and Leander', I was lifted to a heaven ofpassion and music. It was a marvellous revelation of romanticbeauty to me, and as I paced along that lonely and exquisitehighway, with its immense command of the sea, and its peeps everynow and then, through slanting thickets, far down to the snow-white shingle, I lifted up my voice, singing the verses, as Istrolled along:

 Buskins of shells, all silver'd, used she, And branch'd with blushing coral to the knee, Where sparrows perched, of hollow pearl and gold, Such as the world would wonder to behold, --

so it went on, and I thought I had never read anything solovely, --

 Amorous Leander, beautiful and young, Whose tragedy divine Musaeus sung, --

it all seemed to my fancy intoxicating beyond anything I had evereven dreamed of, since I had not yet become acquainted with anyof the modern romanticists. 

When I reached home, tired out with enthusiasm and exercise, Imust needs, so soon as I had eaten, search out my stepmother thatshe might be a partner in my joys. It is remarkable to me now, and a disconcerting proof of my still almost infantile innocence, that, having induced her to settle to her knitting, I began, without hesitation, to read Marlowe's voluptuous poem aloud tothat blameless Christian gentlewoman. We got on very well in theopening, but at the episode of Cupid's pining, my stepmother'sneedles began nervously to clash, and when we launched on thedescription of Leander's person, she interrupted me by saying, rather sharply, 'Give me that book, please, I should like to readthe rest to myself. ' I resigned the reading in amazement, and wasstupefied to see her take the volume, shut it with a snap andhide it under her needlework. Nor could I extract from heranother word on the subject. 

The matter passed from my mind, and I was therefore extremelyalarmed when, soon after my going to bed that night, my Fathercame into my room with a pale face and burning eyes, the prey ofviolent perturbation. He set down the candle and stood by thebed, and it was some time before he could resolve on a form ofspeech. Then he denounced me, in unmeasured terms, for bringinginto the house, for possessing at all or reading, so abominable abook. He explained that my stepmother had shown it to him, andthat he had looked through it, and had burned it. 

The sentence in his tirade which principally affected me wasthis. He said, 'You will soon be leaving us, and going up tolodgings in London, and if your landlady should come into yourroom, and find such a book lying about, she would immediately setyou down as a profligate. ' I did not understand this at all, andit seems to me now that the fact that I had so very simply andchildishly volunteered to read the verses to my stepmother shouldhave proved to my Father that I connected it with no ideas of animmoral nature. 

I was greatly wounded and offended, but my indignation wassmothered up in the alarm and excitement which followed the newsthat I was to go up to live in lodgings, and, as it was evident, alone, in London. Of this no hint or whisper had previouslyreached me. On reflection, I can but admit that my Father, whowas little accustomed to seventeenth-century literature, musthave come across some startling exposures in Ben Jonson, andprobably never reached 'Hero and Leander' at all. The artisticeffect of such poetry on an innocently pagan mind did not comewithin the circle of his experience. He judged the outspokenElizabethan poets, no doubt, very much in the spirit of theproblematical landlady. 

Of the world outside, of the dim wild whirlpool of London, I wasmuch afraid, but I was now ready to be willing to leave thenarrow Devonshire circle, to see the last of the red mud, of thedreary village street, of the plethoric elders, to hear the lastof the drawling voices of the 'Saints'. Yet I had a greatdifficulty in persuading myself that I could ever be happy awayfrom home, and again I compared my lot with that of one of thespeckled soldier-crabs that roamed about in my Father's aquarium, dragging after them great whorl-shells. They, if by chance theywere turned out of their whelk-habitations, trailed about a palesoft body in search of another house, visibly broken-hearted andthe victims of every ignominious accident. 

My spirits were divided pathetically between the wish to stay on, a guarded child, and to proceed into the world, a budding man, and, in my utter ignorance, I sought in vain to conjure up whatmy immediate future would be. My Father threw no light upon thesubject, for he had not formed any definite idea of what I couldpossibly do to earn an honest living. As a matter of fact I wasto stay another year at school and home. 

This last year of my boyish life passed rapidly and pleasantly. My sluggish brain waked up at last and I was able to study withapplication. In the public examinations I did pretty well, andmay even have been thought something of a credit to the school. Yet I formed no close associations, and I even contrived toavoid, as I had afterwards occasion to regret, such lessons aswere distasteful to me, and therefore particularly valuable. ButI read with unchecked voracity, and in several curiousdirections. Shakespeare now passed into my possession entire, inthe shape of a reprint more hideous and more offensive to theeyesight than would in these days appear conceivable. I madeacquaintance with Keats, who entirely captivated me; withShelley, whose 'Queen Mab' at first repelled me from thethreshold of his edifice; and with Wordsworth, for the exerciseof whose magic I was still far too young. My Father presented mewith the entire bulk of Southey's stony verse, which I found itimpossible to penetrate, but my stepmother lent me _The GoldenTreasury_, in which almost everything seemed exquisite. 

Upon this extension of my intellectual powers, however, there didnot follow any spirit of doubt or hostility to the faith. On thecontrary, at first there came a considerable quickening offervour. My prayers became less frigid and mechanical; I nolonger avoided as far as possible the contemplation of religiousideas; I began to search the Scriptures for myself with interestand sympathy, if scarcely with ardour. I began to perceive, without animosity, the strange narrowness of my Father's system, which seemed to take into consideration only a selected circle ofpersons, a group of disciples peculiarly illuminated, and to haveno message whatever for the wider Christian community. 

On this subject I had some instructive conversations with myFather, whom I found not reluctant to have his convictions pushedto their logical extremity. He did not wish to judge, heprotested; but he could not admit that a single Unitarian (or'Socinian', as he preferred to say) could possibly be redeemed;and he had no hope of eternal salvation for the inhabitants ofCatholic countries. I recollect his speaking of Austria. Hequestioned whether a single Austrian subject, except, as he said, here and there a pious and extremely ignorant individual, who hadnot comprehended the errors of the Papacy, but had humbly studiedhis Bible, could hope to find eternal life. He thought that theordinary Chinaman or savage native of Fiji had a better chance ofsalvation than any cardinal in the Vatican. And even in thepriesthood of the Church of England he believed that while manywere called, few indeed would be found to have been chosen. 

I could not sympathize, even in my then state of ignorance, withso rigid a conception of the Divine mercy. Little inclined as Iwas to be sceptical, I still thought it impossible, that a secretof such stupendous importance should have been entrusted to alittle group of Plymouth Brethren, and have been hidden frommillions of disinterested and pious theologians. That the leadersof European Christianity were sincere, my Father did not attemptto question. But they were all of them wrong, _incorrect_; and nomatter how holy their lives, how self-sacrificing their actions, they would have to suffer for their inexactitude through aeons ofundefined torment. He would speak with a solemn complacency ofthe aged nun, who, after a long life of renunciation anddevotion, died at last, 'only to discover her mistake'. 

He who was so tender-hearted that he could not bear to witnessthe pain or distress of any person, however disagreeable orundeserving, was quite acquiescent in believing that God wouldpunish human beings, in millions, for ever, for a purelyintellectual error of comprehension. My Father's inconsistenciesof perception seem to me to have been the result of a curiousirregularity of equipment. Taking for granted, as he did, theabsolute integrity of the Scriptures, and applying to them histrained scientific spirit, he contrived to stifle, with adeplorable success, alike the function of the imagination, thesense of moral justice, and his own deep and instinctivetenderness of heart. 

There presently came over me a strong desire to know whatdoctrine indeed it was that the other Churches taught. Iexpressed a wish to be made aware of the practices of Rome, or atleast of Canterbury, and I longed to attend the Anglican and theRoman services. But to do so was impossible. My Father did not, indeed, forbid me to enter the fine parish church of our village, or the stately Puginesque cathedral which Rome had just erectedat its side, but I knew that I could not be seen at eitherservice without his immediately knowing it, or without his beingdeeply wounded. Although I was sixteen years of age, and althoughI was treated with indulgence and affection, I was still but abird fluttering in the net-work of my Father's will, andincapable of the smallest independent action. I resigned allthought of attending any other services than those at our 'Room', but I did no longer regard this exclusion as a final one. Ibowed, but it was in the house of Rimmon, from which I now knewthat I must inevitably escape. All the liberation, however, whichI desired or dreamed of was only just so much as would bring meinto communion with the outer world of Christianity withoutdivesting me of the pure and simple principles of faith. 

Of so much emancipation, indeed, I now became ardently desirous, and in the contemplation of it I rose to a more considerabledegree of religious fervour than I had ever reached before or wasever to experience later. Our thoughts were at this timeabundantly exercised with the expectation of the immediate comingof the Lord, who, as my Father and those who thought with himbelieved, would suddenly appear, without the least warning, andwould catch up to be with Him in everlasting glory all whomacceptance of the Atonement had sealed for immortality. Thesewere, on the whole, not numerous, and our belief was that theworld, after a few days' amazement at the total disappearance ofthese persons, would revert to its customary habits of life, merely sinking more rapidly into a moral corruption due to theremoval of these souls of salt. This event an examination ofprophecy had led my Father to regard as absolutely imminent, andsometimes, when we parted for the night, he would say with asparkling rapture in his eyes, 'Who knows? We may meet next inthe air, with all the cohorts of God's saints!'

This conviction I shared, without a doubt; and, indeed, --inperfect innocency, I hope, but perhaps with a touch of slynesstoo, --I proposed at the end of the summer holidays that I shouldstay at home. 'What is the use of my going to school? Let me bewith you when we rise to meet the Lord in the air!' To this myFather sharply and firmly replied that it was our duty to carryon our usual avocations to the last, for we knew not the momentof His coming, and we should be together in an instant on thatday, how far soever we might be parted upon earth. I was ashamed, but his argument was logical, and, as it proved, judicious. MyFather lived for nearly a quarter of a century more, never losingthe hope of 'not tasting death', and as the last moments ofmortality approached, he was bitterly disappointed at what heheld to be a scanty reward of his long faith and patience. But ifmy own life's work had been, as I proposed, shelved inexpectation of the Lord's imminent advent, I should have cumberedthe ground until this day. 

To school, therefore, I returned with a brain full of strangediscords, in a huddled mixture of 'Endymion' and the Book ofRevelation, John Wesley's hymns and 'Midsummer Night's Dream'. Few boys of my age, I suppose, carried about with them such aconfused throng of immature impressions and contradictory hopes. I was at one moment devoutly pious, at the next haunted byvisions of material beauty and longing for sensuous impressions. In my hot and silly brain, Jesus and Pan held sway together, asin a wayside chapel discordantly and impishly consecrated toPagan and to Christian rites. But for the present, as in thegreat chorus which so marvellously portrays our double nature, 'the folding-star of Bethlehem' was still dominant. I became moreand more pietistic. Beginning now to versify, I wrote a tragedyin pale imitation of Shakespeare, but on a Biblical andevangelistic subject; and odes that were parodies of those in'Prometheus Unbound', but dealt with the approaching advent ofour Lord and the rapture of His saints. My unwholesomeexcitement, bubbling up in this violent way, reached at last aclimax and foamed over. 

It was a summer afternoon, and, being now left very free in mymovements, I had escaped from going out with the rest of myschoolfellows in their formal walk in charge of an usher. I hadbeen reading a good deal of poetry, but my heart had translatedApollo and Bacchus into terms of exalted Christian faith. I wasalone, and I lay on a sofa, drawn across a large open window atthe top of the school-house, in a room which was used as a studyby the boys who were 'going up for examination'. I gazed down ona labyrinth of garden sloping to the sea, which twinkled faintlybeyond the towers of the town. Each of these gardens held a villain it, but all the near landscape below me was drowned infoliage. A wonderful warm light of approaching sunset modelledthe shadows and set the broad summits of the trees in a richglow. There was an absolute silence below and around me; a magicof suspense seemed to keep every topmost twig from waving. 

Over my soul there swept an immense wave of emotion. Now, surely, now the great final change must be approaching. I gazed up intothe tenderly-coloured sky, and I broke irresistibly into speech. 'Come now, Lord Jesus, ' I cried, 'come now and take me to be forever with Thee in Thy Paradise. I am ready to come. My heart ispurged from sin, there is nothing that keeps me rooted to thiswicked world. Oh, come now, now, and take me before I have knownthe temptations of life, before I have to go to London and allthe dreadful things that happen there!' And I raised myself onthe sofa, and leaned upon the window-sill, and waited for theglorious apparition. 

This was the highest moment of my religious life, the apex of mystriving after holiness. I waited awhile, watching; and then Ifelt a faint shame at the theatrical attitude I had adopted, although I was alone. Still I gazed and still I hoped. Then alittle breeze sprang up and the branches danced. Sounds began torise from the road beneath me. Presently the colour deepened, theevening came on. From far below there rose to me the chatter ofthe boys returning home. The tea-bell rang, --last word of proseto shatter my mystical poetry. 'The Lord has not come, the Lordwill never come, ' I muttered, and in my heart the artificialedifice of extravagant faith began to totter and crumble. Fromthat moment forth my Father and I, though the fact was longsuccessfully concealed from him and even from myself, walked inopposite hemispheres of the soul, with 'the thick o' the worldbetween us'. 

EPILOGUE

THIS narrative, however, must not be allowed to close with theSon in the foreground of the piece. If it has a value, that valueconsists in what light it may contrive to throw upon the uniqueand noble figure of the Father. With the advance of years, thecharacteristics of this figure became more severely outlined, more rigorously confined within settled limits. In relation tothe Son--who presently departed, at a very immature age, for thenew life in London--the attitude of the Father continued to beone of extreme solicitude, deepening by degrees intodisappointment and disenchantment. He abated no jot or tittle ofhis demands upon human frailty. He kept the spiritual cord drawntight; the Biblical bearing-rein was incessantly busy, jerkinginto position the head of the dejected neophyte. That young soul, removed from the Father's personal inspection, began to blossomforth crudely and irregularly enough, into new provinces ofthought, through fresh layers of experience. To the painfulmentor at home in the West, the centre of anxiety was still themeek and docile heart, dedicated to the Lord's service, whichmust, at all hazards and with all defiance of the rules of life, be kept unspotted from the world. 

The torment of a postal inquisition began directly I was settledin my London lodgings. To my Father--with his ample leisure, hispalpitating apprehension, his ready pen--the flow ofcorrespondence offered no trouble at all; it was a grave butgratifying occupation. To me the almost daily letter ofexhortation, with its string of questions about conduct, itsseries of warnings, grew to be a burden which could hardly beborne, particularly because it involved a reply as punctual andif possible as full as itself. At the age of seventeen, themetaphysics of the soul are shadowy, and it is a dreadful thingto be forced to define the exact outline of what is so undulatingand so shapeless. To my Father there seemed no reason why Ishould hesitate to give answers of full metallic ring to his hardand oft-repeated questions; but to me this correspondence wastorture. When I feebly expostulated, when I begged to be left alittle to myself, these appeals of mine automatically stimulated, and indeed blew up into fierce flames, the ardour of my Father'salarm. 

The letter, the only too-confidently expected letter, would lieon the table as I descended to breakfast. It would commonly be, of course, my only letter, unless tempered by a cosy and chattynote from my dear and comfortable stepmother, dealing with suchperfectly tranquillizing subjects as the harvest of roses in thegarden or the state of health of various neighbours. But theother, the solitary letter, in its threatening whiteness, withits exquisitely penned address--there it would lie awaiting me, destroying the taste of the bacon, reducing the flavour of thetea to insipidity. I might fatuously dally with it, I mightpretend not to observe it, but there it lay. Before the morning'sexercise began, I knew that it had to be read, and what wasworse, that it had to be answered. Useless the effort to concealfrom myself what it contained. Like all its precursors, like allits followers, it would insist, with every variety of appeal, ona reiterated declaration that I still fully intended, as in thedays of my earliest childhood, 'to be on the Lord's side' ineverything. 

In my replies, I would sometimes answer precisely as I wasdesired to answer; sometimes I would evade the queries, and writeabout other things; sometimes I would turn upon the tormentor, and urge that my tender youth might be let alone. It littlemattered what form of weakness I put forth by way of baffling myFather's direct, firm, unflinching strength. To an appeal againstthe bondage of a correspondence of such unbroken solemnity Iwould receive--with what a paralysing promptitude!--such a replyas this:--

'Let me say that the 'solemnity' you complain of has only been theexpression of tender anxiousness of a father's heart, that hisonly child, just turned out upon the world, and very far out ofhis sight and hearing, should be walking in God's way. Recollectthat it is not now as it was when you were at school, when we hadpersonal communication with you at intervals of five days--wenow know absolutely nothing of you, save from your letters, andif they do not indicate your spiritual prosperity, the deepestsolicitudes of our hearts have nothing to feed on. But I will tryhenceforth to trust you, and lay aside my fears; for you areworthy of my confidence; and your own God and your father's Godwill hold you with His right hand. '

Over such letters as these I am not ashamed to say that Isometimes wept; the old paper I have just been copying showstraces of tears shed upon it more than forty years ago, tearscommingled of despair at my own feebleness, distraction, at mywant of will, pity for my Father's manifest and patheticdistress. He would 'try henceforth to trust' me, he said. Alas!the effort would be in vain; after a day or two, after a hollowattempt to write of other things, the importunate subject wouldrecur; there would intrude again the inevitable questions aboutthe Atonement and the Means of Grace, the old anxious fears lestI was 'yielding' my intimacy to agreeable companions who were not'one with me in Christ', fresh passionate entreaties to beassured, in every letter, that I was walking in the clear lightof God's presence. 

It seems to me now profoundly strange, although I knew too littleof the world to remark it at the time, that these incessantexhortations dealt, not with conduct, but with faith. Earlier inthis narrative I have noted how disdainfully, with what anaustere pride, my Father refused to entertain the subject ofpersonal shortcomings in my behaviour. There were enough of themto blame, Heaven knows, but he was too lofty-minded a gentlemanto dwell upon them, and, though by nature deeply suspicious ofthe possibility of frequent moral lapses, even in the very elect, he refused to stoop to anything like espionage. 

I owe him a deep debt of gratitude for his beautiful faith in mein this respect, and now that I was alone in London, at thistender time of life, 'exposed', as they say, to all sorts ofdangers, as defenceless as a fledgling that has been turned outof its nest, yet my Father did not, in his uplifted Quixotism, allow himself to fancy me guilty of any moral misbehaviour, butconcentrated his fears entirely upon my faith. 

'Let me know more of your inner light. Does the candle of theLord shine on your soul?' This would be the ceaseless inquiry. Or, again, 'Do you get any spiritual companionship with youngmen? You passed over last Sunday without even a word, yet thisday is the most interesting to me in your whole week. Do you findthe ministry of the Word pleasant, and, above all, profitable?Does it bring your soul into exercise before God? The Coming ofChrist draweth nigh. Watch, therefore and pray always, that youmay be counted worthy to stand before the Son of Man. '

If I quote such passages as this from my Father's letters to me, it is not that I seek entertainment in a contrast between hisearnestness and the casuistical inattention and provokeddistractedness of a young man to whom the real world now offeredits irritating and stimulating scenes of animal and intellectuallife, but to call out sympathy, and perhaps wonder, at thespectacle of so blind a Roman firmness as my Father's spiritualattitude displayed. 

His aspirations were individual and metaphysical. At the presenthour, so complete is the revolution which has overturned thepuritanism of which he was perhaps the latest surviving type, that all classes of religious persons combine in placingphilanthropic activity, the objective attitude, in theforeground. It is extraordinary how far-reaching the change hasbeen, so that nowadays a religion which does not combine with itssubjective faith a strenuous labour for the good of others ishardly held to possess any religious principle worth proclaiming. 

This propaganda of beneficence, this constant attention to themoral and physical improvement of persons who have beenneglected, is quite recent as a leading feature of religion, though indeed it seems to have formed some part of the Saviour'soriginal design. It was unknown to the great preachers of theseventeenth century, whether Catholic or Protestant, and itoffered but a shadowy attraction to my Father, who was the lastof their disciples. When Bossuet desired his hearers to listen tothe _cri de misere l'entour de nous, qui devrait nous fondre lecoeur_, he started a new thing in the world of theology. We maysearch the famous 'Rule and Exercises of Holy Living' from coverto cover, and not learn that Jeremy Taylor would have thoughtthat any activity of the district-visitor or the Salvation lassiecame within the category of saintliness. 

My Father, then, like an old divine, concentrated on thoughtsupon the intellectual part of faith. In his obsession about me, he believed that if my brain could be kept unaffected by any ofthe seductive errors of the age, and my heart centred in theadoring love of God, all would be well with me in perpetuity. Hewas still convinced that by intensely directing my thoughts, hecould compel them to flow in a certain channel, since he had notbegun to learn the lesson, so mournful for saintly men of hiscomplexion, that 'virtue would not be virtue, could it be givenby one fellow creature to another'. He had recognized, withreluctance, that holiness was not hereditary, but he continued tohope that it might be compulsive. I was still 'the child of manyprayers', and it was not to be conceded that these prayers couldremain unanswered. 

The great panacea was now, as always, the study of the Bible, andthis my Father never ceased to urge upon me. He presented to me acopy of Dean Alford's edition of the Greek New Testament, in fourgreat volumes, and these he had had so magnificently bound infull morocco that the work shone on my poor shelf of sixpennypoets like a duchess among dairy maids. He extracted from me awritten promise that I would translate and meditate upon aportion of the Greek text every morning before I started forbusiness. This promise I presently failed to keep, my goodintentions being undermined by an invincible _ennui_; I concealedthe dereliction from him, and the sense that I was deceiving myFather ate into my conscience like a canker. But the dilemma wasnow before me that I must either deceive my Father in such thingsor paralyse my own character. 

My growing distaste for the Holy Scriptures began to occupy mythoughts, and to surprise as much as it scandalized me. My desirewas to continue to delight in those sacred pages, for which Istill had an instinctive veneration. Yet I could not but observethe difference between the zeal with which I snatched at a volumeof Carlyle or Ruskin--since these magicians were now firstrevealing themselves to me--and the increasing languor with whichI took up Alford for my daily 'passage'. Of course, although Idid not know it, and believed my reluctance to be sinful, thereal reason why I now found the Bible so difficult to read was myfamiliarity with its contents. These had the colourless tritenessof a story retold a hundred times. I longed for something new, something that would gratify curiosity and excite surprise. Whether the facts and doctrines contained in the Bible were trueor false was not the question that appealed to me; it was ratherthat they had been presented to me so often and had sunken intome so far that, as someone has said, they 'lay bedridden in thedormitory of the soul', and made no impression of any kind uponme. 

It often amazed me, and I am still unable to understand the fact, that my Father, through his long life--or until nearly the closeof it--continued to take an eager pleasure in the text of theBible. As I think I have already said, before he reached middlelife, he had committed practically the whole of it to memory, andif started anywhere, even in a Minor Prophet, he could go onwithout a break as long as ever he was inclined for thatexercise. He, therefore, at no time can have been assailed by thesatiety of which I have spoken, and that it came so soon to me Imust take simply as an indication of difference of temperament. It was not possible, even through the dark glass ofcorrespondence, to deceive his eagle eye in this matter, and hissuspicions accordingly took another turn. He conceived me to havebecome, or to be becoming, a victim of 'the infidelity of theage. '

In this new difficulty, he appealed to forms of modern literatureby the side of which the least attractive pages of Leviticus orDeuteronomy struck me as even thrilling. In particular, he urgedupon me a work, then just published, called _The Continuity ofScripture_ by William Page Wood, afterwards Lord ChancellorHatherley. I do not know why he supposed that the lucubrations ofan exemplary lawyer, delivered in a style that was like thetrickling of sawdust, would succeed in rousing emotions which theglorious rhetoric of the Orient had failed to awaken; but PageWood had been a Sunday School teacher for thirty years, and myFather was always unduly impressed by the acumen of piousbarristers. 

As time went on, and I grew older and more independent in mind, my Father's anxiety about what he called 'the pitfalls and snareswhich surround on every hand the thoughtless giddy youth ofLondon' became extremely painful to himself. By harping inprivate upon these 'pitfalls'--which brought to my imagination afunny rough woodcut in an old edition of Bunyan, where a devilwas seen capering over a sort of box let neatly into the ground--he worked himself up into a frame of mind which was not a littleirritating to his hapless correspondent, who was now 'snared'indeed, limed by the pen like a bird by the feet, and could notby any means escape. To a peck or a flutter from the bird theimplacable fowler would reply:

'You charge me with being suspicious, and I fear I cannot deny thecharge. But I can appeal to your own sensitive and thoughtfulmind for a considerable allowance. My deep and tender love foryou; your youth and inexperience; the examples of other youngmen; your distance from parental counsel; our absolute andpainful ignorance of all the details of your daily life, exceptwhat you yourself tell us:--try to throw yourself into thestanding of a parent, and say if my suspiciousness isunreasonable. I rejoicingly acknowledge that from all I see youare pursuing a virtuous, steady, worthy course. One good thing mysuspiciousness does:--ever and anon it brings out from youassurances, which greatly refresh and comfort me. And again, itcarries me ever to God's Throne of Grace on your behalf Holy Jobsuspected that his sons might have sinned, and cursed God intheir heart. Was not his suspicion much like mine, grounded onthe same reasons and productive of the same results? For it drovehim to God in intercession. I have adduced the example of thisPatriarch before, and he will endure being looked at again. '

In fact, Holy Job continued to be frequently looked at, and forthis Patriarch I came to experience a hatred which was asvenomous as it was undeserved. But what youth of eighteen wouldwillingly be compared with the sons of Job? And indeed, for mypart, I felt much more like that justly exasperated character, Elihu the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram. 

As time went on, the peculiar strain of inquisition was relaxed, and I endured fewer and fewer of the torments of religiouscorrespondence. Nothing abides in one tense projection, and myFather, resolute as he was, had other preoccupations. Hisorchids, his microscope, his physiological researches, hisinterpretations of prophecy, filled up the hours of his activeand strenuous life, and, out of his sight, I became not indeedout of his mind, but no longer ceaselessly in the painfulforeground of it. Yet, although the reiteration of his anxietymight weary him a little as it had wearied me well nigh to groansof despair, there was not the slightest change in his realattitude towards the subject or towards me. 

I have already had occasion to say that he had nothing of themystic or the visionary about him. At certain times and oncertain points, he greatly desired that signs and wonders, suchas had astonished and encouraged the infancy of the ChristianChurch, might again be vouchsafed to it, but he did not pretendto see such miracles himself, nor give the slightest credence toothers who asserted that they did. He often congratulated himselfon the fact that although his mind dwelt so constantly onspiritual matters it was never betrayed into any suspension ofthe rational functions. 

Cross-examination by letter slackened, but on occasion of mybrief and usually summer visits to Devonshire I suffered acutelyfrom my Father's dialectical appetites. He was surrounded bypeasants, on whom the teeth of his arguments could find nopurchase. To him, in that intellectual Abdera, even an unwillingyouth from London offered opportunities of pleasant contest. Hewould declare himself ready, nay eager, for argument. With hismental sleeves turned up, he would adopt a fighting attitude, andchallenge me to a round on any portion of the Scheme of Grace. His alacrity was dreadful to me, his well-aimed blows fell onwhat was rather a bladder or a pillow than a vivid antagonist. 

He was, indeed, most unfairly handicapped, --I was naked, he in asuit of chain armour, --for he had adopted a method which Ithought, and must still think, exceedingly unfair. He assumedthat he had private knowledge of the Divine Will, and he wouldmeet my temporizing arguments by asseverations, --'So sure as myGod liveth!' or by appeals to a higher authority, --'But what does_my_ Lord tell me in Paul's Letter to the Philippians?' It was theprerogative of his faith to know, and of his character tooverpower objection; between these two millstones I was rapidlyground to powder. 

These 'discussions', as they were rather ironically called, invariably ended for me in disaster. I was driven out of my_papier-mache_ fastnesses, my canvas walls rocked at the first pealfrom my Father's clarion, and the foe pursued me across theplains of Jericho until I lay down ignominiously and covered myface. I seemed to be pushed with horns of iron, such as thosewhich Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah prepared for theencouragement of Ahab. 

When I acknowledged defeat and cried for quarter, my Father wouldbecome radiant, and I still seem to hear the sound of his fullvoice, so thrilling, so warm, so painful to my over-strainednerves, bursting forth in a sort of benediction at the end ofeach of these one-sided contentions, with 'I bow my knees untothe Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened withmight by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell inyour heart by faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christwhich passeth knowledge, that you might be filled with thefullness of God. '

Thus solemn and thus ceremonious was my Father apt to become, without a moment's warning, on plain and domestic occasions;abruptly brimming over with emotion like a basin which an unseenflow of water has filled and over-filled. 

I earnestly desire that no trace of that absurd self-pity whichis apt to taint recollections of this nature should give falsityto mine. My Father, let me say once more, had other intereststhan those of his religion. In particular, at this time, he tookto painting in water-colours in the open air, and he resumed theassiduous study of botany. He was no fanatical monomaniac. Nevertheless, there was, in everything he did and said, thecentral purpose present. He acknowledged it plainly; 'with me, 'he confessed, 'every question assumes a Divine standpoint and isnot adequately answered if the judgement-seat of Christ is notkept in sight. '

This was maintained whether the subject under discussion waspoetry, or society, or the Prussian war with Austria, or thestamen of a wild flower. Once, at least, he was himself consciousof the fatiguing effect on my temper of this insistency, for, raising his great brown eyes with a flash of laughter in them, heclosed the Bible suddenly after a very lengthy disquisition, andquoted his Virgil to startling effect:--

 Claudite jam rivos, pueri: Sat prata biberunt. 

The insistency of his religious conversation was, probably, theless incomprehensible to me on account of the evangelicaltraining to which I had been so systematically subjected. It was, however, none the less intolerably irksome, and would have beenexasperating, I believe, even to a nature in which a powerful andgenuine piety was inherent. To my own, in which a feeble andimitative faith was expiring, it was deeply vexatious. It led, alas! to a great deal of bowing in the house of Rimmon, to muchhypocritical ingenuity in drawing my Father's attention away, ifpossible, as the terrible subject was seen to be looming andapproaching. In this my stepmother would aid and abet, sometimesproducing incongruous themes, likely to attract my Father aside, with a skill worthy of a parlour conjurer, and much to myadmiration. If, however, she was not unwilling to come, in thisway, to the support of my feebleness, there was no open collusionbetween us. She always described my Father, when she was alonewith me, admiringly, as one 'whose trumpet gave no uncertainsound'. There was not a tinge of infidelity upon her candid mind, but she was human, and I think that now and then she wasextremely bored. 

My Father was entirely devoid of the prudence which turns awayits eyes and passes as rapidly as possible in the oppositedirection. The peculiar kind of drama in which every sort ofsocial discomfort is welcomed rather than that the charactersshould be happy when guilty of 'acting a lie', was not inventedin those days, and there can hardly be imagined a figure moreremote from my Father than Ibsen. Yet when I came, at a far laterdate, to read _The Wild Duck_, memories of the embarrassinghousehold of my infancy helped me to realize Gregers Werle, withhis determination to pull the veil of illusion away from everycompromise that makes life bearable. 

I was docile, I was plausible, I was anything but combative; ifmy Father could have persuaded himself to let me alone, if hecould merely have been willing to leave my subterfuges and myexplanations unanalysed, all would have been well. But he refusedto see any difference in temperament between a lad of twenty anda sage of sixty. He had no vital sympathy for youth, which initself had no charm for him. He had no compassion for theweaknesses of immaturity, and his one and only anxiety was to beat the end of his spiritual journey, safe with me in the housewhere there are many mansions. The incidents of human life uponthe road to glory were less than nothing to him. 

My Father was very fond of defining what was his own attitude atthis time, and he was never tired of urging the same ambitionupon me. He regarded himself as the faithful steward of a Masterwho might return at any moment, and who would require to findeverything ready for his convenience. That master was God, withwhom my Father seriously believed himself to be in relations muchmore confidential than those vouchsafed to ordinary piouspersons. He awaited, with anxious hope, 'the coming of the Lord', an event which he still frequently believed to be imminent. Hewould calculate, by reference to prophecies in the Old and NewTestament, the exact date of this event; the date would pass, without the expected Advent, and he would be more thandisappointed, --he would be incensed. Then he would understandthat he must have made some slight error in calculation, and thepleasures of anticipation would recommence. 

Me in all this he used as a kind of inferior coadjutor, much as aresponsible and upper servant might use a footboy. I, also, mustbe watching; it was not important that I should be seriouslyengaged in any affairs of my own. I must be ready for theMaster's coming; and my Father's incessant cross-examination wasmade in the spirit of a responsible servant who fidgets lest somehumble but essential piece of household work has been neglected. 

My holidays, however, and all my personal relations with myFather were poisoned by this insistency. I was never at my easein his company; I never knew when I might not be subjected to aseries of searching questions which I should not be allowed toevade. Meanwhile, on every other stage of experience I wasgaining the reliance upon self and the respect for the opinion ofothers which come naturally to a young man of sober habits whoearns his own living and lives his own life. For this kind ofindependence my Father had no respect or consideration, whenquestions of religion were introduced, although he handsomelyconceded it on other points. And now first there occurred to methe reflection, which in years to come I was to repeat over andover, with an ever sadder emphasis, --what a charming companion, what a delightful parent, what a courteous and engaging friend myFather would have been, and would pre-eminently have been to me, if it had not been for this stringent piety which ruined it all. 

Let me speak plainly. After my long experience, after my patienceand forbearance, I have surely the right to protest against theuntruth (would that I could apply to it any other word!) thatevangelical religion, or any religion in a violent form, is awholesome or valuable or desirable adjunct to human life. Itdivides heart from heart. It sets up a vain, chimerical ideal, inthe barren pursuit of which all the tender, indulgent affections, all the genial play of life, all the exquisite pleasures and softresignations of the body, all that enlarges and calms the soulare exchanged for what is harsh and void and negative. Itencourages a stern and ignorant spirit of condemnation; it throwsaltogether out of gear the healthy movement of the conscience; itinvents virtues which are sterile and cruel; it invents sinswhich are no sins at all, but which darken the heaven of innocentjoy with futile clouds of remorse. There is something horrible, if we will bring ourselves to face it, in the fanaticism that cando nothing with this pathetic and fugitive existence of ours buttreat it as if it were the uncomfortable ante-chamber to a palacewhich no one has explored and of the plan of which we knowabsolutely nothing. My Father, it is true, believed that he wasintimately acquainted with the form and furniture of thishabitation, and he wished me to think of nothing else but of theadvantages of an eternal residence in it. 

Then came a moment when my self-sufficiency revolted against thepolice-inspection to which my 'views' were incessantly subjected. There was a morning, in the hot-house at home, among the gorgeouswaxen orchids which reminded my Father of the tropics in hisyouth, when my forbearance or my timidity gave way. The enervatedair, soaked with the intoxicating perfumes of all thosevoluptuous flowers, may have been partly responsible for myoutburst. My Father had once more put to me the customaryinterrogatory. Was I 'walking closely with God'? Was my sense ofthe efficacy of the Atonement clear and sound? Had the HolyScriptures still their full authority with me? My replies on thisoccasion were violent and hysterical. I have no clearrecollection what it was that I said, --I desire not to recall thewhimpering sentences in which I begged to be let alone, in whichI demanded the right to think for myself, in which I repudiatedthe idea that my Father was responsible to God for my secretthoughts and my most intimate convictions. 

He made no answer; I broke from the odorous furnace of theconservatory, and buried my face in the cold grass upon the lawn. My visit to Devonshire, already near its close, was hurried to anend. I had scarcely arrived in London before the followingletter, furiously despatched in the track of the fugitive, burieditself like an arrow in my heart:

'When your sainted Mother died, she not only tenderly committedyou to God, but left you also as a solemn charge to me, to bringyou up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Thatresponsibility I have sought constantly to keep before me: I cantruly aver that it has been ever before me--in my choice of ahousekeeper, in my choice of a school, in my ordering of yourholidays, in my choice of a second wife, in my choice of anoccupation for you, in my choice of a residence for you; and inmultitudes of lesser things--I have sought to act for you, not inthe light of this present world, but with a view to Eternity. 

'Before your childhood was past, there seemed God's manifestblessing on our care; for you seemed truly converted to Him; youconfessed, in solemn baptism, that you had died and had beenraised with Christ; and you were received with joy into the bosomof the Church of God, as one alive from the dead. 

'All this filled my heart with thankfulness and joy, whenever Ithought of you:--how could it do otherwise? And when I left youin London, on that dreary winter evening, my heart, full ofsorrowing love, found its refuge and its resource in thisthought, --that you were one of the lambs of Christ's flock;sealed with the Holy Spirit as His; renewed in heart to holiness, in the image of God. 

'For a while, all appeared to go on fairly well: we yearned, indeed, to discover more of heart in your allusions to religiousmatters, but your expressions towards us were filial andaffectionate; your conduct, so far as we could see, was moral andbecoming; you mingled with the people of God, spoke of occasionaldelight and profit in His ordinances; and employed your talentsin service to Him. 

'But of late, and specially during the past year, there has becomemanifest a rapid progress towards evil. (I must beg you here topause, and again to look to God for grace to weigh what I amabout to say; or else wrath will rise. )

'When you came to us in the summer, the heavy blow fell full uponme; and I discovered how very far you had departed from God. Itwas not that you had yielded to the strong tide of youthfulblood, and had fallen a victim to fleshly lusts; in that case, however sad, your enlightened conscience would have spokenloudly, and you would have found your way back to the blood whichcleanseth us from all sin, to humble confession and self-abasement, to forgiveness and to recommunion with God. It was notthis; it was worse. It was that horrid, insidious infidelity, which had already worked in your mind and heart with terribleenergy. Far worse, I say, because this was sapping the veryfoundations of faith, on which all true godliness, all realreligion, must rest. 

'Nothing seemed left to which I could appeal. We had, I found, nocommon ground. The Holy Scriptures had no longer any authority:you had taught yourself to evade their inspiration. Anyparticular Oracle of God which pressed you, you could easilyexplain away; even the very character of God you weighed in yourbalance of fallen reason, and fashioned it accordingly. You werethus sailing down the rapid tide of time towards Eternity, without a single authoritative guide (having cast your chartoverboard), except what you might fashion and forge on your ownanvil, --except what you might _guess_, in fact. 

'Do not think I am speaking in passion, and using unwarrantablestrength of words. If the written Word is not absolutelyauthoritative, what do we know of God? What more than we caninfer, that is, guess, --as the thoughtful heathens guessed, --Plato, Socrates, Cicero, --from dim and mute surroundingphenomena? What do we know of Eternity? Of our relations to God?Especially of the relations of a sinner to God? What ofreconciliation? What of the capital question--How can a God ofperfect spotless rectitude deal with me, a corrupt sinner, whohave trampled on those of His laws which were even written on myconscience?. .. 

'This dreadful conduct of yours I had intended, after much prayer, to pass by in entire silence; but your apparently sincereinquiries after the cause of my sorrow have led me to go to theroot of the matter, and I could not stop short of the developmentcontained in this letter. It is with pain, not in anger, that Isend it; hoping that you may be induced to review the wholecourse, of which this is only a stage, before God. If this gracewere granted to you, oh! how joyfully should I bury all the past, and again have sweet and tender fellowship with my beloved Son, as of old. '

The reader who has done me the favour to follow this record ofthe clash of two temperaments will not fail to perceive thecrowning importance of the letter from which I have just made along quotation. It sums up, with the closest logic, the wholehistory of the situation, and I may leave it to form the epigraphof this little book. 

All that I need further say is to point out that when suchdefiance is offered to the intelligence of a thoughtful andhonest young man with the normal impulses of his twenty-oneyears, there are but two alternatives. Either he must cease tothink for himself; or his individualism must be instantlyconfirmed, and the necessity of religious independence must beemphasized. 

No compromise, it is seen, was offered; no proposal of a trucewould have been acceptable. It was a case of 'Everything orNothing'; and thus desperately challenged, the young man'sconscience threw off once for all the yoke of his 'dedication', and, as respectfully as he could, without parade or remonstrance, he took a human being's privilege to fashion his inner life forhimself.