A CRISIS IN HIS HISTORY. 



his own part in it in some things. 

 He missed the most valuable part 

 of life for acquiring the foundation 

 of real knowledge, in being separa- 

 ted from his kind; but that could 

 have been to a great extent amend- 

 ed by his after intercourse with the 

 world, however limited, and by his 

 connection with the India House, had 

 he not shown what appears to have 

 been a natural deficiency in that 

 respect ; at least, he does not seem 

 to have endeavoured to acquire that 

 very important part of one's educa- 

 tion by such means as presented 

 themselves ; and the deficiency re- 

 mained with him to the last. His 

 intercourse with his fellow-creatures 

 was at first limited to a very few 

 grown-up people, who visited his 

 father (p. 53) ; and when he went 

 anywhere it was generally with his 

 father, which kept him from asso- 

 ciating with others. He paid a visit- 

 of upwards of a year to France, before 

 he had any experience of English 

 life, or " knowledge of God and 

 good manners," and returned with 

 some crude ideas of things in both 

 countries. 



" At this point concluded what can 

 properly be called my lessons : when I 

 was about fourteen, I left England [for 

 France] for more than a year ; and after 

 my return, though my studies went on 

 under my father's general direction, he 

 was no longer my school-master " (p. 

 29). " I returned to England in July, 

 1821, and my education resumed its 

 ordinary course " (p. 61). " Under my 

 father's directions my studies were car- 

 ried into the higher branches of analytic 

 psychology " (p. 68). " Having so little 

 experience of English life, and the few 

 people I knew being mostly such as had 

 public objects, ... I could not then 

 know or estimate the difference between 

 this manner of existence [the English] 

 and that of a people like the French " 

 (p. 58). " All these things [difference 

 between English and French life] I did 

 not perceive till long afterwards " (p. 59). 



He says that one of his greatest 

 amusements during part of his child- 

 hood was experimental science, with- 

 out ever seeing an experiment ; and 



j that he devoured treatises on chem- 

 istry before he attended a lecture or 

 saw an experiment (p. 17). In the 

 winter of 1821-2, he read on Roman 

 Law, Roman Antiquities, and a con- 

 siderable portion of Blackstone; 

 then a " Course of Benthamism," 

 Locke's Essays, Hartley's Observa- 

 tions on Man, some of the British 

 Philosophers, etc. 



" In the summer of 1822, I wrote my 

 first argumentative essay " (p. 71). " Af- 

 ter this I continued to write papers on 

 subjects often very much beyond my ca- 

 pacity " (p. 72). [A point worthy of 

 notice.] " I had now also begun to 

 converse, on general subjects, with the 

 instructed men with whom I came in 

 contact " (p. 72). In 1822-3 ne " form- 

 ed the plan of a little society to be com- 

 posed of young men agreeing in fun- 

 damental principles acknowledging 

 utility as their standard in ethics and 

 politics " (p. 79). [An odd standard in 

 morals.] 



In May, 1823, when seventeen 

 years old, he was engaged by the 

 East India Company, in the office 

 of Examiner of India Correspond- 

 ence, immediately under his father, 

 who apparently would hardly let 

 him out of his sight, " with the un- 

 derstanding that I should be em- 

 ployed from the beginning in pre- 

 paring drafts of despatches [from 

 the dictation of others, it is presum- 

 ed], and be thus trained up as a 

 successor to those who then filled 

 the higher Departments of the 

 office " (p. 82). And he says : " In 

 1856, I was promoted to the rank 

 of chief of the office in which I had 

 served for upwards of thirty-three 

 years. ... I held this office as 

 long as it continued to exist, being a 

 little more than two years" (p. 249). 

 For a few years after his appoint- 

 ment, he spent his month's vacation 

 at his father's house in the country, 

 and after that on the Continent, 

 "chiefly in pedestrian excursions, 

 with some one or more of the young 

 men who were my chosen compan- 

 ions ; and at a later period in longer 



