1833 SCHOOLING 



5 



in drawing; and his draughtsmanship, vigorous as it was, 

 and a genuine medium of artistic expression as well as an 

 admirable instrument in his own especial work, never 

 reached the technical perfection of which it was naturally 

 capable. 



The amount of instruction, indeed of any kind, which 

 he received was scanty in the extreme. For a couple of 

 years, from the age of eight to ten, he was given a taste of 

 the unreformed public school life, where, apart from the 

 rough and ready mode of instruction in vogue and the 

 necessary obedience enforced to certain rules, no means 

 were taken to reach the boys themselves, to guide them and 

 help them in their school life. The new-comer was left to 

 struggle for himself in a community composed of human 

 beings at their most heartlessly cruel age, untempered by 

 any external influence. 



Here he had little enough of mental discipline, or that 

 deliberate training of character which is a leading object of 

 modern education. On the contrary, what he learnt was a 

 knowledge of undisciplined human nature.. 



My regular school training (he tells us), was of the briefest, 

 perhaps fortunately; for though my way of life has made me 

 acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the high- 

 est to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into 

 at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were 

 average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and 

 evil as any others; but the people, who were set over us cared 

 about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they 

 were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the strug- 

 gle for existence among ourselves ; bullying was the least of the 

 ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful remi- 

 niscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind 

 is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had 

 bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight 

 lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, 

 made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary eflfectu- 

 ally. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely 

 rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of 

 things in general, arose out of the fact that I — the victor — had 

 a black eye, while he — the vanquished — had none, so that I got 



