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occasion, four boys were selected as having been the perpetrators

of some nameless horror. What it was, to this day I cannot even

guess; but I was one of the four, innocent as a babe, but adjudged

to have been the guiltiest of the guilty. We each had to write out

a sermon, and my sermon was the longest of the four. During the

whole of one term-time we were helped last at every meal. We were

not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished.

Mine was only done a day or two before the holidays. Mrs. Drury,

when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror. There were

ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads. It broke

my heart, knowing myself to be innocent, and suffering also under

the almost equally painful feeling that the other three--no doubt

wicked boys--were the curled darlings of the school, who would never

have selected me to share their wickedness with them. I contrived

to learn, from words that fell from Mr. Drury, that he condemned

me because I, having come from a public school, might be supposed

to be the leader of wickedness! On the first day of the next term

he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong.

With all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not

the courage to carry reparation further. All that was fifty years

ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. What lily-livered

curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth!--at any

rate as far as I was concerned. I remember their names well, and

almost wish to write them here.

When I was twelve there came the vacancy at Winchester College which

I was destined to fill.

the younger had been taken away, being already supposed to have lost

his chance of New College. It had been one of the great ambitions

of my father's life that his three sons, who lived to go to Winchester,

should all become fellows of New College. But that suffering man

was never destined to have an ambition gratified. We all lost the

prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our

reach. My eldest brother all but achieved it, and afterwards went

to Oxford, taking three exhibitions from the school, though he

lost the great glory of a Wykamist. He has since made himself well

known to the public as a writer in connection with all Italian

subjects. He is still living as I now write. But my other brother

died early.

While I was at Winchester my father's affairs went from bad to worse.

He gave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was,

took another farm. It is odd that a man should conceive,--and in

this case a highly educated and a very clever man,--that farming

should be a business in which he might make money without any

special education or apprenticeship. Perhaps of all trades it is

the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be

done, and the best manner of doing them, is most necessary. And it is

one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable.

He had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital.