of a cast of young hawks which his father had received from Lundy
Isle, he had been profiting much, by the means of those coarse and
frivolous amusements, in perseverance, thoughtfulness, and the habit
of keeping his temper; and though he had never had a single "object
lesson," or been taught to "use his intellectual powers," he knew the
names and ways of every bird, and fish, and fly, and could read, as
cunningly as the oldest sailor, the meaning of every drift of cloud
which crossed the heavens. Lastly, he had been for some time past, on
account of his extraordinary size and strength, undisputed cock of the
school, and the most terrible fighter among all Bideford boys; in which
brutal habit he took much delight, and contrived, strange as it may
seem, to extract from it good, not only for himself but for others,
doing justice among his school-fellows with a heavy hand, and succoring
the oppressed and afflicted; so that he was the terror of all the
sailor-lads, and the pride and stay of all the town's boys and girls,
and hardly considered that he had done his duty in his calling if he
went home without beating a big lad for bullying a little one. For the
rest, he never thought about thinking, or felt about feeling; and had
no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother, getting by
honest means the maximum of "red quarrenders" and mazard cherries,
and going to sea when he was big enough. Neither was he what would be
now-a-days called by many a pious child; for though he said his Creed
and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to the service at the
church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every
evening, and had learnt from her and from his father (as he proved well
in after life) that it was infinitely noble to do right and infinitely
base to do wrong, yet (the age of children's religious books not having
yet dawned on the world) he knew nothing more of theology, or of his
own soul, than is contained in the Church Catechism. It is a question,
however, on the whole, whether, though grossly ignorant (according to
our modern notions) in science and religion, he was altogether untrained
in manhood, virtue, and godliness; and whether the barbaric narrowness
of his information was not somewhat counterbalanced both in him and in
the rest of his generation by the depth, and breadth, and healthiness of
his education.

So let us watch him up the hill as he goes hugging his horn, to tell all