e want so inordinate a
quantity. Of that particular light and shade, however, the big broom of
change has swept the scene bare; more history still has been after all
what it wanted. Quite another order, in the whole connection, strikes
me as reigning to-day--though not without the reminder from it that the
relations in which manner, as a generalised thing, in which "tone," is
_positively_ pleasant, is really assured and sound, clear and
interesting, are numerous and definite only when it has had in its past
some strange phases and much misadventure.

XXIII

We were still being but vaguely "formed," yet it was a vagueness
preferred apparently by our parents to the only definiteness in any
degree open to us, that of the English school away from home (the London
private school near home they would absolutely none of;) which they saw
as a fearful and wonderful, though seemingly effective, preparation of
the young for English life and an English career, but related to that
situation only, so little related in fact to any other as to make it, in
a differing case, an educational cul-de-sac, the worst of economies.
They had doubtless heard claimed for it just that no other method for
boys _was_ so splendidly general, but they had, I judge, their own sense
of the matter--which would have been that it all depended on what was
meant by this. The truth was, above all, that to them the formative
forces most closely bearing on us were not in the least vague, but very
definite by _their_ measure and intention; there were "advantages,"
generally much belauded, that appealed to them scantly, and other
matters, conceptions of character and opportunity, ideals, values,
importances, enjoying no great common credit but for which it was their
belief that they, under whatever difficulties, more or less provided. In
respect of which I further remind myself of the blest fewness, as yet,
of our years; and I come back to my own sense, benighted though it may
have been, of a highly-coloured and remarkably active life. I recognise
our immediate, our practical ferment even in our decent perambulations,
our discussions, W. J.'s and mine, of whether we had in a given case
best apply for a renewal of our "artists' materials" to Messrs. Rowney
or to Messrs. Windsor and Newton, and in our pious resort, on these
determinations, to Rathbone Place, more beset by our steps, probably,
than any other single corner of the town, and the short but charge