an Judge, and Robert Curzon, and
Arthur Helps, the historian of Mexico. Thackeray I knew then but very
slightly, as he was a lower schoolboy, and John Leech not at all,
because he was a day boy, seeing that the upper school was made to keep
foolishly aloof from all such; however, in after years I made good
acquaintance with both of those true geniuses, and had Leech down to
Albury, and to illustrate my tales, whilst I have several times
compared judgments with Thackeray as to Doctor Birch and his young
friends and other scholia.

For the matter of my practical education at Charterhouse, I like others
went through the usual course, though without much distinction. I never
gained a prize, albeit I tried for some, by certain tame didactic poems
on the Tower, Carthage, and Jerusalem, and as I couldn't as a stammerer
speak in school, high places were out of my reach. Like others, however,
I learned by heart all Horace's odes and epodes, the Ajax and the
Antigone of Sophocles, and other like efforts of memory, almost useless
in after life, except for capping quotations, and thereby being thought
a pedant by the display of schoolboy erudition. How often have I wished
that the years wasted over Latin verses and Greek plays had been
utilised among French and German, astronomy, geology, chemistry and the
like; but all such useful educationals were quite ignored by the
clerical boobies who then professed to teach young gentlemen all that
they needed to know. Sixty years ago I perceived what we all see now
(teste Lord Sherborne) that a most imperfect classical education, such
as was then provided for us, was the least useful introduction to the
real business of life, except that it was fashionable, and gave a man
some false prestige in the circle of society. At about sixteen I left
Charterhouse for a private tutor, Dr. Stocker, then head of Elizabeth
College, Guernsey, seeing my father wished to do him a service for
kindly private reasons; I was not at the College, but a pupil in his own
house: however, as this other Rev. D.D. proved a failure, I was passed
on to a Rev. Mr. Twopeny of Long Wittenham, near Dorchester, staying
with him about a year with like little profit; when I changed to Mr.
Holt's at Albury, a most worthy friend and neighbour, with whom I read
diligently until my matriculation at Oxford, when I was about nineteen.
With Holt, my intimate comrade was Harold Browne, the present Bishop of
Winchester, and he will reme