e
spectacles for long. Temperament is all-powerful.

And Gordon made no attempt to settle the question. He did not suddenly
feel a loathing for his former pleasures, but during the long summer
holidays, as he bathed in the waters of English poetry, it seemed to him
as if he had outgrown them, and cast them aside. Perhaps in the future
they might momentarily appear beautiful once more, but he did not think
that he would ever again wear them for very long, for they were, after
all, little, insignificant, trivial, and contrasted poorly with the
white heat of Byron's passion, and the flaming ardour of Swinburne, that
cried for "the old kingdoms of earth and their kings." As he read on,
while the summer sun sank in a red sea behind the gaunt Hampstead firs,
read of the proud, domineering soul of Manfred, visualised the burst of
passion that had prompted the murder in _The Last Confession_, felt the
thundering paganism of the _Hymn to Proserpine_, he was overcome with a
tremendous hatred for the system that had kept literature from him as a
shut book, that had offered him mature philosophy instead of colour and
youth, and tried to prevent him from seeking it for himself. So this is
the way, he thought, the youth of England is being brought up. Masters
tell us to fix all our energies on achieving school successes, and think
of calf-bound prizes and tasselled caps all day long. No wonder that, if
they bind us down to trivial things, we become like the Man with the
Muck-Rake, and drift on with low aims, with nothing to help us to live
differently from cattle. No wonder the whole common room is repeatedly
shocked by the discovery of some sordid scandal.

Gordon's soul was very arrogant and very intolerant, and it was rather
unfortunate that, at a time when he was bubbling over with rebellion,
Arnold Lunn's novel, _The Harrovians_, should have been published, as no
previous school story had done it stripped school life of sentiment, and
a storm of adverse criticism broke out. Old Harrovians wrote to the
papers, saying that they had been at Harrow for six years, and that the
conversation was, except in a few ignoble exceptions, pure and manly,
and that the general atmosphere was one of clean, healthy
broadmindedness. Gordon fumed. What fools all these people were! When
they were told the truth, they would not believe it. Prophets must
prophesy smooth things, or else were not prophets. How was there ever
going to be any hope of imp