the lad, and rushing up
with clenched fist and blazing eyes, thrashed the bully so soundly
that after that Thomas enjoyed entire immunity from the objectionable
title.

After about three years at Twyford, the two brothers were sent to the
school at Rugby, then under the mastership of Doctor Arnold, who
proved himself to be the ablest teacher in England; not because he
taught his boys more than any other educator, but because more than
any other he awakened in them the true spirit of manhood. "Tom Brown's
School Days" is a record of the eight happy years that the lads spent
under the Doctor's influence. From Rugby they went to Oxford, where
Thomas Hughes graduated at Oriel College in 1845. The timid "Cadmus"
of Twyford not only passed through Rugby with credit to himself in
foot-ball, in Greek verses, and in the manly art of self-defence, but
he got a "Double First" at Oxford--that is, the highest honors in the
mathematics and the classics--and was elected captain of the 'Varsity
Crew and captain of the University Eleven at cricket as well.

It was while young Hughes was at Oriel that the corn law agitation
reached its height. A heavy duty on all imported grain had made bread
so dear that thousands of English workmen, with their families, were
brought to the verge of starvation. John Bright earnestly espoused
their cause and urged Parliament to repeal a tax that enriched a few
at the expense of a suffering multitude. Elliott, the "Corn Law
Rhymer," stirred the feelings of the masses with his impassioned
appeals in verse, so that all over the country hollow-cheeked artisans
were repeating the lines,--

"England! what for mine and me,
What hath bread-tax done for thee?

* * * * *

Cursed thy harvest, cursed thy land,
Hunger-stung thy skill'd right hand."

Thomas Hughes became a convert to the Liberal movement, which shortly
after succeeded in repealing a tariff that had been the cause of such
wide-spread misery. From that day his sympathies have always been with
those classes who are called to earn the least and endure the most;
and when in 1848 he was admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, London,
he had got the name of being a radical and a reformer in politics--a
name, then, rather more dreadful to steady-going, conservative English
country gentlemen of the "Squire Brown" type than that of mad dog.

But long before this the young man had got over his dread of
opprobrious n