by the Ilissus there was "no Wragg,[8] poor thing!"

Then he taught us to aim at sincerity in our intercourse with Nature.
Never to describe her as others saw her, never to pretend a knowledge of
her which we did not possess, never to endow her with fanciful
attributes of our own or other people's imagining, never to assume her
sympathy with mortal lots, never to forget that she, like humanity, has
her dark, her awful, her revengeful moods. He taught us not to be
ashamed of our own sense of fun, our own faculty of laughter; but to let
them play freely even round the objects of our reasoned reverence, just
in the spirit of the teacher who said that no man really believed in his
religion till he could venture to joke about it. Above all, he taught
us, even when our feelings were most forcibly aroused, to be serene,
courteous, and humane; never to scold, or storm, or bully; and to avoid
like a pestilence such brutality as that of the _Saturday Review_ when
it said that something or another was "eminently worthy of a great
nation," and to disparage it "eminently worthy of a great fool." He laid
it down as a "precious truth" that one's effectiveness depends upon "the
power of persuasion, of charm; that without this all fury, energy,
reasoning power, acquirement, are thrown away and only render their
owner more miserable."

In a word, he combined Light with Sweetness, and in the combination lies
his abiding power.

[Footnote 4: "Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike."--_Pope_.]

[Footnote 5: He was so described by George Sand.]

[Footnote 6: Dr. Williams, President of Jesus College.]

[Footnote 7: _Nicholas Nickleby_.]

[Footnote 8: "A shocking child-murder has just been committed at
Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday
morning with her young illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards
found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. _Wragg is in
custody._"]

CHAPTER III

EDUCATION

"Though I am a schoolmaster's son, I confess that school-teaching or
school-inspecting is not the line of life I should naturally have
chosen. I adopted it in order to marry a lady who is here to-night, and
who feels your kindness as warmly and gratefully as I do. My wife and I
had a wandering life of it at first. There were but three lay-inspectors
for all England. My district went right across from Pembroke Dock to
Great Yarmouth. We had no home. One of our children was born in a
l