It is impossible to grasp the springs of
his conduct unless we know what traditions he inherited from his
forbears.

Peel's education was begun at home with a specific purpose. Though his
father had every reason to be satisfied with his own success, for his
son he cherished a yet higher ambition and one which he did not conceal.
He said openly that he intended him to be Prime Minister of his country.
The knowledge of this provoked many jests among the boy's friends and
caused him no slight embarrassment. It conspired with the shyness and
reserve, which were innate in him, to win him from the outset a
reputation for pride and aloofness. If he had not been forced to mix
with those of his own age, and if he had not resolutely set himself to
overcome this feeling, he might have grown into a student and a recluse.
Both at school and college he did 'attend to his book': at Harrow he
roused the greatest hopes. His brilliant schoolfellow, Lord Byron, while
claiming to excel him in general information and history, admits that
Peel was greatly his superior as a scholar. The working of their minds,
now and afterwards, was curiously different. Bagehot[6] illustrates the
contrast by a striking metaphor: Byron's mind, he says, worked by
momentary eruptions of volcanic force from within and then relapsed into
inactivity. Peel on the other hand steadily accumulated knowledge and
opinions, his mind receiving impressions from outward experience like
the alluvial soil deposited by a river in its course. But this is to
anticipate. At Oxford Peel was the first man to win a 'Double First'
(i.e. a first class both in classics and mathematics), in which
distinction Gladstone alone, among our Prime Ministers, equalled him.
But he also found time during the term to indulge in cricket, in rowing,
and in riding, while in the vacation he developed a more marked taste
for shooting, and thus freed himself from the charge of being a mere
bookworm. He was good-looking, rather a dandy in his dress, stiff in his
manner, regular in his habits, conforming to the Oxford standards of
excellence and as yet showing few signs of independence of character.

[Note 6: Walter Bagehot, _Biographical Studies_, p. 17 (Longmans,
1907).]

Peel went into Parliament early, after the fashion of the day. He was
twenty-one when, in 1809, a seat was offered him at Cashel in Ireland.
The system of 'rotten boroughs' had many faults--our text-books of
history do not spare it