one of those for whom there was no place for repentance, though he sought
it even with tears. So he shrank out of sight of those whom in his
boyish way he idolised, never for a moment suspecting that he might have
capacities to the full as high as theirs though of a different kind, and
fell in more with those who were reputed of the baser sort, with whom he
could at any rate be upon equal terms. Before the end of the half year
he had dropped from the estate to which he had been raised during his
aunt's stay at Roughborough, and his old dejection, varied, however, with
bursts of conceit rivalling those of his mother, resumed its sway over
him. "Pontifex," said Dr Skinner, who had fallen upon him in hall one
day like a moral landslip, before he had time to escape, "do you never
laugh? Do you always look so preternaturally grave?" The doctor had not
meant to be unkind, but the boy turned crimson, and escaped.

There was one place only where he was happy, and that was in the old
church of St Michael, when his friend the organist was practising. About
this time cheap editions of the great oratorios began to appear, and
Ernest got them all as soon as they were published; he would sometimes
sell a school-book to a second-hand dealer, and buy a number or two of
the "Messiah," or the "Creation," or "Elijah," with the proceeds. This
was simply cheating his papa and mamma, but Ernest was falling low
again--or thought he was--and he wanted the music much, and the Sallust,
or whatever it was, little. Sometimes the organist would go home,
leaving his keys with Ernest, so that he could play by himself and lock
up the organ and the church in time to get back for calling over. At
other times, while his friend was playing, he would wander round the
church, looking at the monuments and the old stained glass windows,
enchanted as regards both ears and eyes, at once. Once the old rector
got hold of him as he was watching a new window being put in, which the
rector had bought in Germany--the work, it was supposed, of Albert Durer.
He questioned Ernest, and finding that he was fond of music, he said in
his old trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "Then you should have
known Dr Burney who wrote the history of music. I knew him exceedingly
well when I was a young man." That made Ernest's heart beat, for he knew
that Dr Burney, when a boy at school at Chester, used to break bounds
that he might watch Handel smoking his pipe in the