me for life the lesson that to be
weak is to be wretched, that the state of nature is a state of war, and
_Vae Victis_ the great law of Nature. Many years afterwards I met R. Lowe
(Lord Sherbrooke) at dinner. He was speaking of Winchester, and said
with much animation that he had learnt one great lesson there, namely,
that a man can count on nothing in this world except what lies between
his hat and his boots. I learnt the same lesson at Eton, but alas! by
conjugating not _pulso_ but _vapulo_.' As I have intimated, I think that
his conscience must have rather exaggerated his sins of submission;
though I also cannot doubt that there was some ground for his
self-humiliation. In any case, he atoned for it fully. I must add that
he learnt another lesson, which, after his fashion, he refrains from
avowing. The 'kicks, cuffs, and hat smashing had no other result,' says
Mr. Coleridge, 'than to steel his mind for ever against oppression,
tyranny, and unfairness of every kind.' How often that lesson is
effectually taught by simple bullying I will not inquire. Undoubtedly
Fitzjames learnt it, though he expressed himself more frequently in
terms of indignation against the oppressor than of sympathy for the
oppressed; but the sentiment was equally strong, and I have no doubt
that it was stimulated by these acts of tyranny.

The teaching at Eton was 'wretched'; the hours irregular and very
unpunctual; the classes were excessively large, and the tutorial
instruction supposed to be given out of school frequently neglected. 'I
do not believe,' says my brother, 'that I was ever once called upon to
construe at my tutor's after I got into the fifth form.' An absurd
importance, too, was already attached to the athletic amusements.
Balston, our tutor, was a good scholar after the fashion of the day and
famous for Latin verse; but he was essentially a commonplace don.
'Stephen major,' he once said to my brother, 'if you do not take more
pains, how can you ever expect to write good longs and shorts? If you do
not write good longs and shorts, how can you ever be a man of taste? If
you are not a man of taste, how can you ever hope to be of use in the
world?'--a _sorites_, says my brother, which must, he thinks, be
somewhere defective.

The school, however, says Fitzjames, had two good points. The boys, in
the first place, were gentlemen by birth and breeding, and did not
forget their home training. The simple explanation of the defects of the