apabilities for good and great things, but we are obliged to say of
him:

"Quantum mutatus ab illo
Hectore!"

Yes, Kenrick--for it is he--is altered for the worse. Something or
other has left, in its traces upon his face, the history of two
degenerate years. His cheek does not look as if it were capable any
longer of an ingenuous blush, and there is a curl about his lip and
nostril which speaks of perpetual unhealthy scorn, that child of
mortified vanity and conceit, which brazens out the reproaches of
self-distrust and self-reproach. See with what a careless, almost
patronising, air he barely notices the master who is passing by him. He
has just flung a slight nod to Power, studiously taking care not to
notice Walter at all. Look, too, at the boys who are with him; they are
not boys with whom we like to see him; they are an idle lot, precocious
only in folly and in vice. And that little fellow, who seems to be his
especial favourite, is not at all to our taste; he seems the coolest of
them all. For during the last few years Kenrick has entirely lost his
balance; he has deserted his best friends for the adulation of younger
boys, who fed his vanity, and the society of elder boys, who perverted
his thoughts, and vitiated his habits. He has slackened in the career
of honourable industry, he has deflected from the straight paths of
integrity and virtue. Already the fresh eagerness of youth has palled
into satiety, already some of its sparkling-wine for him is bitter as
vinegar; with him already pleasure has become hectic fever instead of a
healthy glow. Alas! he is not happy. Within these two years he has
lost--and his countenance betrays the fact in its ruined beauty--he has
lost the true joys of youth, and known instead of them the troubles of
the envious, the fears of the cowardly, the heaviness of the slothful,
the shame of the unclean. He has lost something of the instinctive
shrinking, even in thought, from all that is vile and base, the loathing
of falsehood, the kindness that will not willingly give pain, the
humility which has lowly thoughts of its own worth; he has lost his joy
in things lovely, and excellent, and of good report; he has changed them
for the mirth of fools, which is like crackling thorns--changed them for
the feet that go down to death, for the steps that lay hold of hell. It
is a mean price for which he has sold his peace of conscience--"the
sweetness of the cup that is charged