had written, and not what he was said to have written, about his
dissection of the heart.

For the rest, his experience of such a school, before Dr. Arnold's
reforming spirit had made itself felt over the country, is eloquent
testimony to the need of it.

Though my way of life [he writes] has made me acquainted
with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the
lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at
school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average
lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil
as any others; but the people who were set over us cared about
as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were
baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle
for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the
ill practices current among us.

One bright spot in these recollections was the licking of an
intolerable bully, a certain wild-cat element in him making up for
lack of weight. But, alas for justice, "I--the victor--had a black
eye, while he--the vanquished--had none, so that I got into disgrace
and he did not." A dozen years later he ran across this lad in
Sydney, acting as an ostler, a transported convict who had, moreover,
undergone more than one colonial conviction.

This brief school career was ended by the break-up of the Ealing
establishment. After Dr. Nicholas's death, his sons tried to carry on
the school; but the numbers fell off, and George Huxley, about 1835,
returned to his native town of Coventry as manager of the Coventry