utilised among French and German, astronomy, geology, chemistry and the
like; but all such useful educationals were quite ignored by the
clerical boobies who then professed to teach young gentlemen all that
they needed to know. Sixty years ago I perceived what we all see now
(teste Lord Sherborne) that a most imperfect classical education, such
as was then provided for us, was the least useful introduction to the
real business of life, except that it was fashionable, and gave a man
some false prestige in the circle of society. At about sixteen I left
Charterhouse for a private tutor, Dr. Stocker, then head of Elizabeth
College, Guernsey, seeing my father wished to do him a service for
kindly private reasons; I was not at the College, but a pupil in his own
house: however, as this other Rev. D.D. proved a failure, I was passed
on to a Rev. Mr. Twopeny of Long Wittenham, near Dorchester, staying
with him about a year with like little profit; when I changed to Mr.
Holt's at Albury, a most worthy friend and neighbour, with whom I read
diligently until my matriculation at Oxford, when I was about nineteen.
With Holt, my intimate comrade was Harold Browne, the present Bishop of
Winchester, and he will remember that it was our rather mischievous
object to get beyond Mr. Holt in our prepared Aristotle and Plato, as we
knew he had hard work to keep even in the race with his advanced pupils
by dint of midnight oil. With this good tutor and the excellent
ministrations of Hugh M'Neile, the famous rector of Albury, my _status
pupillaris_ comes technically to an end, Oxford being practically
independence; albeit I am sure that education can cease only with human
life, even if it be not carried further, onward and upward, through the
cycles of eternity.

As I did not care to stop the continuity of this gossiping record
(perhaps too light and too frank, but it is best unaltered) I must now
hark back for a few years, to fill in whatever small details of early