no ambition whatsoever beyond pleasing his father and mother, getting by
honest means the maximum of "red quarrenders" and mazard cherries,
and going to sea when he was big enough. Neither was he what would be
now-a-days called by many a pious child; for though he said his Creed
and Lord's Prayer night and morning, and went to the service at the
church every forenoon, and read the day's Psalms with his mother every
evening, and had learnt from her and from his father (as he proved well
in after life) that it was infinitely noble to do right and infinitely
base to do wrong, yet (the age of children's religious books not having
yet dawned on the world) he knew nothing more of theology, or of his
own soul, than is contained in the Church Catechism. It is a question,
however, on the whole, whether, though grossly ignorant (according to
our modern notions) in science and religion, he was altogether untrained
in manhood, virtue, and godliness; and whether the barbaric narrowness
of his information was not somewhat counterbalanced both in him and in
the rest of his generation by the depth, and breadth, and healthiness of
his education.

So let us watch him up the hill as he goes hugging his horn, to tell all
that has passed to his mother, from whom he had never hidden anything
in his life, save only that sea-fever; and that only because he foreknew
that it would give her pain; and because, moreover, being a prudent and
sensible lad, he knew that he was not yet old enough to go, and that, as
he expressed it to her that afternoon, "there was no use hollaing till
he was out of the wood."

So he goes up between the rich lane-banks, heavy with drooping ferns and
honeysuckle; out upon the windy down toward the old Court, nestled
amid its ring of wind-clipt oaks; through the gray gateway into the
homeclose; and then he pauses a moment to look around; first at the wide