outside. I remember, for instance, that, as children, it was a rigid
part of our belief that our father was the handsomest man in the
world--handsome was the word. In the same way our mother was by
prerogative the most beautiful woman. If some hero flashed upon our
scene--Garibaldi, Lancelot of the Lake, or another--the greatest praise
we could possibly have given him for beauty, excellence, courage, or
manly worth would have put him second to our father. So also Helen of
Sparta and Beatrice of Florence gave way. That was the law of the
nursery, rigid and never to be questioned until unconsciously I grew out
of it, and becoming a man, put upon me the panoply of manly eyes. I now
accepted it that to kiss my sister was nothing, but that to kiss her
friend would be very wicked. I discovered that there were two ways of
looking at a young woman, and two ways of thinking about her. I
discovered that it was lawful to have some kinds of appetite, and to
take pleasure in food, exercise, sleep, warmth, cold water, hot water,
the smell of flowers, and quite unlawful so much as to think of, or to
admit to myself the existence of other kinds of appetite. I discovered,
in fact, that love was a shameful thing, that if one was in love one
concealed it from the world, and, above all the world, from the object
of one's love. The conviction was probably instinctive, for one is not
the descendant of puritans for nothing; but the discovery of it is
another matter. Attendance at school and the continuous reading of
romance were partly responsible for that; physical development clinched
the affair, I was in all respects mature at thirteen, though my courage
(to use the word in Chaucer's sense) was not equal to my ability. I had
more than usual diffidence against me, more than usual reserve; and
self-consciousness, from which I have only lately escaped, grew upon me
hand in hand with experience.

But being now become a day-scholar at the Grammar School, and thrown