instances of wrath, which, though they had stamped themselves on his
recollection, conveyed at the time no precise significance. The
issue was that he hardened himself against the influence of his
mother and his aunt, regarding them as in league against the free
progress of his education.

As women, again, he despised these relatives. It is almost
impossible for a bright-witted lad born in the lower middle class to
escape this stage of development. The brutally healthy boy contemns
the female sex because he sees it incapable of his own athletic
sports, but Godwin was one of those upon whose awaking intellect is
forced a perception of the brain-defect so general in women when
they are taught few of life's graces and none of its serious
concerns,--their paltry prepossessions, their vulgar
sequaciousness, their invincible ignorance, their absorption in a
petty self. And especially is this phase of thought to be expected
in a boy whose heart blindly nourishes the seeds of poetical
passion. It was Godwin's sincere belief that he held girls, as
girls, in abhorrence. This meant that he dreaded their personal
criticism, and that the spectacle of female beauty sometimes
overcame him with a despair which he could not analyse. Matrons and
elderly unmarried women were truly the objects of his disdain; in
them he saw nothing but their shortcomings. Towards his mother he
was conscious of no tenderness; of as little towards his sister, who
often censured him with trenchant tongue; as for his aunt, whose
admiration of him was modified by reticences, he could never be at
ease in her company, so strong a dislike had he for her look, her
voice, her ways of speech.

He would soon be fifteen years old. Mrs. Peak was growing anxious,