to represent a surplice, and preaching to my mother's maids in the
kitchen as nearly as possible in Sir Herbert's manner one Sunday morning
when the rest of the family were at church. That is the earliest
indication of the strong clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert
Spencer has always ascribed to me, though I fancy they have for the most
part remained in a latent state.

[There remains no record of his having been a very precocious child.
Indeed, it is usually the eldest child whose necessary companionship
with his elders wins him this reputation. The youngest remains a child
among children longer than any other of his brothers and sisters.

One talent, however, displayed itself early. The faculty of drawing he
inherited from his father. But on the queer principle that training is
either unnecessary to natural capacity or even ruins it, he never
received regular instruction in drawing; and his draughtsmanship,
vigorous as it was, and a genuine medium of artistic expression as well
as an admirable instrument in his own especial work, never reached the
technical perfection of which it was naturally capable.

The amount of instruction, indeed of any kind, which he received was
scanty in the extreme. For a couple of years, from the age of eight to
ten, he was given a taste of the unreformed public school life, where,
apart from the rough and ready mode of instruction in vogue and the
necessary obedience enforced to certain rules, no means were taken to
reach the boys themselves, to guide them and help them in their school
life. The new-comer was left to struggle for himself in a community
composed of human beings at their most heartlessly cruel age, untempered
by any external influence.