genius for mischief amounted to inspiration; it was a divine _afflatus_
which drove him in that direction; and such was his capacity for riding
in whirlwinds and directing storms, that he made it his trade to create
them, as a _nephelaegereta Zeus_, a cloud-compelling Jove, in order that
he _might_ direct them. For this, and other reasons, he had been sent to
the Grammar School of Louth, in Lincolnshire--one of those many old
classic institutions which form the peculiar [1] glory of England. To
box, and to box under the severest restraint of honorable laws, was in
those days a mere necessity of schoolboy life at _public_ schools; and
hence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control of those
generally who had benefited by such discipline--so systematically hostile
to all meanness, pusillanimity, or indirectness. Cowper, in his
"Tyrocinium," is far from doing justice to our great public schools.
Himself disqualified, by a delicacy of temperament, for reaping the
benefits from such a warfare, and having suffered too much in his own
Westminster experience, he could not judge them from an impartial
station; but I, though ill enough adapted to an atmosphere so stormy, yet
having tried both classes of schools, public and private, am compelled in
mere conscience to give my vote (and, if I had a thousand votes, to give
_all_ my votes) for the former.

Fresh from such a training as this, and at a time when his additional
five or six years availed nearly to make _his_ age the double of mine,
my brother very naturally despised me; and, from his exceeding
frankness, he took no pains to conceal that he did. Why should he? Who
was it that could have a right to feel aggrieved by this contempt?
Who, if not myself? But it happened, on the contrary, that I had a
perfect craze for being despised. I doted on it, and considered contempt
a sort of luxury that I was in continual fear of losing. Why not?
Wherefore should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it happen