as an amiable faddist. A special favourite with both of us
was William Stirling of Keir. His great work on the Spanish

painters, and his 'Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth,'
excited our unbounded admiration, while his BONHOMIE and

radiant humour were a delight we were always eager to
welcome.

George Cayley and I now entered at Lincoln's Inn. At the end
of three years he was duly called to the Bar. I was not; for

alas, as usual, something 'turned up,' which drew me in
another direction. For a couple of years, however, I 'ate'

my terms - not unfrequently with William Harcourt, with whom
Cayley had a Yorkshire intimacy even before our Cambridge

days.
Old Mr. Cayley, though not the least strait-laced, was a

religious man. A Unitarian by birth and conviction, he began
and ended the day with family prayers. On Sundays he would

always read to us, or make us read to him, a sermon of
Channing's, or of Theodore Parker's, or what we all liked

better, one of Frederick Robertson's. He was essentially a
good man. He had been in Parliament all his life, and was a

broad-minded, tolerant, philosophical man-of-the-world. He
had a keen sense of humour, and was rather sarcastical; but,

for all that, he was sensitively earnest, and conscientious.
I had the warmest affection and respect for him. Such a

character exercised no small influence upon our conduct and
our opinions, especially as his approval or disapproval of

these visibly affected his own happiness.
He was never easy unless he was actively engaged in some

benevolent scheme, the motion" target="_blank" title="n.促进；提升；倡仪">promotion of some charity, or in what
he considered his parliamentary duties, which he contrived to

make very burdensome to his conscience. As his health was
bad, these self-imposed obligations were all the more

onerous; but he never spared himself, or his somewhat scanty
means. Amongst other minor tasks, he used to teach at the

Sunday-school of St. John's, Westminster; in this he
persuaded me to join him. The only other volunteer, not a

clergyman, was Page Wood - a great friend of Mr. Cayley's -
afterwards Lord Chancellor Hatherley. In spite of Mr.

Cayley's Unitarianism, like Frederick the Great, he was all
for letting people 'go to Heaven in their own way,' and was

moreover quite ready to help them in their own way. So that
he had no difficulty in hearing the boys repeat the day's

collect, or the Creed, even if Athanasian, in accordance with
the prescribed routine of the clerical teachers.

This was right, at all events for him, if he thought it
right. My spirit of nonconformity did not permit me to

follow his example. Instead thereof, my teaching was purely
secular. I used to take a volume of Mrs. Marcet's

'Conversations' in my pocket; and with the aid of the
diagrams, explain the application of the mechanical forces, -

the inclined plane, the screw, the pulley, the wedge, and the
lever. After two or three Sundays my class was largely

increased, for the children keenly enjoyed their competitive
examinations. I would also give them bits of poetry to get

by heart for the following Sunday - lines from Gray's
'Elegy,' from Wordsworth, from Pope's 'Essay on Man' - such

in short as had a moral rather than a religious tendency.
After some weeks of this, the boys becoming clamorous in

their zeal to correct one another, one of the curates left
his class to hear what was going on in mine. We happened at

the moment to be dealing with geography. The curate,
evidently shocked, went away and brought another curate.

Then the two together departed, and brought back the rector -
Dr. Jennings, one of the Westminster Canons - a most kind and

excellent man. I went on as if unconscious of the
censorship, the boys exerting themselves all the more eagerly

for the sake of the 'gallery.' When the hour was up, Canon
Jennings took me aside, and in the most polite manner thanked

me for my 'valuable assistance,' but did not think that the
'Essay on Man,' or especially geography, was suited for the

teaching in a Sunday-school. I told him I knew it was
useless to contend with so high a canonical authority;

personally I did not see the impiety of geography, but then,
as he already knew, I was a confirmed latitudinarian. He

clearly did not see the joke, but intimated that my services
would henceforth be dispensed with.

Of course I was wrong, though I did not know it then, for it
must be borne in mind that there were no Board Schools in

those days, and general education, amongst the poor, was
deplorably deficient. At first, my idea was to give the

children (they were all boys) a taste for the 'humanities,'
which might afterwards lead to their further pursuit. I

assumed that on the Sunday they would be thinking of the
baked meats awaiting them when church was over, or of their

week-day tops and tipcats; but I was equally sure that a time
would come when these would be forgotten, and the other

things remembered. The success was greater from the
beginning than could be looked for; and some years afterwards

I had reason to hope that the forecast was not altogether too
sanguine.

While the Victoria Tower was being built, I stopped one day
to watch the masons chiselling the blocks of stone.

Presently one of them, in a flanneljacket and a paper cap,
came and held out his hand to me. He was a handsome young

fellow with a big black beard and moustache, both powdered
with his chippings.

'You don't remember me, sir, do you?'
'Did I ever see you before?'

'My name is Richards; don't you remember, sir? I was one of
the boys you used to teach at the Sunday-school. It gave me

a turn for mechanics, which I followed up; and that's how I
took to this trade. I'm a master mason now, sir; and the

whole of this lot is under me.'
'I wonder what you would have been,' said I, 'if we'd stuck

to the collects?'
'I don't think I should have had a hand in this little job,'

he answered, looking up with pride at the mighty tower, as
though he had a creative share in its construction.

All this while I was working hard at my own education, and
trying to make up for the years I had wasted (so I thought of

them), by knocking about the world. I spent laborious days
and nights in reading, dabbling in geology, chemistry,

physiology, metaphysics, and what not. On the score of
dogmatic religion I was as restless as ever. I had an

insatiable thirst for knowledge; but was without guidance. I
wanted to learn everything; and, not knowing in what

direction to concentrate my efforts, learnt next to nothing.
All knowledge seemed to me equally important, for all bore

alike upon the great problems of belief and of existence.
But what to pursue, what to relinquish, appeared to me an

unanswerable riddle. Difficult as this puzzle was, I did not
know then that a long life's experience would hardly make it

simpler. The man who has to earn his bread must fain resolve
to adapt his studies to that end. His choice not often rests

with him. But the unfortunate being cursed in youth with the
means of idleness, yet without genius, without talents even,

is terribly handicapped and perplexed.
And now, with life behind me, how should I advise another in

such a plight? When a young lady, thus embarrassed, wrote to
Carlyle for counsel, he sympathetically bade her 'put her

drawers in order.'
Here is the truth to be faced at the outset: 'Man has but

the choice to go a little way in many paths, or a great way
in only one.' 'Tis thus John Mill puts it. Which will he,

which should he, choose? Both courses lead alike to
incompleteness. The universal man is no specialist, and has

to generalise without his details. The specialist sees only
through his microscope, and knows about as much of cosmology