his quiet experiences at Richmond.  Football was in full swing, and one can imagine that to a new boy “Big-side” was not an unalloyed delight.  Whether he distinguished himself as a “dropper,” or ever beat the record time in the “Crick” run, I do not know.  Probably not; his abilities did not lie much in the field of athletics.  But he got on capitally with his work, and seldom returned home without one or more prizes.  Moreover, he conducted himself so well that he never had to enter that dreaded chamber, well known to some Rugbeians, which is approached by a staircase that winds up a little turret, and wherein are enacted scenes better imagined than described.

[Illustration:  Archbishop Tait. From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott and Fry]

A schoolboy’s letter home is not, usually, remarkable for the intelligence displayed in it; as a rule it merely leads up with more or less ingenuity to the inevitable request for money contained in the postscript.  Some of Charles’s letters were of a different sort, as the following example shows: 

Yesterday evening I was walking out with a friend of mine who attends as mathematical pupil Mr. Smythies the second mathematical master; we went up to Mr. Smythies’ house, as he wanted to speak to him, and he asked us to stop and have a glass of wine and some figs.  He seems as devoted to his duty as Mr. Mayor, and asked me with a smile of delight, “Well Dodgson I suppose you’re getting well on with your mathematics?” He is very clever at them, though not equal to Mr. Mayor, as indeed few men are, Papa excepted....  I have read the first number of Dickens’ new tale, “Davy Copperfield.”  It purports to be his life, and begins with his birth and childhood; it seems a poor plot, but some of the characters and scenes are good.  One of the persons that amused me was a Mrs. Gummidge, a wretched melancholy person, who is always crying, happen what will, and whenever the fire smokes, or other trifling accident occurs, makes the remark with great bitterness, and many tears, that she is a “lone lorn creetur, and everything goes contrairy with her.”  I have not yet been able to get the second volume Macaulay’s “England” to read.  I have seen it however and one passage struck me when seven bishops had signed the invitation to the pretender, and King James sent for Bishop Compton (who was one of the seven) and asked him “whether he or any of his ecclesiastical brethren had anything to do with it?” He replied, after a moment’s thought “I am fully persuaded your majesty, that there is not one of my brethren who is not as innocent in the matter as myself.”  This was certainly no actual lie, but certainly, as Macaulay says, it was very little different from one.

The Mr. Mayor who is mentioned in this letter formed a very high opinion of his pupil’s ability, for in 1848 he wrote to Archdeacon Dodgson:  “I have not had a more promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby.”