My performances in class were very irregular.  Upon one occasion I wrote an Alexander, which must be in the prize exercise book, and which I would reprint if I had it by me.  But purely rhetorical compositions were very distasteful to me; I could never make a decent speech.  Upon one prize-day we got up a representation of the Council of Clermont, and the various speeches suitable to the occasion were allotted by competition.  I was a miserable failure as Peter the Hermit and Urban II.; my Godefroy de Bouillon was pronounced to be utterly devoid of military ardour.  A warlike song in Sapphic and Adonic stanzas created a more favourable impression.  My refrain Sternite Turcas, a short and sharp solution of the Eastern Question, was selected for recital in public.  I was too staid for these childish proceedings.  We were often set to write a Middle Age tale, terminating with some striking miracle, and I was far too fond of selecting the cure of lepers.  I often thought of my early studies in mathematics, in which I was pretty well advanced, and I spoke of it to my fellow students, who were much amused at the idea, for mathematics stood very low in their estimation, compared to the literary studies which they looked upon as the highest expression of human intelligence.  My reasoning powers only revealed themselves later, while studying philosophy at Issy.  The first time that my fellow pupils heard me argue in Latin they were surprised.  They saw at once that I was of a different race from themselves, and that I should still be marching forward when they had reached the bounds set for them.  But in rhetoric I did not stand so well.  I looked upon it as a pure waste of time and ingenuity to write when one has no thoughts of one’s own to express.

The groundwork of ideas upon which education at St. Nicholas was based was shallow, but it was brilliant upon the surface, and the elevation of feeling which pervaded the whole system was another notable feature.  I have said that no kind of punishment was administered; or, to speak more accurately, there was only one, expulsion.  Except in cases where some grave offence had been committed, there was nothing degrading in being dismissed.  No particular reason was alleged, the superior saying to the student who was sent away:  “You are a very worthy young man, but your intelligence is not of the turn we require.  Let us part friends.  Is there any service I can do you?” The favour of being allowed to share in an education considered to be so exceptionally good was thought so much of that we dreaded an announcement of this kind like a sentence of death.  This is one of the secrets of the superiority of ecclesiastical over state colleges; their regime is much more liberal, for none of the students are there by right, and coercion must inevitably lead to separation.  There is something cold and hard about the schools and colleges of the state, while the fact of a student having secured by