However exalted may seem the praises which we have given to loose and unplanned reading, we are not saying that it is the sole ingredient of a good education.  Besides this sort of education, which some boys will voluntarily and naturally give themselves, there needs, of course, another and more rigorous kind, which must be impressed upon them from without.  The terrible difficulty of early life—­the use of pastors and masters really is, that they compel boys to a distinct mastery of that which they do not wish to learn.  There is nothing to be said for a preceptor who is not dry.  Mr. Carlyle describes, with bitter satire, the fate of one of his heroes who was obliged to acquire whole systems of information in which he, the hero, saw no use, and which he kept, as far as might be, in a vacant corner of his mind.  And this is the very point:  dry language, tedious mathematics, a thumbed grammar, a detested slate form gradually an interior separate intellect, exact in its information, rigid in its requirements, disciplined in its exercises.  The two grow together; the early natural fancy touching the far extremities of the universe, lightly playing with the scheme of all things; the precise, compacted memory slowly accumulating special facts, exact habits, clear and painful conceptions.  At last, as it were in a moment, the cloud breaks up, the division sweeps away; we find that in fact these exercises which puzzled us, these languages which we hated, these details which we despised, are the instruments of true thought; are the very keys and openings, the exclusive access to the knowledge which we loved.

THE CAVALIERS.  Photogravure from a Painting by F. Vinea.

[Illustration]

THE CAVALIERS

From ‘Thomas Babington Macaulay’

What historian has ever estimated the Cavalier character?  There is Clarendon, the grave, rhetorical, decorous lawyer, piling words, congealing arguments; very stately, a little grim.  There is Hume, the Scotch metaphysician, who has made out the best case for such people as never were, for a Charles who never died, for a Strafford who would never have been attainted; a saving, calculating North-country man, fat, impassive, who lived on eightpence a day.  What have these people to do with an enjoying English gentleman?  It is easy for a doctrinaire to bear a post-mortem examination,—­it is much the same whether he be alive or dead; but not so with those who live during their life, whose essence is existence, whose being is in animation.  There seem to be some characters who are not made for history, as there are some who are not made for old age.  A Cavalier is always young.  The buoyant life arises before us, rich in hope, strong in vigor, irregular in action; men young and ardent, “framed in the prodigality of nature”; open to every enjoyment, alive to every passion, eager, impulsive; brave without discipline, noble without principle; prizing luxury, despising danger; capable of high sentiment, but in each of whom the