It came in aid of my mother’s perplexities, between delicacy and hardihood, between courage and conscientiousness.  It assisted the cheerfulness I inherited from my father; showed me that circumstances were not to check a healthy gaiety, or the most masculine self-respect; and helped to supply me with the resolution of standing by a principle, not merely as a point of lowly or lofty sacrifice, but as a matter of common sense and duty, and a simple cooeperation with the elements natural warfare.

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CHRIST’S hospital.—­Perhaps there is not foundation in the country so truly English, taking that word to mean what Englishmen wish it to mean:—­something solid, unpretending, of good character, and free to all.  More boys are to be found in it, who issue from a greater variety of ranks, than in any other school in the kingdom and as it is the most various, so it is the largest, of all the free schools.  Nobility do not go there except as boarders.  Now and then a boy of a noble family may be met with, and he is reckoned an interloper, and against the charter; but the sons of poor gentry and London citizens abound; and with them, an equal share is given to the sons of tradesmen of the very humblest description, not omitting servants.  I would not take my oath, but I have a strong recollection that in my time there were two boys, one of whom went up into the drawing-room to his father, the master of the house; and the other, down into the kitchen to his father, the coachman.  One thing, however, I know to be certain, and it is the noblest of all; namely, that the boys themselves (at least it was so in my time) had no sort of feeling of the difference of one another’s ranks out of doors.  The cleverest boy was the noblest, let his father be who he might.

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An intense youthful friendship.—­If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ Hospital, the school would be ever dear to me from the recollection of the friendships I formed in it, and of the first heavenly taste it gave me of that most spiritual of the affections.  I use the word “heavenly” advisedly; and I call friendship the most spiritual of the affections, because even one’s kindred, in partaking of our flesh and blood, become, in a manner, mixed up with our entire being.  Not that I would disparage any other form of affection, worshiping, as I do, all forms of it, love in particular, which, in its highest state, is friendship and something more.  But if ever I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of any maturer feeling.  I shall never forget the impression it first made on me.  I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candor, his truth, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness.  It was not any particular talent that attracted me to him or anything striking whatsoever.