The years his youth had seen were stirring enough; the excitements and scandals of the Crimean War, the chief topic during the time just before he went to St. Renny, had been followed, in his first year there, by the tragedy of the Mutiny and the wild stories that had filled the land at the time.  Then, even in Cornwall, the question of the liberation of slaves had been a burning one, and that, combined with the sad tales of distress caused in the North and Midlands, had made the American war a live matter.  Ever since he had heard Russell and Gladstone fighting for the doomed Reform Bill of ’66—­heard, above all, Bright’s magic flow of words—­the political world had held a reality for him it never had before.  Ever since he too had been swept with the crowds to Hyde Park on that memorable day when the people of England had shown their will so plainly he had felt within him a rising sense of the necessity of reforms.  Not till he met his brother-in-law, Dan, had it really become clear to him that there lay his own path....  Up till then, after the fashion of the young who have not been directly incited either by upbringing or an exceptional temperament to deeds bigger than themselves, he had been very engrossed with the personal life of himself and those he knew.  Whenever he had projected beyond that—­as he did in a degree incomprehensible to his family—­it had been into the intangible regions of the spirit.

Now, with the first fine rapture of youth already faded, but its enthusiasm left burning for scope, with his emotional capacities exhausted for a long time to come and his mind sickened of the intimate matters of life, now he was ripening every day for the more material but impersonal energies involved in helping other people’s minds and bodies.  As usual, any measure took far longer to sink in in Cornwall than up-country, and the Education Bill might for long have remained an empty sound as far as Penwith was concerned if it had not been for Boase, Ishmael, and several others of the local gentry.  The Nonconformists were still bitter against it, and there were riots and much heartburning among the poor.  They resented having their children sent to school to learn more than their parents instead of helping them by earning almost as soon as their little legs could stagger.  Indignation meetings were held in the local chapels, and the Parson was once stoned from behind a hedge.  He, though by nature a Conservative, was too truly a wise as well as a compassionate man not to see the crying need for reforms, and though of necessity he deplored the creeping in of undenominationalism, yet he knew his parish was too poor to support adequate Church schools, and he was glad enough to see children in a way to receive some education.  He smiled at the idea of the Bible being “explained” without a leaning to any particular creed, but he relied on his own Sunday school to supply that want.  Also perhaps even he was not averse to supporting