of making up my own mind about it, instead of trying to see what I did admire and why I admired it, I tried feebly for years to admire what I was told was admirable.  The result was waste of time and confusion of thought.  In the same way I followed feebly, as a boy, after the social code.  I tried to like the regulation arrangements, and thought dimly that I was in some way to blame because I did not.  Not until I went up to Cambridge did the conception of mental liberty steal upon me—­ and then only partly.  Of course if I had had more originality I should have perceived this earlier.  But the world appeared to me a great, organised, kindly conspiracy, which must be joined, in however feeble a spirit.  I have learnt gradually that, after a decent compliance with superficial conventionalities, there are not only no penalties attached to independence, but that there, and there alone, is happiness to be found; and that the rewards of a free judgement and an authentic admiration are among the best and highest things that the world has to bestow. . . .—­Ever yours,

T. B.

Upton,
June 18, 1904.

Dear Herbert,—­I am sick at heart.  I received one of those letters this morning which are the despair of most schoolmasters.  I have in my house a boy aged seventeen, who is absolutely alone in the world.  He has neither father or mother, brother or sister.  He spends his holidays with an aunt, a clever and charming person, but a sad invalid (by the way, in passing, what a wretched thing in English it is that there is no female of the word “man”; “woman” means something quite different, and always sounds slightly disrespectful; “lady” is impossible, except in certain antique phrases).  The boy is frail, intellectual, ungenial.  He is quite incapable of playing games decently, having neither strength or aptitude; he finds it hard to make friends, and the consequence is that, like all clever people who don’t meet with any success, he takes refuge in a kind of contemptuous cynicism.  His aunt is devoted to him and to his best interests, but she is too much of an invalid to be able to look after him; the result is that he is allowed practically to do exactly as he likes in the holidays; he hates school cordially, and I don’t wonder.  He fortunately has one taste, and that is for science, and it is more than a taste, it is a real passion.  He does not merely dabble about with chemicals, or play tricks with electricity; but he reads dry, hard, abstruse science, and writes elaborate monographs, which I read with more admiration than comprehension.  This is almost his only hold on ordinary life, and I encourage it with all my might; I ask about his work, make such suggestions as I can, and praise his successful experiments and his treatises, so far as I can understand them, loudly and liberally.