My regular school training [he tells us], was of the briefest, perhaps fortunately; for though my way of life has made me acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst I have ever known.  We boys were average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any others; but the people who were set over us cared about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby-farmers.  We were left to the operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the ill practices current among us.  Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer.  I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually.  However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in general, arose out of the fact that I—­the victor—­had a black eye, while he—­the vanquished—­had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not.  We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested.  One of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam antagonist.  He had a long story of family misfortune to account for his position; but at that time it was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious strangers in New South Wales, and on inquiry I found that the unfortunate young man had not only been “sent out,” but had undergone more than one colonial conviction.

[His brief school career was happily cut short by the break up of the Ealing establishment.  On the death of Dr. Nicholas, his sons attempted to carry on the school; but the numbers declined rapidly, and George Huxley, about 1835, returned to his native town of Coventry, where he obtained the modest post of manager of the Coventry savings bank, while his daughters eked out the slender family resources by keeping school.

In the meantime the boy Tom, as he was usually called, got little or no regular instruction.  But he had an inquiring mind, and a singularly early turn for metaphysical speculation.  He read everything he could lay hands on in his father’s library.  Not satisfied with the ordinary length of the day, he used, when a boy of twelve, to light his candle before dawn, pin a blanket round his shoulders, and sit up in bed to read Hutton’s “Geology.”  He discussed all manner of questions with his parents and friends, for his quick and eager mind made it possible for him to have friendships with people considerably older than himself.  Among these may especially be noted his medical brother-in-law, Dr. Cooke of