I had taken leave of boyhood and entered on the period of youth—a time
when neither children nor men were found to be suitable companions. The
three epochs in our lives are pretty equally divided: that of childhood,
owing to the feebler action of the forces, appears to pass away very
slowly, and ending at our fifteenth or sixteenth year seems interminable;
longer than the time it takes to advance from forty to seventy years of
age, and quite as long as to go onwards from fifteen to forty years.
Of course there is an earlier and a later youth, and it is to the first
that the preceding remark chiefly applies, the period when ignorance is
not strange.
At this early time we do not recognize nature otherwise than as being
ourselves, or in any way apart from us; it is later that the line of
demarkation draws itself between the inner and outer world; and it is
then that time seems to move.
I suppose it was owing to a species of honesty, but I found, very
tryingly, at this time, that my self-assurance and my knowledge were in
strict proportion; I was not, in fact, presumptuous; but of great modesty.
I must put to my credit a habit of not allowing a moment of ignorance to
pass by without rectifying it by questioning either books or persons, and
I often learnt more from others than from books. To this day I never
come across a man possessed of special experience without questioning him
as if I were engaged in a research. Not long ago, a gentleman who had
been twenty years in the Fiji Islands, said of me that I had extracted
more information from him respecting the people and country in an hour’s
conversation, than had been elicited from him by all his friends put
together, during the year he had spent in London as commissioner from the
islands during the Colonial Exhibition.
I trace the increase of this habit upon me to the practice of minute
diagnosis which belongs to the physician. By its means, at all events, I
accumulated corners of knowledge, which few appeared to possess besides
myself.
In a country town there is often a man or two of eminent attainments who
is buried alive. It was so at Lewes, a feeble, antiquated presentiment
of civilization in itself; but it contained Gideon Mantell, the great
geologist, who, searching Tilgate Forest, became the discoverer of the
Iguanodon, which is now visible in the South Kensington Museum.
In those days all county towns were alike in essentials, and Lewes was
not a bad typical example. With a small population it returned two
members to Parliament, both baronets, both wearing pigtails, both having
parks within a drive. There was Sir John Shelley of Maresfield Park, and
Sir George Shiffner of Combe Place. Great men were greater in those days
than they are now, or will ever be again. Sir John looked a great man.
Sir George looked only an important one.
Sir John was tall, slim, upright, with the look of a diagnostic, in
whose presence a horse resolved itself into its elements. The whip in
his hand told the man. When either of these worthies appeared in the
quiet streets—and quiet they were, except on market days—the shop-keepers
were seen standing at their doors as if they were their own customers.
The apparition of Sir John or Sir George was like that of Hermes, when,
formerly, the god visited Athens.
Like everything else that is worn out, Lewes was discontented with
its lot. Not many miles south was Seaford, a rotten borough, and, in
the distance, Old Sarum, and this was more than the less prosperous
inhabitants of Lewes could endure. They must have reform, and it came.
Like many individuals, they did not know when they were well off.
After having two baronets at their command, both with pigtails, they are
no longer a parliamentary borough; even their ancient grammar school is
turned into a commercial Academy, no longer a Plato at its head.
What need is there of eternal retribution when men are everlastingly
punishing themselves?