IT was settled that after a course of three years at a private tutor’s I
was to go to Cambridge. The life I had led for the past three years was
not the best training for the fellow-pupil of lads of fifteen or sixteen
who had just left school. They were much more ready to follow my lead
than I theirs, especially as mine was always in the pursuit of pleasure.
I was first sent to Mr. B.’s, about a couple of miles from Alnwick.
Before my time, Alnwick itself was considered out of bounds. But as
nearly half the sin in this world consists in being found out, my
companions and I managed never to commit any in this direction.
We generally returned from the town with a bottle of some noxious
compound called ‘port’ in our pockets, which was served out in our
‘study’ at night, while I read aloud the instructive adventures of Mr.
Thomas Jones. We were, of course, supposed to employ these late hours in
preparing our work for the morrow. One boy only protested that, under
the combined seductions of the port and Miss Molly Seagrim, he could
never make his verses scan.
Another of our recreations was poaching. From my earliest days I was
taught to shoot, myself and my brothers being each provided with his
little single-barrelled flint and steel ‘Joe Manton.’ At — we were
surrounded by grouse moors on one side, and by well-preserved coverts on
the other. The grouse I used to shoot in the evening while they fed
amongst the corn stooks; for pheasants and hares, I used to get the other
pupils to walk through the woods, while I with a gun walked outside.
Scouts were posted to look out for keepers.
Did our tutor know? Of course he knew. But think of the saving in the
butcher’s bill! Besides which, Mr. B. was otherwise preoccupied; he was
in love with Mrs. B. I say ‘in love,’ for although I could not be sure
of it then, (having no direct experience of the _amantium iræ_,)
subsequent observation has persuaded me that their perpetual quarrels
could mean nothing else. This was exceedingly favourable to the
independence of Mr. B.’s pupils. But when asked by Mr. Ellice how I was
getting on, I was forced in candour to admit that I was in a fair way to
forget all I ever knew.
By the advice of Lord Spencer I was next placed under the tuition of one
of the minor canons of Ely. The Bishop of Ely—Dr. Allen—had been Lord
Spencer’s tutor, hence his elevation to the see. The Dean—Dr. Peacock,
of algebraic and Trinity College fame—was good enough to promise ‘to keep
an eye’ on me. Lord Spencer himself took me to Ely; and there I remained
for two years. They were two very important years of my life. Having no
fellow pupil to beguile me, I was the more industrious. But it was not
from the better acquaintance with ancient literature that I mainly
benefited,—it was from my initiation to modern thought. I was a constant
guest at the Deanery; where I frequently met such men as Sedgwick, Airey
the Astronomer-Royal, Selwyn, Phelps the Master of Sydney, Canon
Heaviside the master of Haileybury, and many other friends of the Dean’s,
distinguished in science, literature, and art. Here I heard discussed
opinions on these subjects by some of their leading representatives.
Naturally, as many of them were Churchmen, conversation often turned on
the bearing of modern science, of geology especially if Sedgwick were of
the party, upon Mosaic cosmogony, or Biblical exegesis generally.
The knowledge of these learned men, the lucidity with which they
expressed their views, and the earnestness with which they defended them,
captivated my attention, and opened to me a new world of surpassing
interest and gravity.
What startled me most was the spirit in which a man of Sedgwick’s
intellectual power protested against the possible encroachments of his
own branch of science upon the orthodox tenets of the Church. Just about
this time an anonymous book appeared, which, though long since forgotten,
caused no slight disturbance amongst dogmatic theologians. The tendency
of this book, ‘Vestiges of the Creation,’ was, or was then held to be,
antagonistic to the arguments from design. Familiar as we now are with
the theory of evolution, such a work as the ‘Vestiges’ would no more stir
the _odium theologicum_ than Franklin’s kite. Sedgwick, however,
attacked it with a vehemence and a rancour that would certainly have
roasted its author had the professor held the office of Grand Inquisitor.
Though incapable of forming any opinion as to the scientific merits of
such a book, or of Hugh Miller’s writings, which he also attacked upon
purely religious grounds, I was staggered by the fact that the Bible
could possibly be impeached, or that it was not profanity to defend it
even. Was it not the ‘Word of God’? And if so, how could any theories
of creation, any historical, any philological researches, shake its
eternal truth?
Day and night I pondered over this new revelation. I bought the
books—the wicked books—which nobody ought to read. The _Index
Expurgatorius_ became my guide for books to be digested. I laid hands on
every heretical work I could hear of. By chance I made the acquaintance
of a young man who, together with his family, were Unitarians. I got,
and devoured, Channing’s works. I found a splendid copy of Voltaire in
the Holkham library, and hunted through the endless volumes, till I came
to the ‘Dialogues Philosophiques.’ The world is too busy, fortunately,
to disturb its peace with such profane satire, such withering sarcasm as
flashes through an ‘entretien’ like that between ‘Frère Rigolet’ and
‘L’Empereur de la Chine.’ Every French man of letters knows it by heart;
but it would wound our English susceptibilities were I to cite it here.
Then, too, the impious paraphrase of the Athanasian Creed, with its
terrible climax, from the converting Jesuit: ‘Or vous voyez bien . . .
qu’un homme qui ne croit pas cette histoire doit être brûlé dans ce monde
ci, et dans l’autre.’ To which ‘L’Empereur’ replies: ‘Ça c’est clair
comme le jour.’
Could an ignorant youth, fevered with curiosity and the first goadings of
the questioning spirit, resist such logic, such scorn, such scathing wit,
as he met with here?
Then followed Rousseau; ‘Emile’ became my favourite. Froude’s ‘Nemesis
of Faith’ I read, and many other books of a like tendency. Passive
obedience, blind submission to authority, was never one of my virtues,
and once my faith was shattered, I knew not where to stop—what to doubt,
what to believe. If the injunction to ‘prove all things’ was anything
more than an empty apophthegm, inquiry, in St. Paul’s eyes at any rate,
could not be sacrilege.
It was not happiness I sought,—not peace of mind at least; for assuredly
my thirst for knowledge, for truth, brought me anything but peace. I
never was more restless, or, at times, more unhappy. Shallow, indeed,
must be the soul that can lightly sever itself from beliefs which lie at
the roots of our moral, intellectual, and emotional being, sanctified too
by associations of our earliest love and reverence. I used to wander
about the fields, and sit for hours in sequestered spots, longing for
some friend, some confidant to take counsel with. I knew no such friend.
I did not dare to speak of my misgivings to others. In spite of my
earnest desire for guidance, for more light, the strong grip of
childhood’s influences was impossible to shake off. I could not rid my
conscience of the sin of doubt.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops
into the child’s first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character
of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which
justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: ‘Tantum Religio potuit
suadere malorum!’