Tell arts they have no soundness, But vary by esteeming; Tell schools they want profoundness, And stand too much on seeming.

If arts and schools reply, Give arts and schools the lie .-- The Soul's Errand.
At ten years old I went to Eton.

I had been educated till that period by my mother, who, being distantly related to Lord ------, (who had published "Hints upon the Culinary Art"), imagined she possessed an hereditary claim to literary distinction.

History was her great forte; for she had read all the historical romances of the day, and history accordingly I had been carefully taught.
I think at this moment I see my mother before me, reclining on her sofa, and repeating to me some story about Queen Elizabeth and Lord Essex; then telling me, in a languid voice, as she sank back with the exertion, of the blessings of a literary taste, and admonishing me never to read above half an hour at a time for fear of losing my health.
Well, to Eton I went; and the second day I had been there, I was half killed for refusing, with all the pride of a Pelham, to wash tea-cups.

I was rescued from the clutches of my tyrant by a boy not much bigger than myself, but reckoned the best fighter, for his size, in the whole school.