His impressionable temperament, and the power he had occasionally shown of absorbing himself in a subject till it produced in him a fit of intense continuous brooding, unfavorable to health and nervous energy, all warned her not to supply him, at a period of rapid mental and bodily growth, with any fresh stimulus to the sense of responsibility.

As a boy he had always shown himself religiously susceptible to a certain extent, and his mother's religious likes and dislikes had invariably found in him a blind and chivalrous support.
He was content to be with her, to worship with her, and to feel that no reluctance or resistance divided his heart from hers.

But there had been nothing specially noteworthy or precocious about his religious development, and at sixteen or seventeen, in spite of his affectionate compliance, and his natural reverence for all persons and beliefs in authority, his mother was perfectly aware that many other things in his life were more real to him than religion.

And on this point, at any rate, she was certainly not the person to force him.
He was such a schoolboy as a discerning master delights in--keen about everything, bright, docile, popular, excellent at games.

He was in the sixth, moreover, as soon as his age allowed; that is to say, as soon as he was sixteen; and his pride in everything connected with the great body which he had already a marked and important place was unbounded.
Very early in his school career the literary instincts, which had always been present in him, and which his mother had largely helped to develop by her own restless imaginative ways of approaching life and the world made themselves felt with considerable force.