A year spent with this clergyman, with whom I had not two ideas in common, produced an effect upon me exactly opposite to that which had been intended. My feelings towards the ancient classics had grown into positive repugnance when I saw the moderns so unjustly sacrificed to them, and my love for the moderns had increased to the point of partisanship. My tutor's injustice towards Dissenters and unbelievers had also, by a natural reaction, aroused in me a profound sympathy for these maligned and despised people, and I would willingly have joined some dissenting body myself if I could have found one that had exactly my own opinions; but it seemed useless to leave the Church of England for another community if I were no more in accordance with the new than with the old. The fact that my master had been a tutor at Oxford and was always boasting about his university career—he openly expressed his contempt for men who "had never seen the smoke of a university"—made me sick of the very name of the place, and to this day I have never visited it. In a word, my tutor made me dislike the very things that it was his business to make me like, and if I had ever felt the least desire for a degree he would have cured me of it, as it was impossible to desire honors that were accessible to so narrow a mind as his, a mind fit for nothing but pedagogy, and really unable to appreciate either literature or art.
At the end of a year, therefore, I said plainly to my guardian that I
was doing no good, and that it was useless to prepare me any further for
Oxford, as I could not conscientiously put my name to the Thirty-nine
Articles.
If, in those days, any human being in our class of society in England had been able to conceive of such a thing as education not in clerical hands, I might have gone on with my classical studies under the direction of a layman; but education and the clergy were looked upon as inseparable; even by myself. My education, therefore, came momentarily to a stand-still, though it happened a little later that a sense of its imperfection made me take it up again with fresh energy on my own account, and I am still working at it, in various directions, at the mature age of fifty-two.
CHAPTER XVI.
1852.
Choice of a profession.—Love of literature and art.—Decision to make trial of both.—An equestrian tour.—Windermere.—Derwentwater.—I take lessons from Mr. J. P. Pettitt.—Ulleswater.—My horse Turf.—Greenock, a discovery.—My unsettled cousin.—Glasgow.—Loch Lomond. —Inverary.—Loch Awe.—Inishail.—Innistrynich.—Oban.—A sailing excursion.—Mull and Ulva.—Solitary reading.
The question of a profession now required an immediate decision. My guardian's choice for me had formerly been the Church, but that was not exactly suited to my ways of thinking. The most natural profession for a young man in my position would have been the law, but my father had expressly desired that I should not adopt it, as he was sick of it for himself, and wished to spare me its anxieties. The cotton trade required a larger disposable capital than I possessed, to start with any chance of success.
My own desires were equally balanced between two pursuits for which I had a great liking, and hoped that there might be some natural aptitude. One of these was literature, and the other painting. A very moderate success in either of these pursuits would, it seemed to me, be more conducive to happiness than a greater success in some less congenial occupation. My fortune was enough for a bachelor, and I did not intend to marry, at least for a long time.
There was no thought of ambition in connection with the desire to follow one of these two pursuits, beyond that of the workman who desires to do well. I mean, I had no social ambition in connection with them. It seemed to me that the liberty of thought which I valued above everything was incompatible, in England, with any desire to rise in the world, as unbelievers lay under a ban, and had no chance of social advancement without renouncing their opinions. This was an additional reason why I should seek happiness in my studies, as a worldly success was denied to me.
The reader may perhaps think that I had not much, in the way of social advancement, to renounce, but in fact I had a position remarkably full of possibilities, that a man of the world could have used to great advantage. I had independent means, enough to enable me, as a bachelor, to live like a gentleman; I belonged to one of the oldest and best-descended families in the English untitled aristocracy, had a retentive memory, a strong voice, and could speak in public without embarrassment. A man of the world, in my position, would have found his upward course straight before him. He would simply have made use of the Church as an instrument (it is one of the most valuable instruments for the worldly), have given himself the advantages of Oxford, married for money, offered his services to the Conservative party, and gone into Parliament. [Footnote: The reader may wonder why the Conservative party is specially mentioned. It is mentioned simply because all my relations and nearly all my influential friends (who could have pushed me) belonged to it. The Conservative party is also the one that gives the best social promotion to those who serve it. There have been many little Beaconsfields.]