nto her lap a lacerated cat, washed
and sewed up its ghastly wound, and nursed it back to health. The great
intimacy with the life and habits of animals which reveals itself in his
works is readily explained by these facts.

Mr. Ready's establishment was chosen for him as the best in the
neighbourhood; and both there and under the preparatory training of that
gentleman's sisters, the young Robert was well and kindly cared for. The
Misses Ready especially concerned themselves with the spiritual welfare
of their pupils. The periodical hair-brushings were accompanied by the
singing, and fell naturally into the measure, of Watts's hymns; and Mr.
Browning has given his friends some very hearty laughs by illustrating
with voice and gesture the ferocious emphasis with which the brush would
swoop down in the accentuated syllables of the following lines:

Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand
In gardens planted by Thy hand.

. . . . .

Fools never raise their thoughts so high,
Like 'brutes' they live, like _brutes_ they die.

He even compelled his mother to laugh at it, though it was sorely
against her nature to lend herself to any burlesquing of piously
intended things.* He had become a bigger boy since the episode of the
cistern, and had probably in some degree outgrown the intense piety of
his earlier childhood. This little incident seems to prove it. On the
whole, however, his religious instincts did not need strengthening,
though his sense of humour might get the better of them for a moment;
and of secular instruction he seems to have received as little from the
one set of teachers as from the other. I do not suppose that the mental
training at Mr. Ready's was more shallow or more mechanical than that
of most other schools of his own or, indeed, of a much later period; but
the brilliant abilities of Robert Browning inspired him with a certain
contempt for it, as also for the average schoolboy intelligence to
which it was apparently adapted. It must be for this reason that, as he
himself declared, he never gained a prize, although these rewards were
showered in such profusion that the only difficulty was to avoid
them; and if he did not make friends at school (for this also has been
somewhere observed),** it can only be explained in the same way. He
was at an intolerant age, and if his schoolfellows struck him as more
backward or more stupid than they need be, he is not likely to have