nd forwards. There was I, looking down with infinite complacency
and satisfaction from this honourable vantage ground upon the floor
of the church, filled and packed as one of our public meetings is,
with people standing and pushing. What was my emotion, my joy, my
exultation, when I espied among this humiliated mass, struggling
and buffeted--whom but Keate! Keate the master of our existence,
the tyrant of our days! Pure, unalloyed, unadulterated rapture!
Such a [Greek: peripeteia], such a reversal of human conditions of being,
as that now exhibited between the Eton lower boy uplifted to the
luxurious gallery pew, and the head-master of Eton, whom I was
accustomed to see in the roomy deck of the upper school with vacant
space and terror all around him, it must be hard for any one to
conceive, except the two who were the subjects of it. Never, never,
have I forgotten that moment.[32]

I will now, after the manner of novelists, ask my reader to effect
along with me, a transition of some eighteen years, and to witness
another, and if not a more complete yet a worthier, turning of the
tables. In the year 1841 there was a very special Eton dinner held
in Willis's Rooms to commemorate the fourth centenary of the
ancient school. Lord Morpeth, afterwards Lord Carlisle, was in the
chair. On his right, not far off him, was Dr. Keate, to whom I
chanced to have a seat almost immediately opposite. In those days,
at public dinners, cheering was marked by gradations. As the Queen
was suspected of sympathy with the liberal government of Lord
Melbourne which advised her, the toast of the sovereign was
naturally received with a moderate amount of acclamation, decently
and thriftily doled out. On the other hand the Queen Dowager either
was, or was believed to be, conservative; and her health
consequently figured as the toast of the evening, and drew forth,
as a matter of course, by far its loudest acclamation. So much was
routine; and we went through it as usual. But the real toast of the
evening was yet to come. I suppose it to be beyond doubt that of
the assembled company the vastly preponderating majority had been
under his sway at Eton; and if, when in that condition, any one of
them had been asked how he liked Dr. Keate, he would beyond
question have answered, 'K