later life, I acquired very tardily
any knowledge of the world, and that simultaneous conspectus of the
relations of persons and things which is necessary for the proper
performance of duties in the world.

I may mention another matter in extenuation. I received, unless my
memory deceives me, very little benefit from teaching. My father was
too much occupied, my mother's health was broken. We, the four
brothers, had no quarrelling among ourselves: but neither can I
recollect any influence flowing down at this time upon me, the
junior. One odd incident seems to show that I was meek, which I
should not have supposed, not less than thrifty and penurious, a
leaning which lay deep, I think, in my nature, and which has
required effort and battle to control it. It was this. By some
process not easy to explain I had, when I was _probably_ seven or
eight, and my elder brothers from ten or eleven to fourteen or
thereabouts, accumulated no less than twenty shillings in silver. My
brothers judged it right to appropriate this fund, and I do not
recollect either annoyance or resistance or complaint. But I
recollect that they employed the principal part of it in the
purchase of four knives, and that they broke the points from the
tops of the blades of my knife, lest I should cut my fingers.

Where was the official or appointed teacher all this time? He was
the Rev. Mr. Rawson of Cambridge, who had, I suppose, been passed by
Mr. Simeon and become private tutor in my father's house. But as he
was to be incumbent of the church, the bishop required a parsonage
and that he should live in it. Out of this grew a very small school
of about twelve boys, to which I went, with some senior brother or
brothers remaining for a while.

Mr. Rawson was a good man, of high no-popery opinions. His school
afterwards rose into considerable repute, and it had Dean Stanley
and the sons of one or more other Cheshire families for pupils. But
I think this was not so much due to its intellectual stamina as to
the extreme salubrity of the situation on the pure dry sands of the
Mersey's mouth, with all the advantages of the strong tidal action
and the fresh and frequent north-west winds. At five miles from
Liverpool Exchange, the sands, delicious for riding, were one
absolute solitude, and only one house looke