nd
university education could give, but also the still greater advantages
of an early introduction into both parliamentary and official life;
provided always that no aberration of character, or taste, or
imagination, or opinion drew him aside from the plain path that lay
before him. He grew up in an atmosphere of the best middle-class
virtues. Decorum, good sense, industry, strict morality; a sober
religious orthodoxy; much simplicity of life, preserved in the midst
of great wealth; ideals which, if not very lofty, were at least
eminently practical and perfectly honourable, prevailed around him,
and their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the
destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring
industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his
character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat
self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very
faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a
schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with
stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually
developed into a strong passion for shooting. He was quiet,
good-natured, studious, scarcely ever in scrapes, and it was not until
the last year of his school life that he threw himself with any
keenness into the amusements of his comrades. He had good natural
abilities; but probably the one point in which he greatly exceeded the
average of intelligent boys was his memory, which was of extraordinary
retentiveness, and which he carefully cultivated. During a few months
which elapsed between leaving Harrow and going to Oxford he constantly
attended the House of Commons, under the Gallery; and he also
attended some natural history lectures at the Royal Institution. His
Oxford career was very successful. He is said to have worked before
his degree examination for no less than eighteen hours, through the
day and night. He gained a double-first, and in the first class of
mathematics he stood alone. Such a success at once stamped him as a
youth of extraordinary promise, and the impression it made was
especially great because, the examination system having been very
recently reorganised, he was the first Oxford man who had attained it.

He was brought into Parliament in April 1809, almost immediately after
he came of age, for the borough of Cashel. No special significance
attaches to the fact of his having entered Parl