re
about the great church, or dive along the odd, secret passages of the
old builders, with quite learned explanations (being proud of, and
therefore painstaking about, the place) of architectural periods, of
Gothic "late" and "early," layer upon layer, down to round-arched
"Norman," like the famous staircase of their school.

The reader comprehends that Uthwart was come where the genius loci was
a strong one, with a claim to mould all who enter it to a perfect,
uninquiring, willing or unwilling, conformity to itself. On Saturday
half-holidays the scholars are taken to church in their surplices,
across the [209] court, under the lime-trees; emerge at last up the
dark winding passages into the melodious, mellow-lighted space, always
three days behind the temperature outside, so thick are the walls;--how
warm and nice! how cool and nice! The choir, to which they glide in
order to their places below the clergy, seems conspicuously cold and
sad. But the empty chapels lying beyond it all about into the distance
are a trap on sunny mornings for the clouds of yellow effulgence. The
Angel Steeple is a lantern within, and sheds down a flood of the like
just beyond the gates. You can peep up into it where you sit, if you
dare to gaze about you. If at home there had been nothing great, here,
to boyish sense, one seems diminished to nothing at all, amid the grand
waves, wave upon wave, of patiently-wrought stone; the daring height,
the daring severity, of the innumerable, long, upward, ruled lines,
rigidly bent just at last, in due place, into the reserved grace of the
perfect Gothic arch; the peculiar daylight which seemed to come from
further than the light outside. Next morning they are here again. In
contrast to those irregularly broken hours at home, the passive length
of things impresses Uthwart now. It develops patience--that tale of
hours, the long chanted English service; our English manner of
education is a development of patience, of decorous and mannerly
patience. "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in [210] his
youth: he putteth his mouth in the dust, he keepeth silence, because he
hath borne it upon him."--They have this for an anthem; sung however to
wonderfully cheerful and sprightly music, as if one liked the thought.

The aim of a veritable community, says Plato, is not that this or that
member of it should be disproportionately at ease, but that the whole
should flourish; though indeed such gen