erse of exemplary in a prefect, whereupon Uthwart, his companion as
usual, manages to take all the blame, and the due penalty next morning.
Stokes accepted the sacrifice the more readily, believing--he too--that
Aldy was "incapable of pain." What surprised those who were in the
secret was that, when it was over, he rose, and facing the
head-master--could it be insolence? or was it the sense of
untruthfulness in his friendly action, or sense of the universal
peccancy of all boys and men?--said submissively: "And now, sir, that I
have taken my punishment, I hope you will forgive my fault."

Submissiveness!--It had the force of genius with Emerald Uthwart. In
that very matter he had but yielded to a senior against his own
inclination. What he felt in Horace was the sense, original, active,
personal, of "things too high for me!", the sense, not really
unpleasing to him, of an unattainable height here too, in this royal
felicity of utterance, this literary art, the minute cares of which had
been really designed for the minute carefulness of a disciple such as
this--all attention. Well! the sense of authority, of a large
intellectual authority over us, impressed anew day after day, of some
impenetrable glory round "the masters of those who know," is, of
course, one of the effects we [218] look for from a classical
education:--that, and a full estimate of the preponderating value of
the manner of the doing of it in the thing done; which again, for
ingenuous youth, is an encouragement of good manners on its part:--"I
behave myself orderly." Just at those points, scholarship attains
something of a religious colour. And in that place, religion,
religious system, its claim to overpower one, presented itself in a way
of which even the least serious by nature could not be unaware. Their
great church, its customs and traditions, formed an element in that
esprit de corps into which the boyish mind throws itself so readily.
Afterwards, in very different scenes, the sentiment of that place would
come back upon him, as if resentfully, by contrast with the conscious
or unconscious profanities of others, crushed out about him
straightway, by the shadow of awe, the minatory flash, felt around his
unopened lips, in the glance, the changed manner. Not to be "occupied
with great matters" recommends in heavenly places, as we know, the
souls of some. Yet there were a few to whom it seemed unfortunate that
religion whose flag Uthwart woul