ected. In the course of time he
and his wife became persuaded even to unconsciousness, that no one could
even dwell under their roof without deep cause for thankfulness. Their
children, their servants, their parishioners must be fortunate _ipso
facto_ that they were theirs. There was no road to happiness here or
hereafter, but the road that they had themselves travelled, no good
people who did not think as they did upon every subject, and no
reasonable person who had wants the gratification of which would be
inconvenient to them--Theobald and Christina.

This was how it came to pass that their children were white and puny;
they were suffering from _home-sickness_. They were starving, through
being over-crammed with the wrong things. Nature came down upon them,
but she did not come down on Theobald and Christina. Why should she?
They were not leading a starved existence. There are two classes of
people in this world, those who sin, and those who are sinned against; if
a man must belong to either, he had better belong to the first than to
the second.

CHAPTER XXVII

I will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years. Enough
that he struggled through them, and at twelve years old knew every page
of his Latin and Greek Grammars by heart. He had read the greater part
of Virgil, Horace and Livy, and I do not know how many Greek plays: he
was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first four books of Euclid
thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of French. It was now time he went
to school, and to school he was accordingly to go, under the famous Dr
Skinner of Roughborough.

Theobald had known Dr Skinner slightly at Cambridge. He had been a
burning and a shining light in every position he had filled from his
boyhood upwards. He was a very great genius. Everyone knew this; they
said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom the word genius
could be applied without exaggeration. Had he not taken I don't know how
many University Scholarships in his freshman's year? Had he not been
afterwards Senior Wrangler, First Chancellor's Medallist and I do not
know how many more things besides? And then, he was such a wonderful
speaker; at the Union Debating Club he had been without a rival, and had,
of course, been president; his moral character,--a point on which so many
geniuses were weak--was absolutely irreproachable; foremost of all,
however, among his many great qualities, and perhaps more re