, conveyed at the time no precise significance. The issue
was that he hardened himself against the influence of his mother and
his aunt, regarding them as in league against the free progress of his
education.

As women, again, he despised these relatives. It is almost impossible
for a bright-witted lad born in the lower middle class to escape this
stage of development. The brutally healthy boy contemns the female sex
because he sees it incapable of his own athletic sports, but Godwin was
one of those upon whose awaking intellect is forced a perception of the
brain-defect so general in women when they are taught few of life's
graces and none of its serious concerns,--their paltry prepossessions,
their vulgar sequaciousness, their invincible ignorance, their
absorption in a petty self. And especially is this phase of thought to
be expected in a boy whose heart blindly nourishes the seeds of
poetical passion. It was Godwin's sincere belief that he held girls, as
girls, in abhorrence. This meant that he dreaded their personal
criticism, and that the spectacle of female beauty sometimes overcame
him with a despair which he could not analyse. Matrons and elderly
unmarried women were truly the objects of his disdain; in them he saw
nothing but their shortcomings. Towards his mother he was conscious of
no tenderness; of as little towards his sister, who often censured him
with trenchant tongue; as for his aunt, whose admiration of him was
modified by reticences, he could never be at ease in her company, so
strong a dislike had he for her look, her voice, her ways of speech.

He would soon be fifteen years old. Mrs. Peak was growing anxious, for
she could no longer consent to draw upon her sister for a portion of
the school fees, and no pertinent suggestion for the lad's future was
made by any of the people who admired his cleverness. Miss Cadman still
clung in a fitful way to the idea of making her nephew a cleric; she
had often talked it over with the Misses Lumb, who of course held that
'any sacrifice' was justifiable with such a motive, and who suggested a
hope that, by the instrumentality of Lady Whitelaw, a curacy might
easily be obtained as soon as Godwin was old enough. But several years
must pass before that Levitical stage could be reached; and then, after
all, perhaps the younger boy, Oliver, placid of temper and notably
pliant in mind, was better suited for the dignity of Orders. It was
lamentable that Godwin should