Thenceforward I progressed rapidly in my learning. Mr. Andrewes was a good scholar, and (quite another matter) a good teacher; and I fancy that I was not wanting in quickness or in willingness to work. But Latin, and arithmetic, and geography, and the marvellous improvement he soon made in my handwriting, were small parts indeed of all that I owe to that good friend of my childhood. I suppose that--other things being equal--children learn most from those who love them best, and I soon found out that I was the object of a strangely strong affection in my new teacher. The chief cause of this I did not then know, and only learnt when death had put an end, for this life, to our happy intercourse. But I had a child's complacent appreciation of the fact that I was a favourite, and on the strength of it I haunted the Rectory at all hours, confident of a welcome. I turned over the Rector's books, and culled his flowers, and joined his rides, and made him tell me stories, and tyrannized over him as over a docile playfellow in a fashion that astonished many grown-up people who were awed and repelled by his reserve and eccentricities, and who never knew his character as I knew it till he could be known no more. But I fancy that there are not a few worthy men who, shy and reserved, are only intimately known by the children whom they love. I may say that not only did I owe much more than mere learning to Mr. Andrewes, but that my regular lessons were a small part even of his teaching. "It always seems to me," he said one day, when my father and I were together at the Rectory, "that there are two kinds of learning more neglected than they should be in the education of the young. Religious knowledge, which, after all, concerns the worthiest part of every man, and the longest share of his existence (to say nothing of what it has to do with matters now); and the knowledge of what we call Nature, and of all the laws which concern our bodies, and rule the conditions of life in this world. It's a hobby of mine, Mr. Dacre, and I'm afraid I ride my hobbies rather like a witch on a broomstick. But a man must deal according to his lights and his conscience; and if I am intrusted with the lad's education for a while, it will be my duty and pleasure to instruct him in religious lore and natural science, so far as his age allows. To teach him to know his Bible (and I wish all who have the leisure were taught to read the Scriptures in the original tongues). To teach him to know his Prayer-book, and its history. Something, too, of the history of his Church, and of the faith in which better men than us have been proud to live, and for which some have even dared to die."