*CHAPTER III.* Father Sancta Clara was obliged to remain quiet at Westacre for some time, and devoted himself entirely to gaining an influence over Johnny. Of course in this he was entirely successful. There was a good library, for that day, at the Priory; the Prior’s old books were still on the shelves, and Richard Inglesant, who we have seen was a scholar, added largely to them, bringing all his books into the country when he came to live at Westacre. The difference between Johnny’s former master and this present one was that between a theorist and dreamer and a statesman and man of the world and critical student of human nature. The Father made Johnny read with him every day, and by his wealth of learning and acquaintance with men and foreign countries, made the reading interesting in the highest degree. In this way he read the classics, making them not dead school books, but the most human utterances that living men ever spoke; and while from these he drew illustrations of human life when reading Plato—which he did every day—he led his pupil to perceive, as he did more fully when he grew older, that wonderful insight into the spiritual life and spiritual distinctions which even Christianity has failed to surpass. He led him, step by step, through that noble resolve by which Socrates—at frightful odds, and with all ordinary experience against him—maintains the advantage to be derived from truth; he pointed out to him the three different elements to be found in Plato: the Socratic or negative argument, simply overthrowing received opinion; the pseudo-scientific, to which Plato was liable from the condition of knowledge in his day; and, finally, the exalted flight of the transcendental reason, which, leaving alike the scepticism of the negative argument and the dreams of false science, flies aloft into the pure ether of the heavenly life. He read to him Aristophanes, pointing out in him the opposing powers which were at work in the Hellenic life as in the life of every civilised age. He did not conceal from him the amount of right there is on the popular side of plain common sense, nor the soundness of that fear which hesitates to overthrow the popular forms of truth, time-honoured and revealed, which have become in the eyes of the majority, however imperfect they may really be, the truth itself. Nor did he fail to show him the unsuitability of the Socratic argument to the masses of the people, who will stop at the negative part, and fail of the ethereal flight beyond; and he showed him how it might be possible, and even the best thing for mankind, that Socrates should die, though Socrates at that moment was the noblest of mankind: as, afterwards, though for a different reason, it was expedient that a nobler than Socrates should die for the people,—nobler, that is, in that he did what Socrates failed in doing, and carried the lowest of the people with him to the ethereal gates. And in this entering into