One talent, however, displayed itself early. The faculty of drawing he inherited from his father. But on the queer principle that training is either unnecessary to natural capacity or even ruins it, he never received regular instruction in drawing; and his draughtsmanship, vigorous as it was, and a genuine medium of artistic expression as well as an admirable instrument in his own especial work, never reached the technical perfection of which it was naturally capable. The amount of instruction, indeed of any kind, which he received was scanty in the extreme. For a couple of years, from the age of eight to ten, he was given a taste of the unreformed public school life, where, apart from the rough and ready mode of instruction in vogue and the necessary obedience enforced to certain rules, no means were taken to reach the boys themselves, to guide them and help them in their school life. The new-comer was left to struggle for himself in a community composed of human beings at their most heartlessly cruel age, untempered by any external influence. Here he had little enough of mental discipline, or that deliberate training of character which is a leading object of modern education. On the contrary, what he learnt was a knowledge of undisciplined human nature.] My regular school training [he tells us], was of the briefest, perhaps fortunately; for though my way of life has made me acquainted with all sorts and conditions of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst I have ever known. We boys were average lads, with much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as any others; but the people who were set over us cared about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as if they were baby-farmers. We were left to the operation of the struggle for existence among ourselves; bullying was the least of the ill practices current among us. Almost the only cheerful reminiscence in connection with the place which arises in my mind is that of a battle I had with one of my classmates, who had bullied me until I could stand it no longer. I was a very slight lad, but there was a wild-cat element in me which, when roused, made up for lack of weight, and I licked my adversary effectually. However, one of my first experiences of the extremely rough-and-ready nature of justice, as exhibited by the course of things in general, arose out of the fact that I--the victor--had a black eye, while he--the vanquished--had none, so that I got into disgrace and he did not. We made it up, and thereafter I was unmolested. One of the greatest shocks I ever received in my life was to be told a dozen years afterwards by the groom who brought me my horse in a stable-yard in Sydney that he was my quondam antagonist. He had a long story of family misfortune to account for his position; but at that time it was necessary to deal very cautiously with mysterious