DOCILITY AND AUTHORITY IN THE HOME AND THE SCHOOL PART II.—_HOW AUTHORITY BEHAVES_ =Mistakes made on Principle.=—Mr Augustus Hare has, apparently, what somebody calls a _bad_ memory, _i.e._ one which keeps a faithful record of every slight and offence that had been done to him since the day he was born! For this reason _The Story of My Life_[1] is not quite pleasant reading, though it is full of interesting details. But all is fish that comes to our net. We have seldom had a more instructive record of childhood, even if we must allow that the instruction comes to us on the lines of what not to do. The fine character and beautiful nature of Mrs Augustus Hare have been known to the world since the _Memorials of a Quiet Life_ were published by this very son; and when we find how this lady misinterpreted the part of mother to her adopted and dearly beloved son, we know that we are not reading of the mistakes of an unworthy or even of a commonplace woman. Mrs Hare always acted upon principle, and when she erred, the principle was in fault. She confounded the two principles of authority and autocracy. She believed that there was some occult virtue in arbitrary action on the part of a parent, and that a child must be the better in proportion as he does as he is bidden—the more outrageous the bidding the better the training. Here is an example of what a loving mother may force herself to do:—“Hitherto, I had never been allowed anything but roast mutton and rice pudding for dinner. Now all was changed. The most delicious puddings were talked of—_dilated_ on—until I became, not greedy, but exceedingly curious about them. At length _le grand moment_ arrived. They were put on the table just before me, and then, just as I was going to eat some of them, they were snatched away, and I was told to get up and carry them off to some poor person in the village. I remember that, though I did not really in the least care about the dainties, I cared excessively about Lea’s wrath at the fate of her nice puddings, of which, after all, I was most innocent.” Here is another arbitrary ruling:—“Even the pleasures of this home-Sunday, however, were marred in the summer, when my mother gave in to a suggestion of Aunt Esther that I should be locked in the vestry of the church between the services. Miserable, indeed, were the three hours which—provided with a sandwich for dinner—I had weekly to spend there; and, though I did not expect to see ghosts, the utter isolation of Hurstmonceaux church, far away from all haunts of men, gave my imprisonment an unusual eeriness. Sometimes I used to clamber over the tomb of the Lords Dacre, which rises like a screen against one side of the vestry, and be stricken with vague terrors by the two grim white figures lying upon it in the silent desolation, in which the scamper of a rat across the floor seemed to make a noise like a whirlwind.... It was a sort of comfort to me, in the real church-time, to repeat vigorously