The experiment of close contact with other boys was too soon to be tried. Mr. Godley's influence appeared to be dangerously evangelical. "The Pilgrim's Progress" and "Alleine's Alarm" were recommended to George by his tutor's sisters, and did not find favor at Althorp in the holidays. We next hear of him at the Rev. ----'s, performing most of the duties of a footman to one or two big boys, and enduring initiation in the iniquities of public school-life. Everyone knows how valuable a prize to youthful tyrants is a child in whom innocence and moral cowardice are combined; and such a prize was George Spencer, blushing at immodest words, and ignorant of the nice distinction between thieving and orchard robbing that exists in the minds of school-boys only. Evening after evening the little boys' rooms were invaded, their occupations broken up, and persecution carried on against one or other of their set. For a little while Spencer used to find a little time of peace when, after such a turmoil, be got into bed, said his prayers, and cried himself to sleep. But the atmosphere was anti-religious, and in the course of ten days be had given up all attempt to pray. A moment of bitter self reproach awaited him. One day he was present when one of the rudest of his tormentors was dressing himself. "To my surprise," he says, "he turned to me, and with his usual civility said some such words as 'Now hold your jaw,' and then, down on his knees near the bed, and his face between his hands, said his prayers. I then saw for a moment to what I had fallen, when even this fellow had more religion than unhappy I had retained, but I had no grain of strength now left to rise. ..." "When I had ceased attempting to maintain my pious feelings, the best consolation I had was in the company of a few boys of a spirit congenial to what mine was now become. All the time that I remained at Eton I never learnt to take pleasure in the manly, active games for which it is so famous. It is not that I was without some natural talent for such things. {176} I have since had my time of most ardent attachment to cricket, to tennis, shooting, hunting, and all active exercises: but my spirit was bent down at Eton; and among the boys who led the way in all manly pursuits, I was always shy and miserable, which was partly a cause and partly an effect of my being looked down upon by them. My pleasure there was in being with a few boys like myself, without spirit for these things, retired apart from the sight of others, amusing ourselves with making arbors and catching little fishes in the streams; and many were the hours I wasted in such childish things when I was grown far too old for them.