"Very good; you will have the less trouble, then, in the preparation for college. You will find out for yourself, of course, the immense disadvantages of self-education. The fact is, my dear lord" (turning to Lord Lynedale), "it is only useful as an indication of a capability of being educated by others. One never opens a book written by working men, without shuddering at a hundred faults of style. However, there are some very tolerable attempts among these--especially the imitations of Milton's 'Comus.'" Poor I had by no means intended them as imitations; but such, no doubt, they were. "I am sorry to see that Shelley has had so much influence on your writing. He is a guide as irregular in taste, as unorthodox in doctrine; though there are some pretty things in him now and then. And you have caught his melody tolerably here, now--" "Oh, that is such a sweet thing!" said Lillian. "Do you know, I read it over and over last night, and took it up-stairs with me. How very fond of beautiful things you must be, Mr. Locke, to be able to describe so passionately the longing after them." That voice once more! It intoxicated me, so that I hardly knew what I stammered out--something about working men having very few opportunities of indulging the taste for--I forget what. I believe I was on the point of running off into some absurd compliment, but I caught the dark lady's warning eye on me. "Ah, yes! I forgot. I dare say it must be a very stupid life. So little opportunity, as he says. What a pity he is a tailor, papa! Such an unimaginative employment! How delightful it would be to send him to college and make him a clergyman!" Fool that I was! I fancied--what did I not fancy?--never seeing how that very "_he_" bespoke the indifference--the gulf between us. I was not a man--an equal; but a thing--a subject, who was to be talked over, and examined, and made into something like themselves, of their supreme and undeserved benevolence. "Gently, gently, fair lady! We must not be as headlong as some people would kindly wish to be. If this young man really has a proper desire to rise into a higher station, and I find him a fit object to be assisted in that praiseworthy ambition, why, I think he ought to go to some training college; St. Mark's, I should say, on the whole, might, by its strong Church principles, give the best antidote to any little remaining taint of _sansculottism_. You understand me, my lord? And, then, if he distinguished himself there, it would be time to think of getting him a sizarship." "Poor Pegasus in harness!" half smiled, half sighed, the dark lady. "Just the sort of youth," whispered Lord Lynedale, loud enough for me to hear, "to take out with us to the Mediterranean as secretary--s'il y avait là de la morale, of course--"