As a rudiment of that vaulting ambition and its consequences which grew up in me by degrees, and has, I lament to say, remained with me, though now grown prudent and steady, the better aims of which I have striven to fulfil, I may mention here, in taking leave of my boyhood, that there was a bath at Islington called Peerless Pool, to which in summer the boys of the school were sent to bathe. It was a large mass of water, oblong in shape, with a wide promenade. There we would spend a whole afternoon, sent there by the authorities when the half-holiday was at hand. There, to excite the wonder and applause of the other boys, I punished myself by taking the longest run to the water’s edge that was obtainable within the enclosure, and leaping somersault fashion into the air to a great height, and reaching the water in a seated posture. In doing this I entailed on myself a punishment equal to being flogged. Being somewhat sheepish at the age of fifteen, I did not stand very high in the estimation of my uncle, General Gordon, while staying with him at Woolwich, when one day he took me down to the Thames to bathe. There was a platform, probably for the soldiers to jump from into the water; this afforded me a long run, and I resolved on performing my feat. My uncle was perfectly amazed at it, and often alluded to it with surprise in later years.

After this display of my pluck, he was much in favour of my going into the army.

By this time my mother was gravitating southwards with my sister and brother, that she might be near her sisters; she accordingly took a house at Lewes, where there was a good grammar school suitable for my brother.

The process of intellectual growth in all probability differs in individuals; what it was in me I am able to state. It is my opinion that with the same organism as I now have, with which I can grasp and master any subject, not much matter what it is, I should have made but a poor show of intellect but for certain elements of a moral nature. The first of these is a sense of one’s own nothingness without knowledge; the second is a desire for even more knowledge than most persons possess.

All this is emotional, but it supplies an impulse to intellectual motor power, which, when traced out, proves to be of a very simple kind, consisting of impressions derived from without being reiterated within, and inspected over and over again. Take several brains of the same capacity: one man has not the impulse of ambition or desire. Say to him—

“All the world’s a stage.” His ear takes the words to his brain, and they are lodged there; he can repeat them from memory of sound. Say to another—

“All the world’s a stage.” He will be impressed, first by words, on receiving them, and will repeat them mentally, and in doing so will see that he is reiterating a pre-existing mental impression; one which at some time he had derived through the eye; he will see a stage with men and women on it—the players. He will see these making “their exits and their entrances,” and by reiterated observation of old impressions, which run parallel, he will observe men and women actively employed in the world. By a like process of observing old impressions mentally, he will not only witness the phenomena of human life, but will undergo the appropriate emotion even before the phenomena are realized, the emotion leading up to the idea.

Now all this requires previous knowledge, without which no extended train of thought can be effectively carried out; whence it is that those who are ambitious and have a desire for knowledge, will acquire it at every expense, both of time and labour, and will so become accustomed to keeping their native intellect in play.