Saturday, for instance, when he was clad in
the uniform of the ten-oar, the first boat on
the river, of which he pulled stroke. At the
tables which then were, and perhaps still are,
set out in the open air at Surley, he was
what writers of a high order would style the
cynosure of neighbouring eyes. He distributed,
right royally, scraps of cold fowl, and
glasses of champagne to his fags, and the
fourth form, who crowded round him. At
the fireworks which succeeded, he stood up
at the head of his crew, waved his hat, and
led the cheering. On these occasions, even
the masters recognised his position, albeit
not written on the tablets of school
precedence. They pointed him out to the fair
visitors who thronged the towing path in
their open carriages and chariots (I think
that Broughams were not as yet invented),
and the Newcastle scholar and the best
Grecian slunk past quite unnoticed, as much
out of place as a poet-laureate at the
storming of the Malakoff. It was a great sight,
too, to see the captain on duck-and-green-pea
night, that is to say, on the alternate Saturdays
in the summer half, when the crews of
the three upper boats rowed up to Surley, to
partake of the delicacies from which the
procession received its name. Or to watch
him directing the matches and sweepstakes
in which, owing to his high position, he was
debarred from taking an active part. Lower
sixes, the two sides of college, the pulling, and
sculling, and double-sculling sweepstakes,
and the like. He discharged, if I remember
rightly, the actual gun which gave the signal
of the start, and which was the only fire-arm
which an Eton boy could have let off in public
without incurring a flogging. He sometimes
ran by the side of the contending
parties. He was always in training,
and we believed him capable of
distancing any professional pedestrian, stag, or
fancy boy, whatever, in a run from Windsor
all the way to London. Then, when not
actually engaged in occupations connected
with his own element, there was a grandeur
about him which threw all the other
notabilities of the school quite into the shade.
As he walked across the playing-fields, for
instance, he seemed a greater man than the
Captain of the Eleven. This, no doubt arose
in some measure, from his branch of the
service being the more popular of the two,
just as, in the affections of Englishmen in
general, the navy holds a higher place than
the army; but it was also, in a great degree,
to be attributed to his stalwart appearance
and personal strength, the special objects of
admiration in all primitive infant communities;
whether of manlike boys, or childlike men;
whether in the British or South Sea Islands.
It was a pleasure to watch him playing at
cricket—almost a pleasure to fag out for
him in the field. He was not very scientific,
to be sure, but when he did catch a
ball—what a swipe! What did it matter,
after all, about the stroke being made in the
wrong direction, when the ball was spinning
like a little speck at the height of a poplar-
tree, or wending its course far over the head
of the outermost scout till it came to earth
in the Fellows' garden.

What I have hitherto said of my hero,
relates, of course, principally to the feeling
which was entertained respecting him by the
lower boys. As we rose in the school, and
(a matter that was of more importance to
some of us in those days) in the boats, our
impression of our captain came necessarily
to be modified. No one is quite a hero to
those who are in immediate contact with
him—or, as the proverb expresses it, to his
valet. We found the office filled by one of
our own contemporaries, by a youth who had
worshipped, and toadied, and fagged for the
captain of the boats of five years before;
who had passed in regular gradations, and
through successive crews, from the Thetis to
the Britannia, from the Britannia to the
Victory, and so onward to the head place in
the ten-oar. If he wore tail-coats, so did we;
if he smoked cigars, and felt a little indisposed
after them, so, in like manner did we;
if he had thrashed a bargee, we, too, had had
our not inglorious contests with the denizens
of Slough and Salt Hill. Our reverence
naturally in some degree diminished; or rather,
adhering to the word already employed, I
should say that it became modified, depending
upon a corrector view of its object. If
we had lost the exaggerated notions
conceived of him in the days of our fourth-
formdom, we had at the same time acquired
a juster appreciation of what he really was,
of the difficulties which he had overcome, of
the influence which he exercised. Just so,
the courtiers who surround a king, and who
know him to be very little of a hero,—
perhaps very much of a drunkard,—may
revere him in their own way to quite as
great an extent as the peasant who believes
that his majesty washes his hands in a golden
basin, and goes to sleep in his crown and
coronation robes.

During the four years that I trembled
under the ferule of Dr. Hawtrey, we had a
succession of three captains of the boats.
The first, A., will be remembered as having
held the office for two successive years.
Indeed, he remained at school a twelvemonth
longer than he would otherwise have done,
on purpose to retain it. Nothing can show
more strongly the influence which a high
position in the boats conferred among us, than
the fact that boys would, in this way, very
often seek to defer the period of their entrance
at the University, or into the army, and
persuade their parents to keep them at school,
in order to rise to eminence on the river. A.
must have been, at the time of his leaving,
very nearly one and twenty, and had quite
outgrown the age to which the necessary
restrictions of the school were adapted. He