There were, namely, two immutable conditions in our agreement.  One was that I should never be compelled to live in town with my pupils, and that when I began my duties my pupils should be handed over entirely to my care, without any restriction; that they should follow me into the country, and there form a restricted and perfectly isolated circle, and that when they returned to town life my duties as preceptor should be at an end.  The time for beginning my new career drew nigh.  As the stipulated dwelling for myself and my pupils was not yet ready, I was expected to take up my abode, for a few days, with my pupils in their town house.  But I felt that it was clear that the least want of firmness at the outset would endanger my whole educational plan; therefore, I stood firm, and indeed gained my point, though at the price of being called headstrong, self-willed, and stubborn.  That my assumption of my post was attended with a sharp contest was a very good and wholesome discipline for me.  It was the fitting inauguration of a position and a sphere of work which was henceforth to be attended, for me, with perpetual and never-ending strife.

But as to this family and all its members, my earnest unbending maintenance of my resolve had a most wholesome effect upon them, even to winning in the end their comprehension and approval, though this was later and long after I had quitted the situation.  It was ten or eleven years afterwards—­that is, four or five years after my departure—­that the mother of these lads expressed her entire approval of the adamantine perseverance I had exhibited in my convictions.

I entered my new sphere of educational work in July 1807.  I was twenty-five years old, as far as years went, but younger by several years in regard to the development of my character.  I neither felt myself so old as I was, nor indeed had I any conception or realisation of my age.  I was only conscious of the strength and striving of my life, the extent of my mental culture, the circumstances of my experience in the world, and especially of—­what shall I call it?—­the shiftlessness and undeveloped state of my culture as far as its helplessness with the external world was concerned, of my ignorance of life both as to what it really was, and how it showed in its outer aspect.  The state of my culture was such as only to serve to plunge me into conflict, through the contradiction and opposition in which I found myself henceforward with all existing methods; and consequently the whole period of my tutorial career was one continual contest.

It was a salutary thing for me that this was my appointed lot from the very beginning.  Now and later on I was therefore able to say to myself by way of consolation and encouragement:  “You knew beforehand just how it would be.”  Still, unpleasantness seldom arrives in exactly the manner expected, and the unexpected is always the hardest to bear.  Thus it was with me in this case; my situation seemed