"
Besides this, he himself personally gave his son an education
which made him, perhaps, all things considered, the most
accomplished man of his age, and without help from the universities
or any other institution of learning. The son grew up with a
profound reverence for his father as a scholar and thinker,
and rarely lost an opportunity of expressing it, though, curiously
enough, he began very early to look on Bentham, the head of the
school, with a critical eye. The young man's course was, however,
still more remarkable than the father's.
Although brought up in a narrow coterie holding peculiar and
somewhat unpopular opinions, and displaying, from his first entrance
in life, as intense hostility as it was in his nature to feel
against anything, against the English universities as then organized
and conducted, though they were the centre of English culture and
indeed one might say of intellectual activity, he saw himself,
before he reached middle life, the most potent influence known to
educated Englishmen, and perhaps that which has most contributed to
the late grave changes in English public opinion on several of the
leading social and political problems.
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