One by one the
boys stole out, and he was left alone. The end is soon told. Forced to
leave Ayrton, he had no means of earning his daily bread; and the weight
of this new anxiety hastening the crisis, the handsome proud scholar
became an inmate of the Brerely Lunatic Asylum. A few years afterwards,
Eric heard that he was dead. Poor broken human heart! may he rest
in peace.
Such was Eric's first school and schoolmaster. But although he learnt
little there, and gained no experience of the character of others or of
his own, yet there was one point about Ayrton Latin School, which he
never regretted. It was the mixture there of all classes. On those
benches gentlemen's sons sat side by side with plebeians, and no harm,
but only good, seemed to come from the intercourse. The neighboring
gentry, most of whom had begun their education there, were drawn into
closer and kindlier union with their neighbors and dependents, from the
fact of having been their associates in the days of their boyhood. Many
a time afterwards, when Eric, as he passed down the streets,
interchanged friendly greetings with some young glazier or tradesman
whom he remembered at school, he felt glad that thus early he had learnt
practically to despise the accidental and nominal differences which
separate man from man.
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