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.