Chamberlain's education, begun in a "lycée" at Versailles, took place mostly on the Continent, but his father had planned a military career for his son. At the age of eleven he was sent to Cheltenham College, an English boarding school which produced many army and navy officers. Chamberlain grew up in a self-confident, optimistic Victorian atmosphere that celebrated the ninteenth century as the "Age of Progress"; a time of growing wealth, scientific discoveries, technological advances and democratic political reforms, a world that many Victorians only expected to get progressively better and better with Britain leading the way for the rest of the world.