More worthy than our twilight dim—
For brave obedience, too, is Light,
And following that is finding Him.
CHAPTER VIII.
ITALY.
The pleasure of having my brother as an inmate was scarcely dimmed by this disappointment, and he remained with us until the autumn of 1850, a white nine months in my life. Your grandfather wrote of him a year later, when he had engaged himself to be married: “I cannot exactly fancy George a married man, seeing that to the latest period his ways in this house have been precisely the same as when he was a Rugby boy—as few wants, and as little assumption, though I have exhorted him to swagger and order a little.” And, as it was at Donnington, so it had been in our diminutive town-house; indeed, I doubt whether any one of you, or any public school boy, would give so little trouble. He read hard, starting with me every morning directly after breakfast; went into no society, except that of a few old friends, and allured me away occasionally on summer afternoons, from law, and the reform of trade, to a game of cricket with the Hampstead club, of which he had become a member, or in the Harrow playing-fields, where he was always more than welcome.
After the long vacation of 1850 he had intended to begin practice in Doctors’ Commons, but was delayed by an accident. He was struck in the eye by a spent shot, in cover shooting, and, though the accident proved not to be a serious one, he was ordered to rest his eyes entirely, and accordingly settled to spend the winter in Italy. The vexation of such a check at the opening of his professional career, was almost compensated, I think, by the delight which this tour gave him. He had never been abroad at this time, except for a few days in France, and his education and natural tastes peculiarly fitted him for enjoying Italy thoroughly, for he was passionately fond of art, as well as a fine classical scholar, having never dropped his Latin and Greek, as most of us are so apt to do the moment we have taken our degrees.
He lingered a little in France, on his way south, chiefly to accustom his ear and tongue to the language, and he writes:—
“Marseilles, December 6th, 1850.