At that period a host of these little colonies were scattered over the Continent nearest England; in fact, an oasis of Anglo-Saxondom in a desert of continentalism, somewhat like the society of English country towns as it was in 1800, not as it is now, where society is confined to the parson, dentist, surgeon, general practitioners, the bankers, and the lawyers. And in those days it had this advantage, that there were no snobs, and one seldom noticed the aigre discorde, the maladie chronique des ménages bourgeoises. Knowing nothing of Mrs. Grundy, the difference of the foreign colonies was that the weight of English respectability appeared to be taken off them, though their lives were respectable and respected. The Mrs. Gamps and Mrs. Grundys were not so rampant. The English of these little colonies were intensely patriotic, and cared comparatively little for party politics. They stuck to their own Church because it was their Church, and they knew as much about the Catholics at their very door, as the average Englishman does of the Hindú. Moreover, they honestly called themselves Protestants in those days, and the French called themselves Catholics. There was no quibble about "their being Anglo-Catholics, and the others Roman-Catholics." They subscribed liberally to the Church, and did not disdain to act as churchwardens. They kept a sharp look-out upon the parson, and one of your Modern High Church Protestants or Puseyites or Ritualists would have got the sack after the first sermon. They were intensely national. Any Englishman in those days who refused to fight a duel with a Frenchman was sent to Coventry, and bullied out of the place. English girls who flirted with foreigners, were looked upon very much as white women who permit the addresses of a nigger, are looked upon by those English who have lived in black countries. White women who do these things lose caste. Beauséjour, the château taken by the family, was inhabited by the Maréchale de Menon in 1778, and eventually became the property of her homme d'affaires, Monsieur Froguet. The dear old place stands on the right bank of the Loire, halfway up the heights that bound the stream, commanding a splendid view, and fronted by a French garden and vineyards now uprooted. In 1875 I paid it a last visit, and found a friend from Brazil, a Madame Izarié, widow of my friend the French Consul of Bahía, who had come to die in the house of his sister, Madame Froguet.

Tours was in those days (1820-30) the most mediæval City in France. The western half of the city, divided from the eastern by the Rue Royale, contained a number of old turreted houses of freestone, which might have belonged to the fifteenth century. There also was the tomb of the Venerable St. Martin in a crypt, where lamps are ever burning, and where the destroyed cathedral has not yet been rebuilt. The eastern city contained the grand Cathedral of St. Garcien, with its domed towers, and the Archévêché or Archbishop's palace with beautiful gardens. Both are still kept in the best order. In forty-five years the city has grown enormously. The southern suburbs, where the Mall and Ramparts used to be, has become Boulevards Heurteloup and Béranger; and "Places," such as that of the Palais de Justice, where cabbage gardens fenced with paling and thorn hedges once showed a few pauper cottages defended by the fortifications, are now Crescents and Kiosks for loungers, houses with tall mansarde roofs, and the large railway station that connects Tours with the outer world. The river, once crossed by a single long stone bridge, has now two suspension bridges and a railway bridge, and the river-holms, formerly strips of sand, are now grown to double their size, covered with trees and defended by stone dykes.

I remember passing over the river on foot when it was frozen, but with the increased population that no longer happens. Still there are vestiges of the old establishments. The Boule d'Or with its Golden Ball, and the Pheasant Hotel, both in the Rue Royale, still remain. You still read, "Maison Piernadine recommended for is elegance, is good taste, is new fashions of the first choice." Madame Fisterre, the maker of admirable apple-puffs, has disappeared and has left no sign. This was, as may be supposed, one of my first childish visits. We young ones enjoyed ourselves very much at the Château de Beauséjour, eating grapes in the garden, putting our Noah's ark animals under the box hedges, picking snail-shells and cowslips in the lanes, playing with the dogs—three black pointers of splendid breed, much admired by the Duke of Cumberland when he afterwards saw them in Richmond Park, named Juno, Jupiter, and Ponto. Charlotte Ling, the old nurse, daughter of the lodge-keeper at Barham House, could not stand the absence of beef and beer and the presence of kickshaws and dandelion salad, and after Aunt Georgina Baker had paid us a visit, she returned with her to Old England. A favourite amusement of us children was swarming up the tails of our father's horses, three in number, and one—a horse of Mecklenburg breed—was as tame as an Arab. The first story Aunt Georgina used to tell of me was of my lying on my back in a broiling sun, and exclaiming, "How I love a bright burning sun!" (Nature speaking in early years). Occasional drawbacks were violent storms of thunder and lightning, when we children were hustled out of our little cots under the roof, and taken to the drawing-room, lest the lightning should strike us, and the daily necessity of learning the alphabet and so forth, multiplication table, and our prayers.

I was intended for that wretched being, the infant phenomenon, and so began Latin at three and Greek at four. Things are better now. Our father used to go out wild-boar hunting in the Forêt d'Amboise, where is the château in which Abd-el-Kadir was imprisoned by the French Government from 1847 to 1852, when he was set free by Napoleon III., at the entreaties of Lord Londonderry. (It is said that his Majesty entered his prison in person and set him free. Abd-el-Kadir, at Damascus, often expressed his obligations to the English, and warmly welcomed any English face. On one occasion I took a near relation of Lord Londonderry's to see him, and he was quite overcome.) My father was periodically brought home hurt by running against a tree. Sport was so much in vogue then as to come between the parson and his sermon.

I was a boy of three ideas. Usually if a child is forbidden to eat the sugar or to lap up the cream he simply either obeys or does the contrary; but I used to place myself before the sugar and cream and carefully study the question, "Have I the courage not to touch them?" When I was quite sure of myself that I had the courage I instantly rewarded resolution by emptying one or both. Moreover, like most boys of strong imagination and acute feeling, I was a resolute and unblushing liar; I used to ridicule the idea of my honour being any way attached to telling the truth, I considered it an impertinence the being questioned, I never could understand what moral turpitude there could be in a lie, unless it was told for fear of the consequences of telling the truth, or one that would attach blame to another person. That feeling continued for many a year, and at last, as very often happens, as soon as I realized that a lie was contemptible, it ran into quite the other extreme, a disagreeable habit of scrupulously telling the truth whether it was timely or not.[1]

The school was mostly manned by English boys, sprinkled with French, and the mixture of the two formed an ungodly article, and the Italian proverb—

"Un Inglese Italianato
È un Diavolo incarnato"

may be applied with quite as much truth to English boys brought up in France. To succeed in English life, boys must be brought up in a particular groove. First the preparatory school, then Eton and Oxford, with an occasional excursion to France, Italy, and Germany, to learn languages, not of Stratford-atte-Bowe, and to find out that England is not the whole world. I never met any of my Tours schoolfellows save one—Blayden Edward Hawke, who became a Commander in the Navy, and died in 1877.

We boys became perfect devilets, and played every kind of trick despite the rattan. Fighting the French gutter-boys with sticks and stones, fists, and snowballs was a favourite amusement, and many a donkey-lad went home with ensanguined nose, whilst occasionally we got the worst of it from some big brother. The next favourite game was playing truant, passing the day in utter happiness, fancying ourselves Robinson Crusoes, and wandering about the strip of wood (long since doomed to fuel) at the top of the Tranchée. Our father and mother went much into the society of the place, which was gay and pleasant, and we children were left more or less to the servants. We boys beat all our bonnes, generally by running at their petticoats and upsetting them. There was one particular case when a new nurse arrived, a huge Norman girl, who at first imposed upon this turbulent nursery by her breadth of shoulder and the general rigour of her presence. One unlucky day we walked to the Faubourg at the south-east of the town, the only part of old Tours now remaining; the old women sat spinning and knitting at their cottage doors, and remarked loud enough for us boys to hear, "Ah ça! ces petits gamins! Voilà une honnête bonne qui ne leur laissera pas faire des farces!" Whereupon Euphrosyne became as proud as a peacock, and insisted upon a stricter discipline than we were used to. That forest walk ended badly. A jerk of the arm on her part brought on a general attack from the brood; the poor bonne measured her length upon the ground, and we jumped upon her. The party returned, she with red eyes, torn cap, and downcast looks, and we hooting and jeering loudly, and calling the old women "Les Mères Pomponnes," who screamed predictions that we should come to the guillotine.

Our father and mother had not much idea of managing their children; it was like the old tale of the hen who hatched ducklings. By way of a wholesome and moral lesson of self-command and self-denial, our mother took us past Madame Fisterre's windows, and bade us look at all the good things in the window, during which we fixed our ardent affections upon a tray of apple-puffs; then she said, "Now, my dears, let us go away; it is so good for little children to restrain themselves." Upon this we three devilets turned flashing eyes and burning cheeks upon our moralizing mother, broke the windows with our fists, clawed out the tray of apple-puffs, and bolted, leaving poor mother a sadder and a wiser woman, to pay the damages of her lawless brood's proceedings.

Talking of the guillotine, the schoolmaster unwisely allowed the boys, by way of a school-treat, to see the execution of a woman who killed her small family by poisoning, on condition that they would look away when the knife descended; but of course that was just the time (with such an injunction) when every small neck was craned and eyes strained to look, and the result was that the whole school played at guillotine for a week, happily without serious accidents.[2]

The residence at Tours was interrupted by occasional trips, summering in other places, especially at St. Malo. The seaport then thoroughly deserved the slighting notice, to which it was subjected by Captain Marryat, and the house in the Faubourg was long remembered from its tall avenue of old yew trees, which afforded abundant bird's-nesting. At Dieppe the gallops on the sands were very much enjoyed, for we were put on horseback as soon as we could straddle. Many a fall was of course the result, and not a few broken heads, whilst the rival French boys were painfully impressed by the dignity of spurs and horsewhips.

Grandmamma Baker was determined to learn French, and, accordingly, secured a professor. The children's great delight was to ambuscade themselves, and to listen with joy to the lessons. "What is the sun?" "Le soleil, madame!" "La solelle." "Non, madame. Le so—leil." "Oh, pooh! La solelle." After about six repetitions of the same, roars of laughter issued from the curtains—we of course speaking French like English, upon which the old lady would jump up and catch hold of the nearest delinquent and administer condign punishment. She had a peculiar knack of starting the offender, compelling him to describe a circle of which she was the centre, whilst, holding with the left hand, she administered smacks and cuffs with the right; but, as every mode of attack has its own defence, it was soon found out that the proper corrective was to throw one's self on one's back, and give vigorous kicks with both legs. It need hardly be said that Grandmamma predicted that Jack Ketch would make acquaintance with the younger scions of her race, and that she never arrived at speaking French like a Parisian.

Another frequent visitor was popularly known as "Aunt G."—Georgina Baker, the younger of the three sisters, who was then in the heyday of youth and high spirits. An extremely handsome girl, with blue eyes and dark hair and fine tall figure, she was the life of the house as long as her visits lasted. Her share of the property being £30,000, she had of course a number of offers from English as well as foreigners. On the latter she soon learned to look shy, having heard that one of her rejected suitors had exclaimed to his friend, "Quelle dommage, avec cette petite ferme à vendre," the wished-for farm, adjoining his property, happening then to be in the market. Heiresses are not always fortunate, and she went on refusing suitor after suitor, till ripe middle age, when she married Robert Bagshaw, Esq., M.P. for Harwich. She wanted to adopt me, intending to accompany me to Oxford and leave me her property, but this project had no stay in it. At the time she was at Tours, Aunt G. had a kind of "fad" that she would marry one of her brother-in-law Burton's brothers. Her eldest sister Sarah had married my uncle Burton, elder brother of my father, who, sorely against his wish, which pointed to the Church, had been compelled by the failure of the "rint" to become an army surgeon—the same who had the disappointment at St. Helena.

At last it became apparent that Tours was no longer a place for us who were approaching the ticklish time of teens. All Anglo-French boys generally were remarkable young ruffians, who, at ten years of age, cocked their hats and loved the ladies. Instead of fighting and fagging, they broke the fine old worked glass church windows, purloined their fathers' guns to shoot at the monuments in the churchyards, and even the shops and bazaars were not safe from their impudent raids. The ringleader of the gang was a certain Alek G——, the son of a Scotchmen of good family, who was afterwards connected with or was the leading spirit of a transaction, which gave a tablet and an inscription to Printing House Square. Alek was very handsome, and his two sisters were as good looking as himself. He died sadly enough at a hospital in Paris. Political matters, too, began to look queer. The revolution which hurled Charles X. from the throne, produced no outrages in quiet Tours, beyond large gatherings of the people with an immense amount of noise, especially of "Vive la Chatte!" (for La Charte), the good commères turning round and asking one another whom the Cat might be that the people wished it so long a life; but when Casimir Périer had passed through the town, and "the three glorious days of July" had excited the multitude, things began to look black, and cries of "À bas les Anglais!" were not uncommon. An Englishmen was threatened with prison because the horse he was driving accidentally knocked down an old woman, and a French officer of the line, who was fond of associating with English girls, was grossly insulted and killed in a dastardly duel by a pastrycook.

At last, after a long deliberation, the family resolved to leave Tours. Travelling in those days, especially for a large family, was a severe infliction. The old travelling carriages, which had grown shabby in the coach-house, had to be taken out and furbished up, and all the queer receptacles, imperial, boot, sword-case, and plate-chest, to be stuffed with miscellaneous luggage. After the usual sale by auction, my father took his departure, perhaps mostly regretted by a little knot of Italian exiles, whom he liked on account of his young years spent in Sicily, and whose society not improbably suggested his ultimate return to Italy. Then began the journey along the interminable avenues of the old French roads, lined with parallel rows of poplars, which met at a vanishing point of the far distance. I found exactly the same thing, when travelling through Lower Canada in 1860. Mighty dull work it was, whilst the French postilion in his seven-league boots jogged along with his horses at the rate of five miles an hour, never dreaming of increasing the rate, till he approached some horridly paved town, when he cracked his whip, like a succession of pistol shots, to the awe and delight of all the sabots. Very slow hours they were, especially as the night wore on, and the road, gleaming white between its two dark edges, looked of endless length. And when at last the inn was reached, it proved very unlike the inn of the present day. A hard bargain had to be driven with a rapacious landlady, who, if you objected to her charges, openly roared at you with arms akimbo, "that if you were not rich enough to travel, you ought to stay at home." Then the beds had to be inspected, the damp sheets to be aired, and the warming-pans to be ordered, and, as dinner had always to be prepared after arrival, it was not unusual to sit hungry for a couple of hours.

The fatigues of the journey seriously affected my mother's health, and she lost no time in falling very ill at Chartres. Then Grandmamma Baker was sent for to act garde-malade, and to awe the children, who were wild with delight at escaping school and masters, with the weight of her sturdy Scotch arm. The family passed through Paris, where the signs of fighting, bullets in the walls, and burnt houses, had not been wholly obliterated, and were fortunate enough to escape the cholera, which then for the first time attacked Europe in its very worst form. Grandmamma Baker was very nearly as bad, for she almost poisoned her beloved grandchildren, by stuffing our noses and mouths full of the strongest camphor whenever we happened to pass through a town. The cold plunge into English life was broken by loitering on the sands of Dieppe. A wonderful old ramshackle place it was in those days, holding a kind of intermediate place between the dulness of Calais and the liveliness of "Boolone," as the denizens called it. It wanted the fine hotels and the Établissement, which grew up under the Second Empire, but there was during the summer a pleasant, natural kind of life, living almost exclusively upon the sands and dipping in the water, galloping about on little ponies, and watching the queer costumes of the bathers, and discussing the new-comers. Though railways were not dreamt of, many Parisians used to affect the place, and part of the French nature seems to be, to rush into the sea as soon as they see it.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHILDREN ARE BROUGHT TO ENGLAND.

Landing in England was dolorous. Grandmamma Baker inflated her nostrils, and, delighted at escaping from those crapauds and their kickshaws, quoted with effusion her favourite Cowper, "England, with all thy faults, I love thee still." The children scoffed. The air of Brighton, full of smoke and blacks, appeared to them unfit for breathing. The cold grey seas made them shudder. In the town everything appeared so small, so prim, so mean, the little one-familied houses contrasting in such a melancholy way with the big buildings of Tours and Paris. We revolted against the coarse and half-cooked food, and, accustomed to the excellent Bordeaux of France, we found port, sherry, and beer like strong medicine; the bread, all crumb and no crust, appeared to be half baked, and milk meant chalk and water. The large joints of meat made us think of Robinson Crusoe, and the vegetables cuite à l'eau, especially the potatoes, which had never heard of "Maître d'hôtel" suggested the roots of primitive man. Moreover, the national temper, fierce and surly, was a curious contrast to the light-hearted French of middle France. A continental lady of those days cautioned her son, who was about to travel, against ridicule in France and the canaille in England. The little children punched one another's heads on the sands, the boys punched one another's heads in the streets, and in those days a stand-up fight between men was not uncommon. Even the women punched their children, and the whole lower-class society seemed to be governed by the fist.

My father had determined to send his boys to Eton to prepare for Oxford and Cambridge. In the mean time some blundering friend had recommended him a preparatory school. This was kept by the Rev. Charles Delafosse, who rejoiced in the title of Chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland, a scion of royalty, who had, apparently, very little to do with the Church. Accordingly, the family went to Richmond, the only excitement of the journey being the rage of the post-boys, when we boys on the box furtively poked their horses with long sticks. After sundry attempts at housing themselves in the tiny doll-rooms in the stuffy village, they at last found a house, so called by courtesy, in "Maids of Honour Row," between the river and the Green, a house with a strip of garden fronting it, which a sparrow could hop across in thirty seconds. Opening upon the same Green, stood that horror of horrors, the school, or the "Establishment," as it would now be called. It consisted of a large block of buildings (detached), lying between the Green and the Old Town, which has long been converted into dwelling-houses. In those days it had a kind of paling round a paddock, forming a long parallelogram, which enclosed some fine old elm trees. One side was occupied by the house, and the other by the school-room. In the upper stories of the former, were the dormitories with their small white beds, giving the idea of the Lilliput Hospital; a kind of outhouse attached to the dwelling was the place where the boys fed at two long tables stretching the whole length of the room. The only decoration of the palings were names cut all over their inner surfaces and rectangular nails at the top, acting as chevaux de frise. The school-room was the usual scene of hacked and well-used benches and ink-stained desks, everything looking as mean and uncomfortable as possible.

This was the kind of Dotheboys Hall, to which, in those days, gentlemen were contented to send their sons, paying a hundred a year, besides "perquisites" (plunder): on the Continent the same treatment would be had for £20.

The Rev. Charles was a bluff and portly man, with dark hair and short whiskers, whose grand aquiline nose took a prodigious deal of snuff, and was not over active with the rod; but he was no more fit to be a schoolmaster than the Grand Cham of Tartary. He was, however, rather a favourite with the boys, and it was shrewdly whispered, that at times he returned from dining abroad half-seas over. His thin-lipped wife took charge of the ménage, and looked severely after the provisions, and swayed with an iron sceptre the maid-servants, who had charge of the smaller boys. The ushers were the usual consequential lot of those days. There was the handsome and dressy usher, a general favourite with the fair; the shabby and mild usher, despised by even the smallest boy; and the unfortunate French usher, whose life was a fair foretaste of Purgatory.

Instead of learning anything at this school, my brother and I lost much of what we knew, especially in French, and the principal acquisitions were, a certain facility of using our fists, and a general development of ruffianism. I was in one perpetual scene of fights; at one time I had thirty-two affairs of honour to settle, the place of meeting being the school-room, with the elder boys sitting in judgment. On the first occasion I received a blow in the eye, which I thought most unfair, and having got my opponent down I proceeded to hammer his head against the ground, using his ears by way of handles. My indignation knew no bounds when I was pulled off by the bystanders, and told to let my enemy stand up again. "Stand up!" I cried, "after all the trouble I've had to get the fellow down." At last the fighting went on to such an extent, that I was beaten as thin as a shotten herring, and the very servant-maids, when washing me on Saturday night, used to say, "Drat the child! what has he been doing? he's all black and blue." Edward fought just as well as I did, but he was younger and more peaceable. Maria says that I was a thin, dark little boy, with small features and large black eyes, and was extremely proud, sensitive, shy, nervous, and of a melancholy, affectionate disposition. Such is the effect of a boys' school after a few months' trial, when the boys learn to despise mother and sisters, and to affect the rough as much as possible, and this is not only in England, but everywhere where the boy first escapes from petticoat government. He does not know what to do to show his manliness. There is no stronger argument in favour of mixed schools, up to a certain age, of boys and girls together.

At the little Richmond theatre we were taken to see Edmund Kean, who lived in a cottage on the Green. He had gentle blood in his veins, grandson (illegitimate) of George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, and that accounted for his Italian, or rather un-John-Bull appearance, and for his fiery power. I saw him in his famous Richard III. rôle, and remember only what old Colley Grattan described, "Looks bloated with brandy, nose red, cheeks blotched, and eyes blood-shot." He was drinking himself to death. His audience appeared not a little afraid of him; perhaps they had heard of the Guernsey scene, where he stood at the footlights and flashed out, "Unmannered dogs! stand ye where I command."

Our parents very unwisely determined to correct all personal vanity in their offspring by always dwelling upon our ugliness. My nose was called cocked; it was a Cross which I had to carry, and was a perpetual plague to me; and I was assured that the only decent feature in my face was my teeth. Maria, on account of her fresh complexion, was called Blousabella; and even Edward, whose features were perfect, and whom Frenchmen used to stop and stare at in the streets, and call him "Le petit Napoleon," was told to nauseousness that "handsome is as handsome does." In later life we were dressed in a marvellous fashion; a piece of yellow nankin would be bought to dress the whole family, like three sticks of barley sugar. Such was the discipline of the day, and nothing could be more ill-judged; it inflicted an amount of torment upon sensitive children which certainly was not intended, but which had the very worst effect.

If we children quarrelled, and turned up our noses at the food in English hotels, what must have been our surprise at the food of an English school? Breakfast at 8 a.m., consisting of very blue milk and water, in chipped and broken-handled mugs of the same colour. The boys were allowed tea from home, but it was a perpetual battle to get a single drink of it. The substantials were a wedge of bread with a glazing of butter. The epicures used to collect the glazing to the end of the slice in order to convert it into a final bonne bouche. The dinner at one o'clock began with stickjaw (pudding) and ended with meat, as at all second-rate schools. The latter was as badly cooked as possible, black out and blue inside, gristly and sinewy. The vegetables were potatoes, which could serve for grapeshot, and the hateful carrot. Supper was a repetition of breakfast, and, at an age when boys were making bone and muscle, they went hungry to bed.

Occasionally the pocket-money and tips were clubbed, and a "room" would go in for a midnight feed of a quartern loaf, ham, polony, and saveloys, with a quantity of beer and wine, which generally led to half a dozen fights. Saturday was a day to be feared on account of its peculiar pie, which contained all the waifs and strays of the week. On the Sunday there was an attempt at plum-pudding of a peculiarly pale and leaden hue, as if it had been unjustly defrauded of its due allowance of plums. And this dull routine lasted throughout the scholastic year. School hours were from seven till nine, and ten to one, and three to five, without other changes, save at the approach of the holidays, when a general burst of singing, locally called "challenging," took place. Very few were the schoolfellows we met in after life. The ragged exceptions were Guildford Onslow, the Claimant's friend. Tuckey Baines, as he was called on account of his exploits on Saturday pie, went into the Bombay army, and was as disagreeable and ill-conditioned as when he was a bully at school. He was locally celebrated for hanging the wrong Mahommad, and for his cure for Sindee litigiousness, by making complainant and defendant flog each other in turn. The only schoolboy who did anything worthy, was Bobby Delafosse (who was appointed to the 26th Regiment, N.I.), who showed immense pluck, and died fighting bravely in the Indian Mutiny. I met him in Bombay shortly before I went off to the North-West Provinces, but my remembrances of the school were so painful, that I could not bear to recognize him. In fact, that part of life, which most boys dwell upon with the greatest pleasure, and concerning which, most autobiographers tell the longest stories—school and college—was ever a nightmare to us. It was like the "Blacking-shop" of Charles Dickens.

I really caught the measles at school, and was nursed by Grandmamma Baker in Park Street. It was the only infantine malady that I ever had. The hooping-cough only attacked me on my return from Harar, when staying with my friend Dr. Steinhaüser at Aden, in 1853. As soon as I was well enough to travel, the family embarked at the Tower Wharf for Boulogne. We boys scandalized every one on board. We shrieked, we whooped, we danced for joy. We shook our fists at the white cliffs, and loudly hoped we should never see them again. We hurrah'd for France, and hooted for England, "The Land on which the Sun ne'er sets—nor rises," till the sailor who was hoisting the Jack, looked upon us as a pair of little monsters. In our delight at getting away from school and the stuffy little island, we had no idea of the disadvantages which the new kind of life would inflict on our future careers. We were too young to know. A man who brings up his family abroad, and who lives there for years, must expect to lose all the friends who could be useful to him when he wishes to start them in life. The conditions of society in England are so complicated, and so artificial, that those who would make their way in the world, especially in public careers, must be broken to it from their earliest day. The future soldiers and statesmen must be prepared by Eton and Cambridge. The more English they are, even to the cut of their hair, the better. In consequence of being brought up abroad, we never thoroughly understood English society, nor did society understand us. And, lastly, it is a real advantage to belong to some parish. It is a great thing, when you have won a battle, or explored Central Africa, to be welcomed home by some little corner of the Great World, which takes a pride in your exploits, because they reflect honour upon itself. In the contrary condition you are a waif, a stray; you are a blaze of light, without a focus. Nobody outside your own fireside cares.

No man ever gets on in the world, or rises to the head of affairs, unless he is a representative of his nation. Taking the marking characters of the last few years—Palmerston, Thiers, Cavour, and Bismarck—what were they but simply the types of their various nationalities? In point of intellect Cavour was a first-rate man, Thiers second-rate, Palmerston third-rate, whilst Bismarck was strength, Von Moltke brain. Their success in life was solely owing to their representing the failings, as well as the merits of their several nationalities. Thiers, for instance, was the most thoroughbred possible épicier, and yet look at his success. And his death was mourned even in England, and yet he was the bitterest enemy that England ever had. His Chauvinism did more than the Crimean War to abolish the prestige of England. Unhappily for his Chauvinism, it also thoroughly abolished France.

Mr. Du Pré, the tutor, and Miss Ruxton, the governess, had their work cut out for them. They attempted to commence with a strict discipline; for instance, the family passing through Paris lodged at the Hôtel Windsor, and they determined to walk the youngsters out school fashion. The consequence was that when the walk extended to the boulevards, the young ones, on agreement, knowing Paris well, suddenly ran away, and were home long before the unfortunate strangers could find their way, and reported that their unlucky tutor and governess had been run over by an omnibus. There was immense excitement till the supposed victims walked in immensely tired, having wandered over half Paris, not being able to find their way. A scene followed, but the adversaries respected each other more after that day.

The difficulty was now where to colonize. One of the peculiarities of the little English colonies was the unwillingness of their denizens to return to them when once they had left them. My father had been very happy at Tours, and yet he religiously avoided it. He passed through Orleans—a horrid hole, with as many smells as Cologne—and tried to find a suitable country house near it, but in vain; everything seemed to smell of goose and gutter. Then he drifted on to Blois, in those days a kind of home of the British stranger, and there he thought proper to call a halt. At last a house was found on the high ground beyond the city, which, like Tours, lies mainly on the left bank of the river, and where most of the English colonists dwelt. There is no necessity of describing this little bit of England in France, which was very like Tours. When one describes one colony, one describes them all. The notables were Sir Joseph Leeds, Colonel Burnes, and a sister of Sir Stamford Raffles, who lived in the next-door villa, if such a term may be applied to a country house in France in 1831. The only difference from Tours was, there was no celebrated physician, no pack of hounds, and no parson. Consequently service on Sundays had to be read at home by the tutor, and the evening was distinguished by one of Blair's sermons. This was read out by us children, each taking a turn. The discourse was from one of Blair's old three volumes, which appeared to have a soporific effect upon the audience. Soft music was gradually heard proceeding from the nasal organs of father and mother, tutor and governess; and then we children, preserving the same tone of voice, entered into a conversation, and discussed matters, until the time came to a close.

At Blois we were now entering upon our teens; our education was beginning in real earnest. Poor Miss Ruxton soon found her task absolutely impossible, and threw up the service. A schoolroom was instituted, where time was wasted upon Latin and Greek for six or seven hours a day, besides which there was a French master—one of those obsolete little old men, who called themselves Professeurs-ès-lettres, and the great triumph of whose life was that he had read Herodotus in the original. The dancing-master was a large and pompous oldster, of course an ancien militaire, whose kit and whose capers were by contrast peculiarly ridiculous, and who quoted at least once every visit, "Oh, Richard! oh, mon roi!" He taught, besides country dances, square and round, the Minuet de la Cour, the Gavotte de Vestris, and a Danse Chinoise, which consisted mainly in turning up thumbs and toes. The only favourite amongst all those professors was the fencing-master, also an old soldier, who had lost the thumb of his right hand in the wars, which of course made him a gauché in loose fencing. We boys gave ourselves up with ardour to this study, and passed most of our leisure hours in exchanging thrusts. We soon learned not to neglect the mask: I passed my foil down Edward's throat, and nearly destroyed his uvula, which caused me a good deal of sorrow. The amusements consisted chiefly of dancing at evening parties, we boys choosing the tallest girls, especially a very tall Miss Donovan. A little fishing was to be had, my father being a great amateur. There were long daily walks, swimming in summer, and brass cannons, bought in the toy shops, were loaded to bursting.

The swimming was very easily taught; in the present day boys and girls go to school and learn it like dancing. In our case Mr. Du Pré supported us by a hand under the stomach, taught us how to use our arms and legs, and to manage our breath, after which he withdrew his hand and left us to float as we best could.

This life lasted for a year, till all were thoroughly tired of it. Our father and mother were imperceptibly lapsing into the category of professed invalids, like people who have no other business in life, except to be sick. This was a class exceptionally common in the unoccupied little English colonies that studded the country. It was a far robuster institution than the Parisian invalid, whose object in life was to appear maladive et souffrante. The British malade consumed a considerable quantity of butcher's meat, but although he or she always saw death in the pot, they had not the moral courage to refuse what disagreed with them. They tried every kind of drug and nostrum known, and answered every advertisement, whether it agreed with their complaint or not. Their table de nuit was covered with bottles and gallipots. They dressed themselves three or four times a day for the change of climate, and insensibly acquired a horror of dining out, or passing the evening away from home. They had a kind of rivalry with other invalids; nothing offended them more than to tell them that they were in strong health, and that if they had been hard-worked professionals in England, they would have been ill once a year, instead of once a month. Homœopathy was a great boon to them, and so was hydropathy. So was the grape-cure and all the humbug invented by non-professionals, such as hunger-cure and all that nonsense.

Our parents suffered from asthma, an honest and respectable kind of complaint, which if left to itself, allows you, like gout, to last till your eightieth year, but treated systematically, and with the aid of the doctor, is apt to wear you out. Grandmamma Baker, who came over to Blois, compared them in her homely Scotch fashion to two buckets in a well. She was very wroth with my father, when, remembering the days of his youth, he began to hug the idea of returning to Italy and seeing the sun, and the general conclusion of her philippics ("You'll kill your wife, sir") did not change his resolution. She even insinuated that in the olden day there had been a Sicilian young woman who received the Englishman's pay, and so distributed it as to keep off claims. So Grandmamma Baker was sent off to her beloved England, "whose faults she still loved."