'Farewell,' had prepared me for all that was
beautiful and right in the terraced gardens,
proportioned arcades, and white spaces of
VI. SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN. 1 67
sunny wall, which have in general no honest
charm for the English mind. But to me, they
were almost native through Turner, ā familiar
at once, and revered. I had no idea then of
the Renaissance evil in them ; they were
associated only with what I had been told
of the ' divine art ' of Raphael and Lionardo,
and, by my ignorance of dates, associated
with the stories of Shakespeare. Portia's
villa, ā Juliet's palace, ā I thought to have
been like these.
Also, as noticed in the epilogue to reprint
of vol. ii. of Modern Painters, I had always
a quite true perception of size, whether in
mountains or buildings, and with the percep-
tion, joy in it; so that the vastness of scale
in the Milanese palaces, and the 'mount of
marble, a hundred spires,' of the duomo, im-
pressed me to the full at once : and not having
yet the taste to discern good Gothic from bad,
the mere richness and fineness of lace-like
tracery against the sky was a consummate
rapture to me ā how much more getting up
to it and climbing among it, with the Monte
Rosa seen between its pinnacles across the
plain !
1 68 PR;ETER!TA.
137. I had been partly prepared for this
view by the admirable presentment of it in
London, a year or two before, in an exhibi-
tion, of which the vanishing has been in later
life a greatly felt loss to me, ā Burford's pano-
rama in Leicester Square, which was an
educational institution of the highest and
purest value, and ought to have been sup-
ported by the Government as one of the
most beneficial school instruments in London.
There I had seen, exquisitely painted, the
view from the roof of Milan Cathedral, when
I had no hope of ever seeing the reality, but
with a joy and wonder of the deepest; ā and
now to be there indeed, made deep wonder
become fathomless.
Again, most fortunately, the weather was
clear and cloudless all day long, and as the
sun drew westward, we were able to drive
to the Corso, where, at that time, the higher
Milanese were happy and proud as ours in
their park, and whence, no railway station
intervening, the whole chain of the Alps was
visible on one side, and the beautiful city with
its dominant frost-crystalline Duomo on the
other. Then the drive home in the open
VI. SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN. I 69
carriage through the quiet twilight, up the
long streets, and round the base of the
Duomo, the smooth pavement under the
wheels adding with its silentness to the sense
of dream wonder in it all, ā the perfect air in
absolute calm, the just seen majesty of encom-
passing Alps, the perfectness ā so it seemed to
me ā and purity, of the sweet, stately, stainless
marble against the sky. What more, what
else, could be asked of seemingly immutable
good, in this mutable world ?
138. I wish in general to avoid interference
with the reader's judgment on the matters
which I endeavour serenely to narrate ; but
may, I think, here be pardoned for observ-
ing to him the advantage, in a certain way, of
the contemplative abstraction from the world
which, during this early continental travelling,
was partly enforced by our ignorance, and
partly secured by our love of comfort. There
is something peculiarly delightful ā nay, de-
lightful inconceivably by the modern German-
plated and French-polished tourist, in passing
through the streets of a foreign city without
understanding a word that anybody says !
One's ear for all sound of voices then becomes
I70 PRiETERITA.
entirely impartial ; one is not diverted by the
meaning of syllables from recognizing the
absolute guttural, liquid, or honeyed quality of
them : while the gesture of the body and the
expression of the face have the same value for
you that they have in a pantomime; every
scene becomes a melodious opera to you, or
a picturesquely inarticulate Punch. Consider,
also, the gain in so consistent tranquillity.
Most young people nowadays, or even lively
old ones, travel more in search of adventures
than of information. One of my most valued
records of recent wandering is a series of
sketches by an amiable and extremely clever
girl, of the things that happened to her people
and herself every day that they were abroad.
Here it is brother Harry, and there it is
mamma, and now paterfamilias, and now her
little graceful self, and anon her merry or re-
monstrant sisterhood, who meet with enchant-
ing hardships, and enviable misadventures;
bind themselves with fetters of friendship,
and glance into sparklings of amourette, with
any sort of people in conical hats and fringy
caps : and it is all very delightful and con-
descending; and, of course, things are learnt
VI. SCHAFFHAUSEN AND MILAN. I 7 I
about the country that way which can be
learned in no other way, but only about that
part of it which interests itself in you, or
which you have pleasure in being acquainted
with. Virtually, you are thinking of yourself
all the time ; you necessarily talk to the cheer-
ful people, not to the sad ones ; and your
head is for the most part vividly taken up
with very little things. I don't say that our
isolation was meritorious, or that people in
general should know no language but their
own. Yet the meek ignorance has these ad-
vantages. We did not travel for adventures,
nor for company, but to see with our eyes,
and to measure with our hearts. If you have
sympathy, the aspect of humanity is more
true to the depths of it than its words ; and
even in my own land, the things in which I
have been least deceived are those which I
have learned as their Spectator.
CHAPTER VII.
PAPA AND MAMMA.
139. THE work to which, as partly above
described, I set myself during the year 1834
under the excitement remaining from my
foreign travels, was in four distinct directions,
in any one of which my strength might at that
time have been fixed by definite encourage-
ment. There was first the effort to express
sentiment in rhyme ; the sentiment being
really genuine, under all the superficial vani-
ties of its display ; and the rhymes rhythmic,
only without any ideas in them. It was im-
possible to explain, either to myself or other
people, why I liked staring at the sea, or
scampering on a moor; but, one had pleasure
in making some sort of melodious noise about
it, like the waves themselves, or the peewits.
Then, secondly, there was the real love of en-
graving, and of such characters of surface and
shade as it could give. I have never seen
172
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. 173
drawing, by a youth, so entirely industrious
in delicate line ; and there was really the
making of a fine landscape, or figure outline,
engraver in me. But fate having ordered
otherwise, I mourn the loss to engraving less
than that before calculated, or rather incal-
culable, one, to geology ! Then there was,
thirdly, the violent instinct for architecture;
but I never could have built or carved any-
thing, because I was without power of design ;
and have perhaps done as much in that direc-
tion as it was worth doing with so limited
faculty. And then, fourthly, there was the un-
abated, never to be abated, geological instinct,
now fastened on the Alps. My fifteenth
birthday gift being left to my choice, I asked
for Saussure's ' Voyages dans les Alpes,' and
thenceforward began progressive work, carry-
ing on my mineralogical dictionary by the
help of Jameson's three-volume Mineralogy,
(an entirely clear and serviceable book ;) com-
paring his descriptions with the minerals in
the British Museum, and writing my own
more eloquent and exhaustive accounts in a
shorthand of many ingeniously symbolic char-
acters, which it took me much longer to write
174 PR^ETERITA.
my descriptions in, than in common text, and
which neither I nor anybody else could read
a word of, afterwards.
140. Such being the quadrilateral plan of
my fortifiable dispositions, it is time now to
explain, with such clue as I have found to
them, the somewhat peculiar character and
genius of both my parents; the influence of
which was more important upon me, then,
and far on into life, than any external condi-
tions, either of friendship or tutorship, whether
at the University, or in the world.
It was, in the first place, a matter of
essential weight in the determination of subse-
quent lines, not only of labour but of thought,
that while my father, as before told, gave me
the best example of emotional reading, ā read-
ing, observe, proper, not recitation, which he
disdained, and I disliked, ā my mother was both
able to teach me, and resolved that I should
learn, absolute accuracy of diction and pre-
cision of accent in prose ; and made me know,
as soon as I could speak plain, what I have
in all later years tried to enforce on my
readers, that accuracy of diction means accu-
racy of sensation, and precision of accent,
VIIo PAPA AND MAMMA. 175
precision of feeling. Trained, herself in girl-
hood, only at Mrs. Rice's country school, my
mother had there learned severely right prin-
ciples of truth, charity, and housewifery, with
punctilious respect for the purity of that
English which in her home surroundings she
perceived to be by no means as undefiled
as the ripples of Wandel. She was the
daughter, as aforesaid, of the early widowed
landlady of the King's Head Inn and Tavern,
which still exists, or existed a year or two
since, presenting its side to Croydon market-
place, its front and entrance door to the
narrow alley which descends, steep for pedes-
trians, impassable to carriages, from the High
Street to the lower town.
14 1 o Thus native to the customs and dialect
of Croydon Agora, my mother, as I now read
her, must have been an extremely intelligent,
admirably practical, and naively ambitious
girl ; keeping, without contention, the head-
ship of her class, and availing herself with
steady discretion of every advantage the
country school and its modest mistress could
offer her. I never in her after-life heard
her speak with regret, and seldom without
I76 PR^.TERITA.
respectful praise, of any part of the discipline
of Mrs. Rice.
I do not know for what reason, or under
what conditions, my mother went to live with
my Scottish grandfather and grandmother,
first at Edinburgh, and then at the house of
Bower's Well, on the slope of the Hill of
Kinnoul, above Perth. I was stupidly and
heartlessly careless of the past history of my
family as long as I could have learnt it ; not
till after my mother's death did I begin to
desire to know what I could never more be
told.
But certainly the change, for her, was into
a higher sphere of society, ā that of real,
though sometimes eccentric, and frequently
poor, gentlemen and gentlewomen. She must
then have been rapidly growing into a tall,
handsome, and very finely made girl, with a
beautiful mild firmness of expression ; a fault-
less and accomplished housekeeper, and a
natural, essential, unassailable, yet inoffensive,
prude. I never heard a single word of any
sentiment, accident, admiration, or affection
disturbing the serene tenor of her Scottish
stewardship ; yet I noticed that she never
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. I 77
spoke without some slight shyness before my
father, nor without some pleasure, to other
people, of Dr. Thomas Brown.
142. That the Professor of Moral Philo-
sophy was a frequent guest at my grand-
mother's tea-table, and fond of benignantly
arguing with Miss Margaret, is evidence
enough of the position she held in Edinburgh
circles ; her household skills and duties never
therefore neglected ā rather, if anything, still
too scrupulously practised. Once, when she
had put her white frock on for dinner, and
hurried to the kitchen to give final glance
at the state and order of things there, old
Mause, having run against the white frock
with a black saucepan, and been, it seems,
rebuked by her young mistress with too
little resignation to the will of Providence in
that matter, shook her head sorrowfully,
saying, 'Ah, Miss Margaret, ye are just like
Martha, carefu' and troubled about mony
things.'
143. When my mother was thus, at twenty,
in a Desdemona-like prime of womanhood,
intent on highest moral philosophy, ā "though
still the house affairs would draw her thence "
vol. 1. M
I78 PR^TERITA.
ā my father was a dark-eyed, brilliantly active,
and sensitive youth of sixteen. Margaret
became to him an absolutely respected and
admired ā mildly liked ā governess and confi-
dante. Her sympathy was necessary to him
in all his flashingly transient amours; her
advice in all domestic business or sorrow,
and her encouragement in all his plans of
life.
These were already determined for com-
merce ; ā yet not to the abandonment of liberal
study. He had learned Latin thoroughly,
though with no large range of reading, under
the noble traditions of Adams at the High
School of Edinburgh : while, by the then
living and universal influence of Sir Walter,
every scene of his native city was exalted in
his imagination by the purest poetry, and
the proudest history, that ever hallowed or
haunted the streets and rocks of a brightly
inhabited capital. I have neither space, nor
wish, to extend my proposed account of things
that have been, by records of correspond-
ence ; ā it is too much the habit of modern
biographers to confuse epistolary talk with
vital fact. But the following letter from Dr.
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. 179
Thomas Brown to my father, at this critical
juncture of his life, must be read, in part as
a testimony to the position he already held
among the youths of Edinburgh, and yet more
as explaining some points of his blended char-
acter, of the deepest significance afterwards,
both to himself and to me.
144. "8, N. St. David's Street,
"Edinburgh, February \Zth, 1807.
" MY DEAR Sir, ā When I look at the date
of the letter which you did me the honour to
send me as your adviser in literary matters
ā an office which a proficient like you scarcely
requires ā I am quite ashamed of the interval
which I have suffered to elapse. I can truly
assure you, however, that it has been un-
avoidable, and has not arisen from any want
of interest in your intellectual progress. Even
when you were a mere boy I was much de-
lighted with your early zeal and attainments ;
and for your own sake, as well as for. your
excellent mother's, I have always looked to
you with great regard, and with the belief
that you would distinguish yourself in what-
ever profession you might adopt.
l80 PRETERIT A.
" You seem, I think, to repent too much the
time you have devoted to the Belles Lettres.
I confess I do not regret this for you. You
must, I am sure, have felt the effect which
such studies have in giving a general refine-
ment to the manners and to the heart, which,
to anyone who is not to be strictly a man of
science, is the most valuable effect of literature.
You must remember that there is a great dif-
ference between studying professionally, and
studying for relaxation and ornament. In
the society in which you are to mix, the
writers in Belles Lettres will be mentioned
fifty times, when more abstract science will
not be mentioned once ; and there is this
great advantage in that sort of knowledge,
that the display of it, unless very immoderate
indeed, is not counted pedantry, when the
display of other intellectual attainments might
run some risk of the imputation. There is
indeed one evil in the reading of poetry and
other light productions, that it is apt to be
indulged in to downright gluttony, and to
occupy time which should be given to busi-
ness ; but I am sure I can rely on you that
you will not so misapply your time. There
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. I 8 I
is, however, one science, the first and greatest
of sciences to all men, and to merchants
particularly ā the science of Political Economy.
To this I think your chief attention should
be directed. It is in truth the science of
your own profession, which counteracts the
ā (word lost with seal) ā and narrow habits
which that profession is sometimes apt to pro-
duce ; and which is of perpetual appeal in
every discussion on mercantile and financial
affairs. A merchant well instructed in Politi-
cal Economy must always be fit to lead the
views of his brother merchants ā without it,
he is a mere trader. Do not lose a day,
therefore, without providing yourself with a
copy of Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations,'
and read and re-read it with attention ā as I
am sure you must read it with delight. In
giving you this advice I consider you as a
merchant, for as that is to be your profession
in life, your test of the importance of any
acquirement should be how far it will tend
to render you an honourable and distinguished
merchant ; ā a character of no small estima-
tion in this commercial country. I therefore
consider the physical sciences as greatly
182
PR./ETERITA.
* subordinate in relation to your prospects in
life, and the society in which you will be called
to mingle. All but chemistry require a greater
preparation in mathematics than you probably
have, and chemistry it is quite impossible to
understand without some opportunity of see-
ing experiments systematically carried on.
If, however, you have the opportunity to
attend any of the lecturers on that science
in London, it will be well worth your while,
and in that case I think you should purchase
either Dr. Thompson's or Mr. Murray's new
system of chemistry, so as to keep up con-
stantly with your lecturer. Even of physics
in general it is pleasant to have some view,
however superficial, and therefore though you
cannot expect without mathematics to have
anything but a superficial view, you had
better try to attain it. With this view you
may read Gregory's ā¢ Economy of Nature/
which though not a good book, and not
always accurate, is, I believe, the best popu-
lar book we have, and sufficiently accurate
for your purposes. Remember, however,
that though you may be permitted to be
a superficial natural philosopher, no such
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. I 83
indulgence is to be given you in Political
Economy.
" The only other circumstance remaining
for me to request of you is that you will not
suffer yourself to lose any of the languages
you have acquired. Of the modern languages
there is less fear, as your mercantile com-
munications will in some measure keep them
alive ; but merchants do not correspond in
Latin, and you may perhaps lose it uncon-
sciously. Independently, however, of the
admirable writers of whom you would thus
deprive yourself, and considering the language
merely as the accomplishment of a gentleman,
it is of too great value to be carelessly re-
signed.
" Farewell, my dear sir. Accept the regard
of all this family, and believe me, with every
wish to be of service to you,
" Your sincere friend,
" T. Brown."
145. It may easily be conceived that a
youth to whom such a letter as this was
addressed by one of the chiefs of the purely
intellectual circles of Edinburgh, would be
I84 PR^TERITA.
regarded with more respect by his Croydon
cousin than is usually rendered by grown
young women to their schoolboy friends.
Their frank, cousinly relation went on,
however, without a thought on either side of
any closer ties, until my father, at two or
three and twenty, after various apprentice-
ship in London, was going finally to London
to begin his career in his own business. By
that time he had made up his mind that
Margaret, though not the least an ideal
heroine to him, was quite the best sort of
person he could have for a wife, the rather as
they were already so well used to each other ;
and in a quiet, but enough resolute way,
asked her if she were of the same mind, and
would wait until he had an independence
to offer her. His early tutress consented
with frankly confessed joy, not indeed in the
Agnes Wickfield way, ' I have loved you all
my life,' but feeling and admitting that it was
great delight ' to be allowed to love him now.
The relations between Grace Nugent and Lord
Colambre in Miss Edgeworth's ' Absentee '
extremely resemble those between my father
and mother, except that Lord Colambre is a
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. I 8 5
more eager lover. My father chose his wife
much with the same kind of serenity and
decision with which afterwards he chose his
clerks.
146. A time of active and hopeful content-
ment for both the young people followed, my
mother being perhaps the more deeply in love,
while John depended more absolutely on her
sympathy and wise friendship than is at all
usual with young men of the present day in
their relations with admired young ladies.
But neither of them ever permitted their feel-
ings to degenerate into fretful or impatient
passion. My mother showed her affection
chiefly in steady endeavour to cultivate her
powers of mind, and form her manners, so
as to fit herself to be the undespised com-
panion of a man whom she considered much
her superior : my father in unremitting atten-
tion to the business on the success of which
his marriage depended : and in a methodical
regularity of conduct and correspondence
which never left his mistress a moment of
avoidable anxiety, or gave her motive for any
serious displeasure.
On these terms the engagement lasted nine
1 86
PRjETERITA.
years ; at the end of which time, my grand-
father's debts having been all paid, and my
father established in a business gradually
increasing, and liable to no grave contingency,
the now not very young people were married
in Perth one evening after supper, the servants
of the house having no suspicion of the event
until John and Margaret drove away together
next morning to Edinburgh.
147. In looking back to my past thoughts
and ways, nothing astonishes me more than
my want of curiosity about all these matters ;
and that, often and often as my mother used
to tell with complacency the story of this
carefully secret marriage, I never asked, ' But,
mother, why so secret, when it was just what
all the friends of both of you so long expected,
and what all } r our best friends so heartily
wished ? '
But, until lately, I never thought of writing
any more about myself than was set down
in diaries, nor of my family at all : and thus
too carelessly, and, as I now think, profanely,
neglected the traditions of my people. ' What
does it all matter, now ? ' I said ; ' we are what
we are, and shall be what we make ourselves.'
VII. PAPA AND MAMMA. I 87
Also, until very lately, I had accustomed
myself to consider all that my parents had
done, so far as their own happiness was con-
cerned, entirely wise and exemplary. Yet
the reader must not suppose that what I have
said in my deliberate writings on the propriety
of long engagements had any reference to this
singular one in my own family. Of the
heroism and patience with which the sacrifice
was made, on both sides, I cannot judge : ā
but that it was greater than I should myself
have been capable of, I know, and I believe
that it was unwise. For during these years
of waiting, my father fell gradually into a
state of ill-health, from which he never entirely
recovered ; and in close of life, they both had
to leave their child, just when he was begin-
ning to satisfy the hopes they had formed for
him.
148. I have allowed this tale of the little I
knew of their early trials and virtues to be
thus chance told, because I think my history
will, in the end, be completest if I write as its
connected subjects occur to me, and not with
formal chronology of plan. My reason for
telling it in this place was chiefly to explain
1 88 PR^TERITA.
how my mother obtained her perfect skill
in English reading, through the hard effort
which, through the years of waiting, she made
to efface the faults, and supply the defects, of
her early education ; effort which was aided
and directed unerringly by her natural ā for
its intensity I might justly call it supernatural
ā purity of heart and conduct, leading her
always to take most delight in the right and
clear language which only can relate lovely
things. Her unquestioning evangelical faith
in the literal truth of the Bible placed me, as
soon as I could conceive or think, in the
presence of an unseen world ; and set my
active analytic power early to work on the
questions of conscience, free will, and re-
sponsibility, which are easily determined in
days of innocence ; but are approached too