seen a simple examination paper on it, that I could not have got a dozen marks. Of what value, then, were my notions on matters demanding far greater concentration of thought? Accuracy I fancied might be acquired, but I was mistaken. It is a gift as much as the art of writing sublime poetry. I struggled and struggled with pencil and précis, but I did not improvė. My cousin's before-mentioned friend took delight in checking, like an accountant, what was said to him, especially by me, and although I saw that this for the most part was a mere trick, I could not deny that it proved continually that my so-called opinions were not worth a straw. The related virtues of accuracy, strength of memory, and clear definition, are of great importance, but I over-estimated them. I see now that human affairs are so complicated, that had I possessed the advantages bestowed on my cousin and his companion, they would not have prevented delusions, all the more perilous, perhaps, because I should have been more confident. However, at the time of which I am speaking, I was wretched, and believed that my wretchedness was entirely due to deficiencies and weaknesses, from which my

H

friends were free. No sorrow of genius is greater than the daily misery of the man with no gifts, who is not properly equipped, and has desires out of all proportion to his capacity.

I had no real love of art and did not understand it. I went to concerts, but the only part of a sonata or symphony which took hold of me was that which was melodious. The long passages with no striking theme in them conveyed nothing to me, and as to Bach, excepting now and then, his music was like a skilful recitation of nonsense verses. The Marseillaise on a barrelorgan was intelligible, but gymnastics on strings-what did they represent? With pictures the case was somewhat different. I often left Clapton early in order that I might have half an hour at Christie's in quiet, and I have spent many pleasant moments in those rooms on sunny mornings in May and June before De Wint's and Turner's landscapes. But I knew nothing about them. Without previous instruction I should probably have placed something worthless on the same level with them, and I could not fix my attention on them long. A water-colour by Turner, on which all his power had been expended, an abstract of

years and years of toil and observation, was unable to detain me for more than five minutes, and in those five minutes I very likely did not detect one of its really distinguishing qualities. As to the early religious pictures of the Italian school, I cared nothing either for subject or treatment, and would have given a cartload of them for a drawing by Hunt of a bird's nest. Wanting an ear for music and an eye for pictorial merit, I believed, or affected to believe, that the raptures of people who possessed the ear and eye were a sham. It irritated me to hear my aunt play, although she had been well taught in her youth and was a skilful performer. I know she would have liked to feel that she gave me some pleasure, and that her playing was admired, but I was so openly indifferent to it that at last she always shut the piano if I happened to come into the room while she was practising. I remember saying to her when she was talking to me about one of Mozart's quartets she had just heard, that music was immoral, inasmuch as it provoked such enormous insincerity. It is strange that, although spite was painful to me, especially towards her, I could not help indulging in it.

My failings gradually wrought in me confirmed bitterness. I persuaded myself that the interest which people appeared to take in me was mere polite pretence. There may be enough selfishness in the world to explain misanthropy, but there is never enough to justify it, and what we imagine to be indifference to us is often merely the reserve caused by our own refusal to surrender ourselves to legitimate and generous emotions. Oddly enough, I frequently made hasty and spasmodic offers of intimate friendship to people who were not prepared for them, and the natural absence of immediate response was a further reason for scepticism. A man to whom I was suddenly impelled was in want of money, and I pressed ten pounds upon him. He could not pay me at the appointed time, whereupon I set him down as an ungrateful brute, and moralised like Timon.

There was at that time living in London a lady whom I must call Mrs. A. She was the widow of a professor at Cambridge who had died young, and she might have been about five-and-thirty or forty years old. My cousin, who had known her husband, introduced me to her. She was not handsome; the cheek-bones were a little too prominent,

and her face was weather-worn, but not by wind and sun. Nevertheless it was a quietly victorious face. Her ways were simple and refined. She had travelled much, as far even as Athens, and was complete mistress of Italian and French. Her voice struck me-it was so musical, and adapted itself so delicately to varying shades of thought and emotion. I have often reflected how little we get out of the voice in talking. How delightful is the natural modulation which follows the sense, and how much the sense gains if it is so expressed rather than in half-inarticulate grunts, say, between the inspirations and expirations of a short pipe!

Mrs. A. took much notice of me, and her attitude towards me was singular. She was not quite old enough to be motherly to me, but she was too old for restrictions on her intercourse with me, and her wide experience and wisdom well qualified her to be my directress. Often when I went to her house nobody was there, and she would talk to me with freedom on all sorts of subjects. I did not fall in love with her, but she was still attractive as a woman, and difference of sex, delightful manners, subtle intellect, expressive grey eyes, and lovely