My father—like Mrs. Charles Kemble, as her daughter records—“hated a fool,” and I should imagine, from various circumstances, had no horror of a really learned lady. At any rate, he had planned for my education that it should have the solid foundation of Latin and Greek. But his death, when I was eight and a half years old, resulted in long years of straitened circumstances; and the teaching at a good day school was all my mother could afford me. Thus, with a very brief exception, to be measured by weeks rather than months, when I was placed with an excellent teacher, I was, out of school hours, nearly always in the society of my elders. I mention this, and one or two other personal circumstances, to account for my taking an interest in events which surely must have been little heeded by the generality of children. I had a younger brother—a high-spirited and thoroughly boyish boy, of whom by-and-by I shall have to speak in connection with an historical event; but, whatever his merits, he was little of a companion to his quiet, book-loving sister; so that in many respects I was lifted prematurely out of childish thoughts and childish interests.

But my mother had been my father's second wife; and I had two half-brothers, the elder of whom died in India, after distinguishing himself in various ways. He was the first to introduce gas to the streets of Calcutta.