Tracks of a Rolling Stone

TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts. The last eighteen months before I went to Cambridge, I was placed, or rather placed myself, under the tuition of Mr...

MR. EDWARD ELLICE, who constantly figures in the memoirs of the last century as ‘Bear Ellice’ (an outrageous misnomer, by the way), and who later on married my mother, was the c...

FOR eight or nine years, while my sons were at school, I lived at Rickmansworth. Unfortunately the Leweses had just left it. Moor Park belonged to Lord Ebury, my wife’s uncle, a...

IT was an easier task when all was over to set the little Amazons on their horses than to keep them there, for by the time we had perched one on her saddle, or pad rather, and a...

IN November, 1862, my wife and I received an invitation to spend a week at Compiègne with their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of the French. This was due to the circumstance...

THE next winter we lay for a couple of months off Chinhai, which we had stormed, blockading the mouth of the Ningpo river. Here, I regret to think, I committed an act which has...

BEFORE setting out from Seville we had had our Foreign Office passports duly _viséd_. Our profession was given as that of travelling artists, and the _visé_ included the permiss...

THE first time I ‘smelt powder’ was at Amoy. The ‘Blonde’ carried out Lord Palmerston’s letter to the Chinese Government. Never was there a more iniquitous war than England then...

FORT LARAMIE was a military station and trading post combined. It was a stone building in what they called a ‘compound’ or open space, enclosed by a palisade. When we arrived th...

IN February of this year, 1852, Lord Palmerston, aided by an incongruous force of Peelites and Protectionists, turned Lord John Russell out of office on his Militia Bill. Lord D...

IT is curious if one lives long enough to watch the change of taste in books. I have no lending-library statistics at hand, but judging by the reading of young people, or of tho...

WE were nearly six weeks in the Havana, being detained by Lord Durham’s illness. I provided myself with a capital Spanish master, and made the most of him. This, as it turned ou...

BEFORE the first streak of dawn I was up and off to hunt for the horses and mules, which were now allowed to roam in search of feed. On my return, the men were afoot, taking it...

WE know more of the early days of the Pyramids or of ancient Babylon than we do of our own. The Stone age, the dragons of the prime, are not more remote from us than is our earl...

WE were now steering by compass. Our course was nearly north-west. This we kept, as well as the formation of the country and the watercourses would permit. After striking the gr...

WE must move on; we have a long and rough journey before us. Durham had old friends in New York, Fred Calthorpe had letters to Colonel Fremont, who was then a candidate for the...

THE winter of 1854–55 I spent in Rome. Here I made the acquaintance of Leighton, then six-and-twenty. I saw a good deal of him, as I lived almost entirely amongst the artists, t...

OUR experiences are little worth unless they teach us to reflect. Let us then pause to consider this hourly experience of human beings—this remarkable efficacy of prayer. There...

MY confidence was restored, and with it my powers of endurance. Sleep was out of the question. The night was bright and frosty; and there was not heat enough in my body to dry m...

Bidding Samson stay where he was, I made my way as directed. A middle-aged officer in undress uniform was sitting on an empty packing-case in front of his tent, whittling a piec...

BEFORE dropping the curtain on my college days I must relate a little adventure which is amusing as an illustration of my reverend friend Napier’s enthusiastic spontaneity. My o...

SOME few years later, while travelling with my family in Switzerland, we happened to be staying at Baveno on Lago Maggiore at the same time, and in the same hotel, as the Crown...

BEFORE I went to America, I made the acquaintance of Dr. George Bird; he continued to be one of my most intimate friends till his death, fifty years afterwards. When I first kne...

I HAD completed my second year at the University, when, in October 1848, just as I was about to return to Cambridge after the long vacation, an old friend—William Grey, the youn...

WHAT was then called Fort Vancouver was a station of the Hudson’s Bay Company. We took up our quarters here till one of the company’s vessels—the ‘Mary Dare,’ a brig of 120 tons...

AT the risk of being tedious, I will tell of one more day’s buffalo hunting, to show the vicissitudes of this kind of sport. Before doing so we will glance at another important...

PROBABLY the most important historical event of the year ’49 was the discovery of gold in California, or rather, the great Western Exodus in pursuit of it. A restless desire pos...

THROUGH the Cayley family, I became very intimate with their near relatives the Worsleys of Hovingham, near York. Hovingham has now become known to the musical world through its...

MY stepfather, Mr. Ellice, having been in two Ministries—Lord Grey’s in 1830, and Lord Melbourne’s in 1834—had necessarily a large parliamentary acquaintance; and as I could alw...

IT WAS with a sorry heart that I bade farewell to my Vienna friends, my musical comrades, the Legation hospitalities, and my faithful little Israelite. But the colt frisks over...

DURING my blindness I was hospitably housed in Eaten Place by Mr. Whitbread, the head of the renowned firm. After my recovery I had the good fortune to meet there Lady Morgan, t...

THE following winter, my friend, George Cayley, was ordered to the south for his health. He went to Seville. I joined him there; and we took lodgings and remained till the sprin...

A MAN whom I had known from my school-days, Frederick Thistlethwayte, coming into a huge fortune when a subaltern in a marching regiment, had impulsively married a certain Miss...

THE lectures at the Royal Institution were of some help to me. I attended courses by Owen, Tyndall, Huxley, and Bain. Of these, Huxley was _facile princeps_, though both Owen an...

Where capital punishment is resorted to, the sole end in view is the protection of Society. The malefactor being put to death, there can be no thought of his amendment. And so f...

IN February, 1855, Roebuck moved for a select committee to inquire into the condition of the Army before Sebastopol. Lord John Russell, who was leader of the House, treated this...

WHAT remains to be told will not take long. Hardships naturally increased as the means of bearing them diminished. I have said the salmon held out for many days. We cut it in st...

SPORT had been the final cause of my trip to America—sport and the love of adventure. As the bison—buffalo, as they are called—are now extinct, except in preserved districts, a...

THE passage from the romantic to the realistic, from the chimerical to the actual, from the child’s poetic interpretation of life to life’s practical version of itself, is too g...

A STEAMER took us down to Acapulco. It is probably a thriving port now. When we were there, a few native huts and two or three stone buildings at the edge of the jungle constitu...

VIENNA in the early part of the last century was looked upon as the gayest capital in Europe. Even the frightful convulsion it had passed through only checked for a while its ch...

THROUGH George Bird I made the acquaintance of the leading surgeons and physicians of the North London Hospital, where I frequently attended the operations of Erichsen, John Mar...

SOON after I was seven years old, I went to what was then, and is still, one of the most favoured of preparatory schools—Temple Grove—at East Sheen, then kept by Dr. Pinkney. I...

IT was settled that after a course of three years at a private tutor’s I was to go to Cambridge. The life I had led for the past three years was not the best training for the fe...

IN the autumn following the end of the Franco-German war, Dr. Bird and I visited all the principal battlefields. In England the impression was that the bloodiest battle was foug...

THE remainder of the year ’49 has left me nothing to tell. For me, it was the inane life of that draff of Society—the young man-about-town: the tailor’s, the haberdasher’s, the...

THE belief in phantoms, ghosts, or spirits, has frequently been discussed in connection with speculations on the origin of religion. According to Mr. Spencer (‘Principles of Soc...

ON my arrival at the Havana I found that Durham, who was still an invalid, had taken up his quarters at Mr. Crauford’s, the Consul-General. Phoca, who was nearly well again, was...