and keeping it from Mr Parr's eyes, not thinking the eye of God is upon me, a greater eye than man's; and another my cribing things from other boys, which is another word for stealing not exactly stealing, but leads to it." After this calm discrimination of morals, he goes on to other matters. "I am such a horrid sumer" (sum-er-i.e., arithmetician), he says, with felicitous vexation; "it is that that gets me down in my class so much. I was perfectly beaten last week, for they brought me down from top to bottom." There are many people

who will feel the deepest sympathy with Lowry in his tribulations as a "horrid sumer." "Ex

cuse the blots," he adds; "but I put it in my shelf, and when I came to get it to finish it, and it was out on the table-but I must now finish, for I am impatient." It cannot be said that the writing is much to Lowry's credit, and the anxious excuses of his master's wife are not without justification. But it is very touching to find these little letters so carefully preserved after fifty long years, so living in their childish freedom and confusion of over-active thought. The little fellow was not clever, so far as appeared; but he was the light of his mother's eyes, and already a favourite everywhere,—the brightest restless child, always doing, forming

already his succinct little opinions upon things and men.

In 1841, Lady Oliphant-who during this interval had been spending her time partly in England, partly in Scotland: at the paternal house of Condie, which was paradise to Lowry in the holidays; at Wimbledon, in the house of Major Oliphant,1 another brother of her husband, where the boy found comrades and companions of an age similar to his own; and for a considerable period in Edinburgh-joined Sir Anthony in Ceylon. But it soon became apparent that to be separated thus from her only child was too great a strain upon the happiness and health of the tender mother; and she had not been long settled in the island before imperative orders were sent home for the return of Lowry, accompanied by a tutor who could carry on his education. "Send out the kid at once" was, I have been told, the telegraphic summons; but this must be a fond invention of later days, for there was then no telegraph, nor was Sir Anthony at all likely to use such an expression. This decision was simplified by the fact that there were two boys, the sons of Mr Moydart, a

1 Afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel James Oliphant, for many years a director of the East India Company, and chairman of that body. in 1854.

THE FIRST TUTOR.

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neighbour at Colombo, of an age to share his lessons, and afford boyish company for the ChiefJustice's only child. Laurence, who had followed his schoolmaster, Mr Parr, to Preston, in Lancashire, where that gentleman had accepted a living, was summoned from school in all haste, and the much trusted Uncle James at Wimbledon was charged with the choice of the tutor. The gentleman selected by Major Oliphant was Mr Gepp, now vicar of Higher Easton, near Chelmsford, a very young man just from Oxford, to whom, as to his pupil, the long journey overland, then a new route, and captivating to the imagination, was a great frolic and delight.

By this time Lowry had developed out of the early stage of childhood into an active and lively boy, eager for new experiences, and all the novelty and movement that were to be had. One bustling delightful visit he had at Condie to celebrate the marriage of his uncle, where there were tenants' dinners and outdoor dances, at which Lowry "kissed the lassies" with whom he danced, in delightful emulation of another young and gay uncle. He was between twelve and thirteen, with all his faculties awake, and his whole being agog for novelty and incident, when he set out to join his parents in the late winter of 1841. He has

VOL. I.

B

himself given an account of this, the first great journey which he made independently, the first he could fully recollect. It is astonishing to note the enormous difference between the means of travelling then and now, although the modern age of rapid movement had set in, and the English world was already exceedingly proud of itself for its first steps towards speed and ease in that long journey, the most important and momentous of all to Englishmen. From Boulogne, “where we arrived in a steamer direct from London Bridge"-to Marseilles occupied eight days and five nights of incessant diligence travel, varied by the incident of sticking in the snow at Chalons, from which they had to be dug out. The mail train rattles across the Continent from Calais to Brindisi now in three days. Yet I suspect Laurence and his companion had the best of it. Packed up in the banquette of the oldfashioned diligence, they saw and enjoyed everything, the new unfamiliar landscape, the quaint villages, the old towns, the winterly brightness of France, newer and more original to them than anything is now to eyes so accustomed to discount every novelty as ours are. And the jolting, dirt, and wretchedness of the most highly organised train de luxe, with its sleeping-carriages and dining-saloons, one more odious than the other,

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yet the last word of luxurious organisation and supposed comfort in travelling are a poor exchange for the more leisurely progress, which at least permitted a tranquil meal now and then, and unfolded the country through which he passed, and many amusing and agreeable incidents to the traveller.

"Adventures," somebody says, 66 come to the adventurous," and this first voyage of the boy who had so many before him was signalised by a visit, made necessary by an accident, to Mocha, a place very little visited either then or now by the Giaour, and where the Shereef was exceedingly civil to the English travellers—a civility, I believe, explained by the fact that an English gunboat lay not far off, though the strangers were unaware of this strong inducement to politeness on the part of their entertainers. The voyage altogether, with the repeated breakdowns of the ship and pauses for repairs (there was then no P. & O.), lasted about three months. We are not told to what pitch of despairing anxiety the parents in Ceylon had been driven by all this delay. But at last it came to an end, and Lowry settled down in the new brilliant Eastern world, where everything was a wonder, to his lessons with Mr Gepp and the Moydart boys, and to that close companionship with his mother which occu