20 AUTOBIOGRAPH. [ch. it. 



sion for shooting and for hunting, and, when this failed, for 

 riding across country, I got into a sporting set, including 

 some dissipated low-minded young men. "We used often 

 to dine together in the evening, though these dinners often 

 included men of a higher stamp, and we sometimes drank 

 too much, with jolly singing and playing at cards after- 

 wards. I know that I ought to feel ashamed of days and 

 evenings thus spent, but as some of my friends were very 

 pleasant, and we were all in the highest spirits, I cannot 

 help looking back to these times with much pleasure.* 



But I am glad to think that I had many other friends 

 of a widely different nature. I was very intimate with 

 Whitley,f who was afterwards Senior Wrangler, and we 

 used continually to take long walks together. He inocu- 

 lated me with a taste for pictures and good engravings, of 

 which I bought some. I frequently went to the Fitzwilliam 

 Gallery, and my taste must have been fairly good, for I cer- 

 tainly admired the best pictures, which I discussed with the 

 old curator. I read also with much interest Sir Joshua 

 Reynolds' book. This taste, though not natural to me, 

 lasted for several years, and many of the pictures in the 

 National Gallery in London gave me much pleasure ; that 

 of Sebastian del Piombo. exciting in me a sense of sublimity. 



I also got into a musical set, I believe by means of my 

 warm-hearted friend, Herbert, J who took a high wrang- 

 ler's degree. From associating with these men, and hear- 

 ing them play, I acquired a strong taste for music, and 

 used very often to time my walks so as to hear on week 

 days the anthem in King's College Chapel. This gave me 

 intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes 

 shiver. I am sure that there was no affectation or mere 

 imitation in this taste, for I used generally to go by myself 

 to King's College, and I sometimes hired the chorister boys 

 to sing in my rooms. Nevertheless I am so utterly desti- 

 tute of an ear, that I cannot perceive a discord, or keep 

 time and hum a tune correctly; and it is a mystery how I 

 could possibly have derived pleasure from music. 



My musical friends soon jDerceived my state, and some- 



* I gather from some of my father's contemporaries that lie has exag- 

 gerated the Bacchanalian nature of these parties. F. D. 



t Rev. C. Whitley, Hon. Canon of Durham, formerly Reader in Natural 

 Philosophy in Durham University. 



X The late John Maurice Herbert, County Court Judge of Cardiff and the 

 Monmouth Circuit. 



