xv HOME LIFE AND TRAVELS 371 



This event changed the current of our lives. As 

 has been stated, the offer came to me to stand for 

 Parliament and, mainly for the sake of my wife and 

 daughters, I felt that a fresh life was desirable, and so 

 I became member for South Manchester, and resigning 

 my Professorship, moved to London. I retained, 

 however, my house in Manchester until after the 

 meeting of the British Association in the autumn of 

 1887, living during the Parliamentary session in the 

 house in Queen's Gate which Mrs. Potter lent us, 

 until I took the house, 10 Bramham Gardens, which has 

 been our pleasant London home ever since. 



In the spring of 1885 my mother died at the age of 

 eighty-seven. To those who have lived to a good 

 old age in consonance with Nature's laws, death 

 usually comes as a friendly visitor. Such was my 

 mother's case, and hers was a normal end ; up to the 

 last a quiet enjoyment of life's evening, and an equally 

 peaceful passing away. 



A part of the winter of several of those years we 

 passed at Grasse on the Riviera ; a more charming 

 or a more healthy place it would be difficult to find. 

 Standing a thousand feet above the Mediterranean, 

 the air is crisp and invigorating, and the drives and 

 walks through the mountainous hinterland are most 

 picturesque. We had the advantage there of fre- 

 quently staying with our friends, the late Mr. and Miss 

 Bowes, who had built for themselves a charming villa. 



I passed some time during the summer of 1887 at a 

 very different place, namely, H arrogate, for I suffered 

 from my constitutional weakness gout and the sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen which exists in very notable quan- 

 tities in the H arrogate waters is said by the profession 

 to have a beneficial effect on that particular malady. 

 I doubt, however, very much whether, in spite of the 



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