30 From 1850 to 1862 n 



not why, at the sight of the most luscious and sunny- 

 prospects ' ? And if it be true, as some folks believe, 

 that to one man there are many souls, — surely, it 

 ought to be true of every poet, — then, were it but 

 now granted to us to gaze into the halls of Paradise, 

 mieht we not see therein a certain sun-bronzed soul, 



' A-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees, 

 With a negro lass to fan him, while he listens to the roar 

 Of the breakers on the reef outside that never touch the shore' ? 



It was the good fortune of his brother George to 

 find such bliss as that, even in this world ; but for a 

 few years of his life, following i860, he had to 

 content himself with the north sub-tropical region 

 of the globe. His health having been somewhat 

 affected by his constant attendance upon the second 

 Earl of Ellesmere, during the latter's last illness in 

 the autumn of 1862, the Honourable Captain (the 

 late Admiral) Egerton, with great kindness, took 

 him for a cruise in H.M.S. St. George, the grand, 

 old-fashioned wooden man-of-war, on board of which 

 H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh was then serving as 

 a midshipman. During this cruise George Kingsley 

 gained his first experiences of the Mediterranean, 

 whose every gulf and bay he was subsequently to 

 know almost as well as the ordinary country practi- 

 tioner knows the roads along which he drives on his 

 daily round to his patients ; and it exercised so 

 fascinating an influence over him that, during a 

 short period of leisure in the winter of the following 



