AT GREENWICH 67 



little like himself as possible. His lodgings were 

 hard by ' across a dirty green and through some 

 half-built streets of two-storied houses ' ; he had 

 Carlyle and the poets, engineering and mathematics, 

 to study by himself in such spare time as remained 

 to him ; and there were several ladies, young and 

 not so young, with whom he liked to correspond. 

 But not all of these could compensate for the 

 absence of that mother who had made herself so 

 large a figure in his life, for sorry surroundings, 

 unsuitable society, and work that leaned to the 

 mechanical. ' Sunday,' says he, ' I generally visit 

 some friends in town and seem to swim in clearer 

 water, but the dirty green seems all the dirtier 

 when I get back. Luckily I am fond of my pro- 

 fession, or I could not stand this life.' It is a ques- 

 tion in my mind if he could have long continued 

 to stand it without loss. ' We are not here to be 

 happy, but to be good,' quoth the young philo- 

 sopher ; but no man had a keener appetite for 

 happiness than Fleeming Jenkin. There is a time 

 of life besides when, apart from circumstances, 

 few men are agreeable to their neighbours and still 

 fewer to themselves ; and it was at this stage that 

 Fleeming had arrived, later than common and even 

 worse provided. The letter from which I have 

 quoted is the last of his correspondence with Frank 

 Scott, and his last confidential letter to one of his 

 own sex. * If you consider it rightly,' he wrote 



