CHILDHOOD AND BOYHOOD 19 



machine," by which the rate of falling bodies is 

 measured), who, without any pretence of learning, 

 showed so much sympathy with boyish tastes and 

 aspirations that I began to develop freely. Two 

 of my fellow-pupils, Matthew P. Watt and Hugh 

 William Boulton, were brothers. They were grand- 

 sons of my grandfather's friend of the original 

 " Boulton and Watt " firm, and sons of my father's 

 friend, w T ho carried on the manufactory. Hugh 

 William became an exceptionally handsome and 

 socially favoured Life-Guardsman ; he died young. 

 Matthew was then, subsequently at Cambridge, and 

 again for some years afterwards, an object of reverence 

 to me. I have known few or any who seemed to me 

 his natural superiors in breadth and penetration of 

 intellect, but he was cursed with a fortune far in 

 excess of his simple though cultured needs, which 

 exacted duties from him that he hated. His large 

 fortune also removed the stimulus which necessity 

 gives for getting through work and having done with 

 it, instead of lingering indefinitely. He consequently 

 grew amateurish, wasting thought on ingenious para- 

 doxes and literary trifles, and failed to check a natural 

 tendency towards recluseness and some other oddities 

 of disposition. He gained the University prizes for 

 Greek and Latin Epigrams at Cambridge in 1841, 

 but did not care to compete for other honours. His 

 artistic sense was of a high and classical order. His 

 ideal, like that of Goethe, was a uniform culture of 

 all the higher faculties. There was nothing ignoble 

 in his nature. Whenever I talked with him about 

 my own occasional annoyances, they seemed to 

 become petty through his broad way of looking at 



