8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



not cut myself, and none of the ordinary symptoms 

 of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I 

 was somehow, and I remember sinking into a 

 strange state of apathy. By way of a last chance, 

 I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, 

 friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse 

 in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember stag- 

 gering from my bed to the window on the bright 

 spring morning after my arrival, and throwing 

 open the casement. Life seemed to come back 

 on the wings of the breeze, and to this day the 

 faint odour of wood-smoke, like that which floated 

 across the farm-yard in the early morning, is as 

 good to me as the " sweet south upon a bed of 

 violets." I soon recovered, but for years I suffered 

 from occasional paroxysms of internal pain, and 

 from that time my constant friend, hypochondriacal 

 dyspepsia, commenced his half century of co- 

 tenancy of my fleshly tabernacle. 



Looking back on my " Lehrjahre," I am sorry to 

 say that I do not think that any account of my 

 doings as a student would tend to edification. In 

 fact, I should distinctly warn ingenuous youth t<> 

 avoid imitating my example. I worked extremely 

 hard when it pleased me, and wlu-n it did not 

 which was a very frequent case I was extremely 

 idle (unless making caricatures of one's pastors 

 and masters is to be called a branch of industry), 

 sted my energies in wrong directions. I 

 iv.ul < v, rything I could lay hands upon, in- 



