274 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



by its readers, few of whom were well enough versed 

 either in Hterature or life to understand the tenderness and 

 melancholy which were concealed beneath this acrid and 

 positive manner of writing. The reception of the Memo- 

 rial by his wife's friends and many of his own shut him 

 still further up within himself, and he became almost as 

 silent and reserved as he had been before his marriage. 



He was roused, however, during the spring and summer 

 of this year, by a good deal of lecturing, in Scotland, in 

 the North, in the midland counties. London became inex- 

 pressibly disagreeable to him, and he began to look about 

 for a home in the country. In March he was approached 

 by the committee of an educational scheme which was 

 then occupying a good deal of public attention, a certain 

 Gnoll College, which was to form the nucleus of a univer- 

 sity for Wales, and was to be founded on a romantic 

 acclivity in the Vale of Neath, in Glamorganshire. It was 

 hoped that this institution would be richly endowed, and 

 the committee was endeavouring to secure the best men in 

 every branch as its professors. This Gnoll project gratified 

 my father's dislike to London, and when, in June, it 

 proceeded so far as the offer to him of the chair of Natural 

 History, with a residence, he received the proposition 

 with delight. But there was a worm at the root of this 

 tree, and Gnoll never opened its academic halls. On 

 September i, having satisfied himself that the Welsh 

 project would come to nothing, Philip Gosse went down to 

 his old haunt, the village of St. Marychurch, in South 

 Devon. This place had just been seized with a building 

 craze, and new villas, each in its separate garden, were 

 rising on all hands. Philip Gosse hired a horse, and rode 

 round the neighbourhood to see what he could find to suit 

 him, and at last he discovered, near the top of the Torquay 

 Road, Avhat he thought was the exact place. 



