MEMOIR. xxvii 
more than enough to have taken the Easter before, 
if it would have satisfied me. I should have been 
surprised to have been told that season, when I was 
riding H 's little cob in Rotten Row, in the glory 
of summer and all the hope of youth, that before the 
leaves had all left the trees that very horse would 
have been H 's death, and that I should be a 
hundred times worse than dead."^ 
Throughout the whole of this weary time, however, 
he never relinquished — so indomitable was his spirit 
— the hope of a better time approaching. Once at 
Liverpool, indeed, for a short stay in 1869, he writes 
upon this subject, " I like to be where I can be 
amused and see life without having to take part in 
it, though I would fifty times rather be at work at 
something. I wonder," he adds, "whether I ever 
shall be again." And he was at work again, not 
quite two years later, once more restored to health, 
and busily preparing for a trip across the Atlantic, 
which had been recommended to him for the 
thorough re-establishment of his health, and which 
accorded happily with the early fancies of his boy- 
hood. It was by this time almost too late for him, 
even had he now wished it, to have thought seriously 
of adopting one of the recognized professions. A few 
years earlier he had thought both of the army and 
^ His friend here referred to was killed by a fall from his horse 
late that autumn. 
