ster.

[18] Here I must depart from my rule, and mention a name--FitzRoy
Stewart.

VI

HOME

"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."
WORDSWORTH, "_To a Sky-lark_."

I said good-bye to Oxford on the 17th of June, 1876. What was the next
step to be? As so often in my life, the decision came through a doctor's
lips. He spoke in a figure, and this is what he said. "When a man has
had a severe illness, he has taken a large sum out of his capital.
Unless he has the wisdom to replace it, he must be permanently poorer;
and, when the original stock was not large, the necessity of economizing
becomes more urgent. You are in that case. My advice, therefore, is--Do
nothing for the next two or three years. Concentrate all your efforts on
getting better. Live as healthy a life as you can, and give mind and
body a complete rest. If you will obey this counsel, you will find that
you have replaced the capital, or, at any rate, some of it; and you may,
in spite of all disabilities, be able to take your part in the life and
work of the world." The prescription of total abstinence from effort
exactly suited my disposition of the moment. Oxford, one way and
another, had taken more out of me than till then I had realized, and I
was only too thankful to have an opportunity of making good the loss.

It being, for the time, my prime object to recover some portion of
health and strength, I was beyond measure fortunate in the possession of
an absolutely ideal home. "'Home! Sweet Home!' Yes. That is the song
that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For
forty years we never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else.
The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their
language by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our
honest, British, Protestant virtues. It is the only nursery of our
Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our far-flung children turn, with
all their memories aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but they keep
something sound at the core so long as they are faithful to the old
home. There is still a tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their
eyes, as they speak together of the days that can never die out of
their lives, when they were at home in the old familiar places, with
father and mother, in the healthy gladness of their childhood."[19] To
me home was all