by Bowen, for he had a good eye for ground, he
knew the movements of the armies down to the smallest detail, and he
could explain with perfect lucidity the positions of the combatants
and the tactical moves in the game.

Twice only did he come across actual fighting, once at Dueppel in 1864,
during the Schleswig-Holstein war, and again in Paris during the siege
of the Communards by the forces that obeyed Thiers and the Assembly
sitting at Versailles. He maintained that the Commune had been
unfairly judged by Englishmen, and wrote a singularly interesting
description of what he saw while risking his life in the beleaguered
city. There was in him a great spirit of adventure, though the
circumstances of his life gave it little scope.

Travel was one of his chief pleasures, but it was, if possible, a
still greater pleasure to his fellow-travellers, for he was the most
agreeable of companions, fertile in suggestion, candid in discussion,
swift in decision. He cared nothing for luxury and very little for
comfort; he was absolutely unselfish and imperturbably good-humoured;
he could get enjoyment out of the smallest incidents of travel, and
his curiosity to see the surface of the earth as well as the cities of
men was inexhaustible. He loved the unexpected, and if one had written
proposing an expedition to explore Tibet, he would have telegraphed
back, "Start to-night: do we meet Charing Cross or Victoria?"

I have dwelt on Bowen's gifts and methods as a teacher, because
teaching was the joy and the business of his life, and because he
showed a new way in which boys might be stimulated and guided. But he
was a great deal besides a teacher, just as his brother Charles was a
great deal besides a lawyer. Both had talents for literature of a very
high order. Charles published a verse translation of Virgil's
_Eclogues_ and the first six books of the _Aeneid_, full of ingenuity
and refinement, as well as of fine poetic taste. Edward's vein
expressed itself in the writing of songs. His school songs, composed
for the Harrow boys, became immensely popular with them, and their use
at school celebrations of various kinds has passed from Harrow to the
other great schools of England, even to some of the larger girls'
schools. The songs are unique in their fanciful ingenuity and humorous
extravagance, full of a boyish joy in life, in the exertion of
physical strength, in the mimic strife of games, yet with an
occasional touch of sadness,