born in 1832 and 1834 at the same house. The
Kensington of those days was still distinctly separate from London. A
high wall divided Kensington Gardens from the Hounslow Road; there were
still deer in the Gardens; cavalry barracks close to Queen's Gate, and a
turnpike at the top of the Gloucester Road. The land upon which South
Kensington has since arisen was a region of market gardens, where in our
childhood we strolled with our nurse along genuine country lanes.

It would be in my power, if it were desirable, to give an unusually
minute account of my brother's early childhood. My mother kept a diary,
and, I believe, never missed a day for over sixty years. She was also in
the habit of compiling from this certain family 'annals' in which she
inserted everything that struck her as illustrative of the character of
her children. About 1884 my brother himself began a fragment of
autobiography, which he continued at intervals during the next two or
three years. For various reasons I cannot transfer it as a whole to
these pages, but it supplies me with some very important
indications.[49] A comparison with my mother's contemporary account of
the incidents common to both proves my brother's narrative to be
remarkably accurate. Indeed, though he disclaimed the possession of
unusual powers of memory in general, he had a singularly retentive
memory for facts and dates, and amused himself occasionally by
exercising his faculty. He had, for example, a certain walking-stick
upon which he made a notch after a day's march; it served instead of a
diary, and years afterwards he would explain what was the particular
expedition indicated by any one of the very numerous notches.

Although I do not wish to record trifles important only in the eyes of a
mother, or interesting only from private associations, I will give
enough from these sources to illustrate his early development; or rather
to show how much of the later man was already to be found in the infant.
It requires perhaps some faith in maternal insight to believe that
before he was three months old he showed an uncommon power of 'amusing
himself with his own thoughts,' and had 'a calm, composed dignity in his
countenance which was quite amusing in so young a creature.' It will be
more easily believed that he was healthy and strong, and by the age of
six months 'most determined to have his own way.' On August 15, 1830,
Wilberforce was looking at the baby, when he woke up, burst int