at Trinity, and brought news of what was
exciting young men at the Universities. A quaint discussion recalled by
my brother indicates one topic which even reached the schoolboy mind. He
was arguing as to confirmation with Herbert Coleridge (1830-1861) whose
promising career as a philologist was cut short by an early death. 'If
you are right,' said Fitzjames, 'a bishop could not confirm with his
gloves on.' 'No more he could,' retorted Coleridge, boldly accepting the
position. Political questions turned up occasionally. O'Connell was
being denounced as 'the most impudent of created liars,' and a belief in
Free Trade was the mark of a dangerous radical. To the Eton time my
brother also refers a passionate contempt for the 'sentimental and
comic' writers then popular. He was disgusted not only by their
sentimentalism but by their vulgarity and their ridicule of all that he
respected.

One influence, at this time, mixed oddly with that exerted by my father.
My eldest brother, Herbert, had suffered from ill health, due, I
believe, to a severe illness in his infancy, which had made it
impossible to give him a regular education. He had grown up to be a
tall, large-limbed man, six feet two-and-a-half inches in height, but
loosely built, and with a deformity of one foot which made him rather
awkward. The delicacy of his constitution had caused much anxiety and
trouble, and he diverged from our family traditions by insisting upon
entering the army. There, as I divine, he was the object of a good deal
of practical joking, and found himself rather out of his element. He
used to tell a story which may have received a little embroidery in
tradition. He was at a ball at Gibraltar, which was attended by a naval
officer. When the ladies had retired this gentleman proposed pistol
shooting. After a candelabrum had been smashed, the sailor insisted upon
taking a shot at a man who was lying on a sofa, and lodged a bullet in
the wall just above his head. Herbert left the army about 1844 and
entered at Gray's Inn. He would probably have taken to literature, and
he wrote a few articles not without promise, but his life was a short
one. He was much at Windsor, and the anxiety which he had caused, as
well as a great sweetness and openness of temper, made him, I guess, the
most tenderly loved of his parents' children. He had, however, wandered
pretty widely outside the limits of the Clapham Sect. He became very
intimate with Fitzjames, and they h