o be impracticable, but
his claim was partly recognised in his appointment to succeed William
Smyth (died June 26, 1849) as Regius Professor of Modern History at
Cambridge.[53] I may as well mention here the later events of his life,
as they will not come into any precise connection with my brother's
history. The intimacy between the two strengthened as my brother
developed into manhood, and they were, as will be seen, in continual
intercourse. But after leaving King's College my brother followed his
own lines, though for a time an inmate of our household.

The Kensington house having been let, we lived in various suburban
places, and, for a time, at Cambridge. My father's professorship
occupied most of his energies in later years. He delivered his first
course in the May term of 1850. Another very serious illness,
threatening brain fever, interrupted him for a time, and he went abroad
in the autumn of 1850. He recovered, however, beyond expectation, and
was able to complete his lectures in the winter, and deliver a second
course in the summer of 1851. These lectures were published in 1852 as
'Lectures on the History of France.' They show, I think, the old
ability, but show also some failure of the old vivacity. My father did
not possess the profound antiquarian knowledge which is rightly demanded
in a professor of the present day; and, indeed, I think it is not a
little remarkable that, in the midst of his absorbing work, he had
acquired so much historical reading as they display. But, if I am not
mistaken, the lectures have this peculiar merit--that they are obviously
written by a man who had had vast practical experience of actual
administrative work. They show, therefore, an unusual appreciation of
the constitutional side of French history; and he anticipated some of
the results set forth with, of course, far greater knowledge of the
subject, in Tocqueville's 'Ancien Regime.' Tocqueville himself wrote
very cordially to my father upon the subject; and the lectures have been
valued by very good judges. Nothing, however, could be more depressing
than the position of a professor at Cambridge at that time. The first
courses delivered by my father were attended by a considerable number of
persons capable of feeling literary curiosity--a class which was then
less abundant than it would now be at Cambridge. But he very soon found
that his real duty was to speak to young gentlemen who had been driven
into his lecture-room by