things he likewise all along was; and
had had his sights, and reflections, and sorrows and adventures, from
Kaimes Castle onward,--and had gone at least to Dover on his own score.
_Puer bonae spei_, as the school-albums say; a boy of whom much may be
hoped? Surely, in many senses, yes. A frank veracity is in him, truth
and courage, as the basis of all; and of wild gifts and graces there is
abundance. I figure him a brilliant, swift, voluble, affectionate and
pleasant creature; out of whom, if it were not that symptoms of delicate
health already show themselves, great things might be made. Promotions
at least, especially in this country and epoch of parliaments and
eloquent palavers, are surely very possible for such a one!

Being now turned of sixteen, and the family economics getting yearly
more propitious and flourishing, he, as his brother had already
been, was sent to Glasgow University, in which city their Mother had
connections. His brother and he were now all that remained of the
young family; much attached to one another in their College years as
afterwards. Glasgow, however, was not properly their College scene:
here, except that they had some tuition from Mr. Jacobson, then a senior
fellow-student, now (1851) the learned editor of St. Basil, and Regius
Professor of Divinity in Oxford, who continued ever afterwards a valued
intimate of John's, I find nothing special recorded of them. The Glasgow
curriculum, for John especially, lasted but one year; who, after some
farther tutorage from Mr. Jacobson or Dr. Trollope, was appointed for a
more ambitious sphere of education.

In the beginning of his nineteenth year, "in the autumn of 1824," he
went to Trinity College, Cambridge. His brother Anthony, who had already
been there a year, had just quitted this Establishment, and entered on
a military life under good omens; I think, at Dublin under the Lord
Lieutenant's patronage, to whose service he was, in some capacity,
attached. The two brothers, ever in company hitherto, parted roads
at this point; and, except on holiday visits and by frequent
correspondence, did not again live together; but they continued in a
true fraternal attachment while life lasted, and I believe never had
any even temporary estrangement, or on either side a cause for such. The
family, as I said, was now, for the last three years, reduced to these
two; the rest of the young ones, with their laughter and their
sorrows, all gone. The parents o