As for my mother, it turned out that she was then selecting her last
and final home--though the end was not, thank God, for many a long
year yet. As for me, the decision arrived at during those walks on
Exeter Northernhay, was more momentous still. For I was choosing the
road that led not only to my home for the next half century nearly,
but to two marriages, both of them so happy in all respects as rarely
to have fallen to the lot of one and the same man!

How little we either of us, my mother and I, saw into the
future--beyond a few immediate inches before our noses! Truly _prudens
futuri temporis exitum caliginosâ nocte premit Deus!_ And when I hear
talk of "conduct making fate," I often think--humbly and gratefully, I
trust; marvelling, certainly,--how far it could have _à priori_ seemed
probable, that the conduct of a man who, without either _oes in
presenti_, or any very visible prospect of _oes in futuro_, turns
aside from all the beaten paths of professional industry should
have led him to a long life of happiness and content, hardly to be
surpassed, and, I should fear, rarely equalled. _Deus nobis haec otia
fecit!--Deus_, by the intromission of one rarely good mother, and two
rarely good, and I may add rarely gifted, wives!

Not that I would have the reader translate "_otia_" by idleness. I
have written enough to show that my life hitherto had been a full
and active one. And it continued in Italy to be an industrious one.
Translate the word rather into "independence." For I worked at work
that I liked, and did no taskwork. Nevertheless, I would not wish to
be an evil exemplar, _vitiis imitabile_, and I don't recommend you,
dear boys, to do as I did. I have been quite abnormally fortunate.

Well, we thought that we were casting the die of fate on a very