first great event in his life occurred; the family, consisting of his
father and mother, his two sisters, his brother and himself, went to
Italy. The South-Eastern Railway stopped at Ashford, whence they
travelled to Dover in their own carriage; the carnage was put on
board the steamboat, they crossed the Channel, and proceeded to
Cologne, up the Rhine to Basle and on through Switzerland into Italy,
through Parma, where Napoleon's widow was still reigning, Modena,
Bologna, Florence, and so to Rome. They had to drive where there was
no railway, and there was then none in all Italy except between
Naples and Castellamare. They seemed to pass a fresh custom-house
every day, but, by tipping the searchers, generally got through
without inconvenience. The bread was sour and the Italian butter
rank and cheesy--often uneatable. Beggars ran after the carriage all
day long, and when they got nothing jeered at the travellers and
called them heretics. They spent half the winter in Rome, and the
children were taken up to the top of St. Peter's as a treat to
celebrate their father's birthday. In the Sistine Chapel they saw
the cardinals kiss the toe of Pope Gregory XVI., and in the Corso, in
broad daylight, they saw a monk come rolling down a staircase like a
sack of potatoes, bundled into the street by a man and his wife. The
second half of the winter was spent in Naples. This early
introduction to the land which he always thought of and often
referred to as his second country made an ineffaceable impression
upon him.

In January, 1846, he went to school at Allesley, near Coventry, under
the Rev. E. Gibson. He seldom referred to his life there, though
sometimes he would say something that showed he had not forgotten all
about it. For instance, in 1900, Mr. Sydney C. Cockerell, now the
Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, showed him a medieval