temperament, and possessed of the most piercing black eyes I ever saw in
a woman's head. With no more education than other women of the middle
classes of her day, she had an excellent mental capacity. Her most
distinguishing characteristic, however, was rapidity of thought. If one
ventured to suggest that she had not taken much time to arrive at any
conclusion, she would say, "I cannot help it; things flash across me."
That peculiarity has been passed on to me in full strength; it has often
stood me in good stead; it has sometimes played me sad tricks, and it
has always been a danger. But, after all, if my time were to come over
again, there is nothing I would less willingly part with than my
inheritance of mother-wit.

[Restless, talkative, untiring to the day of her death, she was at
sixty-six "as active and energetic as a young woman." His early devotion
to her was remarkable. Describing her to his future wife he writes:--]

As a child my love for her was a passion. I have lain awake for hours
crying because I had a morbid fear of her death; her approbation was my
greatest reward, her displeasure my greatest punishment.

I have next to nothing to say about my childhood (he continues in the
Autobiography). In later years my mother, looking at me almost
reproachfully, would sometimes say, "Ah! you were such a pretty boy!"
whence I had no difficulty in concluding that I had not fulfilled my
early promise in the matter of looks. In fact, I have a distinct
recollection of certain curls of which I was vain, and of a conviction
that I closely resembled that handsome, courtly gentleman, Sir Herbert
Oakley, who was vicar of our parish, and who was as a god to us country
folk, because he was occasionally visited by the then Prince George of
Cambridge. I remember turning my pinafore wrong side forwards in order