all would rise to their former positions, and the servants would file
out of the room. It must have been somewhat of an effort for my father
to go through this ceremony; but I think he did it, not only for the
reason above mentioned, but also because he thought it right that his
children should have the opportunity of gaining whatever religious
sentiment such proceedings might inculcate. But I do not think that he
had much faith in the practice as an English institution. Indeed, he
has somewhere written that the English "bring themselves no nearer to
God when they pray than when they play cards."

[IMAGE: ROBERT BROWNING]

I understood long afterwards, as I did not at the time, how closely my
father and mother studied in all things the welfare and cultivation of
their children. They were not formal or oppressive about it; all went
pleasantly and with seeming spontaneity, as if in accordance with our
own desire; but we were wisely and needfully guided. We were never
sent to school during our seven years in Europe; but either we were
taught our lessons by our parents at home or by governesses. In
addition to the constant walks which I took with my father, he
encouraged me to join a cricket club in the Park, and sent me to
Huguenin's gymnasium in Liverpool, to the Cornwallis swimming-baths,
and to a dancing-academy kept by a highly ornamental Frenchman, and he
bought me an enormous steel hoop, and set me racing after it at
headlong speed. Nor did he neglect to stimulate us in the imaginative
and aesthetic side. From the date of our settlement in England to the
end of his life, he read aloud to us in the evenings many of the
classics of literature. Spenser's The Faerie Queene, the Don Quixote
of Cervantes, the poems and novels of Scott, Grimm's and Andersen's
Fairy Tales, much of Defoe and Swift, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake field,