son's son--he was yet prompted by instinct to kindle and tend a torch
which one after him should carry, and perhaps should carry high. It would
be difficult to name any man who had a stronger sense of the family bond.

He had married very young--before he was nineteen--Maria Dover Walker, the
beautiful daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman, still younger than he. This
couple, who lived together "in a most complete happiness" for forty years,
had one child only, born in 1810, Charles Wentworth Dilke, commonly called
Wentworth. [Footnote: _Papers of a Critic_, vol. i., p. 13.] Mr. Dilke
sent his son to Westminster, and removed him at the age of sixteen,
arranging--because his theory of education laid great stress on the
advantage of travel--that the lad should live for a while with Baron
Kirkup, British Consul and miniature painter, in Florence, as a
preparatory discipline before going to Cambridge. What he hoped and
intended is notably expressed in a letter written by him at Genoa on his
return journey to his son in Florence in 1826: [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 18.]

"I ought to be in bed, but somehow you are always first in my thoughts
and last, and I prefer five minutes of gossiping with you.... How,
indeed, could it be otherwise than that you should be first and last
in my thoughts, who for so many years have _occupied all_ my thoughts.
For fifteen years at least it has been my pleasure to watch over you,
to direct and to advise. Now, direct and personal interference has
ceased.... It is natural, perhaps, that I should take a greater
interest than other fathers, for I have a greater interest at stake. I
have _but one _son. That son, too, I have brought up differently from
others, and if he be not better than others, it will be urged against
me, not as a misfortune, but as a shame. From the first hour I never
taught you to believe what I did not myself believe. I have been a
thousand times censured for it, but I had that confidence in truth