have cost him a few tears one night, but it did not alter his
determination. He continued to send contributions to the newspapers,
and when his father somewhat later suggested that he should consider
the question of "studying for a profession," he replied: "If so, what
profession? I have a particular and strong prejudice for one course of
life to which you, I fear, will not agree." He was not unwilling to
pay the price for what he intended to attain. He knew himself, and his
only suffering was at the thought of being obliged to turn aside from
the aims which Nature held before him.

He was seventeen years old when he wrote to a friend: "Somehow, and
yet I hardly know why, I am unwilling to study a profession. I cannot
make a lawyer of any eminence, because I have not a talent for
argument; I am not good enough for a minister,--and as to Physic, I
utterly and absolutely detest it."

To his father the same year he wrote: "I have already hinted to you
what would best please me. I want to spend one year at Cambridge for
the purpose of reading history, and of becoming familiar with the best
authors in polite literature; whilst at the same time I can be
acquiring the Italian language, without an acquaintance with which I
shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful departments of
letters.... The fact is--and I will not disguise it in the least, for
I think I ought not--the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future
eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and
every earthly thought centres in it.... Whether Nature has given me
any capacity for knowledge or not, she has at any rate given me a very
strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident
in believing that, if I can ever rise in the world, it must be by the
exercise of my talent in the wide field of literature. With such a