V. PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON 97

(it has never come straight again since),-and a well-broken Shetland pony bought for me, and the two of us led about the Norwood roads by a riding master with a leading string. I used to do pretty well as long as we went straight, and then get thinking of something, and fall off when we turned a corner. I might have got some inkling of a seat in Heaven’s good time, if no fuss had been made about me, nor inquiries instituted whether I had been off or on; but as my mother, the moment I got home, made searching scrutiny into the day’s disgraces, I merely got more and more nervous and helpless after every tumble; and this branch of my education was at last abandoned, my parents consoling themselves, as best they might, in the conclusion that my not being able to learn to ride was the sign of my being a singular genius.¹

111. The rest of the year² was passed in such home employment as I have above described;-but, either in that or the preceding year, my mineralogical taste received a new and very important impulse from a friend who entered afterwards intimately into our family life, but of whom I have not yet spoken.

My illness at Dunkeld, above noticed,³ was attended by two physicians,-my mother,-and Dr. Grant. The Doctor must then have been a youth who had just obtained his diploma. I do not know the origin of his acquaintance with my parents; but I know that my father had almost paternal influence over him; and was of service to him, to what extent I know not, but certainly continued and effective, in beginning the world. And as I grew older I

¹ [One MS. has the following additional passage here:-

“It seems singular to me, looking back, that I made no attempt, on all that Welsh tour, to keep note of a single scene by drawing. No vestige of any such effort occurs after that rapturous divergence at Hereford. I suppose the excitement put me off work, for I cannot ascribe my idleness to any modest perception that Cader Idris and Plynlimmon were a little beyond my then attained pictorial faculty, since, only the following year, I set myself, unabashed, to limn my impression of the chain of the Alps and the plains of Lombardy.”

The “following year” is a mistake, as the foreign tour was in 1833.]

² [1831.]

³ [See above, p. 70.]

XXXV. G

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