at 7 in the evening. For these long hours in the schoolroom they took a sufficient revenge out of doors. One can picture the torrent of thick-booted Irish boys, each accustomed to do battle for his own branch in the great laurel at home, ravaging among the miniature embellishments of a Champs Elysées garden. They set up a swing, wore the grass into holes, swarmed up the delicately-nurtured cedar, and trampled the flower-beds. At the end of six months, when the family left, Mr. Bourke had to pay the outraged proprietor a bill of five hundred francs, for 'dégradation du jardin.'

In the summer of 1839 the family rolled southwards to Switzerland, and had four months of climbing. The next winter, passed in Florence, opened up a new world. The French and Italian masters went on as before, and Richard took lessons in singing and on the violoncello, for both of which he had early disclosed an aptitude. But another sort of education also began. At first half holidays, then whole days, were spent in the galleries; the mother now as ever leading him on in all noble culture. 'Richard,' writes his brother, 'intensely enjoyed the artistic atmosphere of the place.' He learned to recognise the different schools and artists by patiently looking at their works.

At Florence, too, Richard first entered the world. The mother took care that the best houses should be open to her son. So to balls, Richard Bourke and his next brother went; and to all the haunts of men and women in that friendly society of winter refugees. 'Before he returned to England,' writes his brother, 'he had become a man.'

This was in May 1840. Richard, now in his nineteenth year, set up a hunter out of his slender allowance, with an occasional second horse—a sufficiently unpretending stud, but one which he made the most of by hard riding and knowledge of the country. In December he received a captain's commission in the Kildare Militia, of which his great-uncle, the Earl of Mayo, was colonel. In 1841 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, but did not reside; and, after the usual course of study with a tutor, took an uneventful degree. During this time he lived much with his grand-uncle, the Earl of Mayo, at Palmerstown, in County Kildare. Hayes and County Meath begin to fade into the distance. But in 1842 the death of a dearly-loved brother, from the after-effects of a Roman fever, called forth a burst of home feeling, and is recorded in a little poem, which retains the pathos of the moment. Next year, 1843, Richard Southwell Bourke came of age.

His hostess at Palmerstown, the Countess of Mayo, lived in the bright world which still sparkles in Praed's vers de société, and, childless, clever, and kind, did what such a lady can do to make a young relative's entrance into life pleasant. Her twin-sister had married a Mr. Smith, a gentleman who, having made his fortune in the West Indies, resided at Bersted Lodge, Sussex. The Countess of Mayo's duties at Court, as Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Adelaide, kept the Palmerstown family much in England; and the twin-sisters, both childless, carried through life a peculiarly strong and tender attachment to each other. One year the Earl and Countess, with their grand-nephew, lived at Bersted Lodge; the next year Mrs. Smith paid a long visit to Palmerstown; and Richard Bourke thus saw a more varied society than usually falls to the lot of a young Irish squire.

The next couple of seasons, Mr. Bourke devoted to the art of making himself agreeable in London society. A fragment of drift-wood, cast ashore from the old letters of the period, shows in what guise he flitted before contemporary faces. 'A very young man, with a fine bearing; one of the best waltzers in town, and a great deal made of.' By this time his frame had expanded itself to the commanding stature with the air of robust strength, by which he was known through life.

In 1845 his great-aunt, Lady de Clifford, died, and Mr. Bourke, not being able to go out much, devoted the summer to a tour in Russia. Armed with introductions to a Court and society then famous for its hospitality to Englishmen, he saw what was best worth seeing, and made the personal acquaintance of many European statesmen and diplomatists who had hitherto been to him only names. His letters give one the impression of a keen young intelligence looking for its first time on unfamiliar objects, and of immense powers of physical enjoyment. On his return from his tour he published an account of it in two volumes.² They are a very fair specimen of a young man's travels—modestly written, full of eyesight, and not overlaid with general reflections. His descriptions of Russian life are quiet and realistic, and had at the time a novelty which they do not now possess.

² St. Petersburg and Moscow. A Visit to the Court of the Czar. By Richard Southwell Bourke, Esq. 2 vols. Henry Colburn, 1846.

The Russians of that day appeared to him to be essentially in the imitative stage, both as regards art and letters; and he supports this position by well-chosen examples of pictorial design and by the statistics of the book-trade, contrasting the enormous number of volumes imported with the few original works produced in the country. He was particularly struck by the absence of a middle class. 'In no country,' he says, 'except, perhaps, in Ireland, is the transition from the palace to the cabin more abrupt, or the difference between the peer and the peasant more wide. This is mainly owing to the want of a middle class—that cement of the social state ... which is so indispensable to the wellbeing of a commonwealth. The serf in his sheepskin may walk into the palace of his lord, or may watch by his master's gate; but no feeling in his breast tells him that he is born of the same race or formed for the same purposes. And the great lord, knowing his superiority of birth, education, and descent, looks forth on his horde of slaves with all benignity and kind attention. But it is the affection of a good heart for a noble and faithful beast, whose involuntary service may sometimes command the solicitude of the master, but never the least participation in a single right of fellowship or friendship.'³

³ Vol. i, pp. 154-155.

And here are the results: 'We see perfectly devised plans of Government placed among a tangled web of complicated and clumsy political institutions. We see one race of men enjoying all the benefits and exhibiting all the graces of enlightened education, while the other and inferior class are sunk in deep ignorance, rudeness, and slavery. We see the palace towering by the cabin, the rod of bondage lying beside the sceptre of righteousness. The rivers flow at one moment among stately fanes and Grecian porticos; at another, wander through the savage forest and uncultivated morass. All is incongruous; the social edifice is yet unbuilt, and the materials for its erection lie in splendid confusion on desert ground.'⁴

⁴ Vol. i, pp. 273-274. It should be remembered that these remarks apply to Russia in 1845.

Mr. Bourke gives several pages to the protective system with a pleasing candour, considering the last desperate stand which at that very time was being made for it at home. After speaking of the disabilities of the merchants, and the high price alike of the luxuries and of the necessaries of life in St. Petersburg, he says: 'I fancy the real secret of the unhealthy state of the commercial interest in Russia is the incompetency of the rulers to legislate properly on this most important branch of political economy. It is impossible that men totally unacquainted with the commonest details of trade can devise measures that would