life, and with only such education (beyond what he owed to his mother, an uncommon woman, who probably did better for him) as an ordinary private school had afforded, equipped himself with French and Italian in perfection, entered the Stock Exchange at an early age, had a successful career there, and rose to be Chairman of its Committee. He was a fine whist and chess player (more especially, or more notedly, the latter) and was reputed, I believe, at one time, to be the best amateur player of the clarionet. Music was his constant and greatest delight, but his pen was also an instrument which (though he sought no public beyond his friends) he often used very entertainingly. He was a brilliant—often a witty—talker, with a distinction of manner, more French- than English-seeming in its light debonairness, and his individualities, traits, foibles, etc., were so many and vivid, that to write either of him or of Dr. Johnson with scanted pen, would be much the same thing. My two uncles, the artist and dramatist, who lived next door, on each side of us, would also require portraiture for anything beyond this bare statement. Both were out-of-the-canvas-stepping personalities, carrying with them atmosphere and aroma.

"My mother was an exceptionally thoughtful and broad-minded woman—more advanced, on most subjects, than where they stand now—a vivid and vital being, of great vivacity, gladness (that never was levity) and conversational powers, with a gift for the interchange of ideas (which is not, by any means, always the same thing). She was also a poet, as her little volume of collected pieces, 'Words without Music' (a modest title) testifies, at least to myself. She had joyous 'L'Allegro'-like country instincts, a deep inborn love of the beauties of nature (which she sketched charmingly), and great feeling for, and interest in both plant and animal life. I underline that word, in its last connection, because killing was quite another thing for her, and her whole soul shrank away from it. But of course, as you know, what, in root and origin, may be the same, is often differentiated in the sexes, and so inherited by each. It was, I think, undoubtedly through our mother (though he did not, personally, much resemble either parent) that my brother inherited everything that made him distinctively himself. By this I mean that though much and that the best—as, for instance, his patriotism and love of truth—may have come to him from both sides, and some from the other only, it was that one that gave to it, and the whole, its original life-shaping turn. The whole was included in the blood of the Bruces of Clackmannan, representative, I believe, of the elder branch of the family that gave Robert Bruce to the throne of Scotland, but what exact position, in our family tree, is occupied by Bruce, the Abyssinian explorer, I do not quite know. However, he must have been some sort of ancestor of my brother, and Bruce, since the intermingling, has been a family name, though not given to any of us surviving infancy, owing to an idea which had arisen, through several instances of such association, that it had become unlucky. In this regard, it has been rather the patronymic, which, from one war to another, has borne the malevolent influence. None have come back, either wounded, invalided or at all. All killed outright—but this by the way. Had it not been for my mother, therefore, my brother, in all probability, would either never, or not in any preponderating degree, have felt the 'call of the wild,' for my father not only never felt it, but never was able to comprehend the feeling. There was, in fact, nothing at all in him of what was my brother's life and being. He was, in the proper evolutionary sense of the word, essentially a civilized man and a Londoner. Sport was, for him, an unknown (and much disliked) quantity, and though taking, in an air-tight-compartment sort of way, some interest in insects, he had not much about him of the real naturalist. Those feelings (imperishably summed up by Jack London in the title of his masterpiece) which, coming out of a remote past, beckon back the only supposedly or but half-made-up civilized amongst us, from late into early conditions, were not, as I say, his heritage; and this was equally (or even more) the case with his brothers—my two uncles—and as far as I know or have ever heard, all the precedent members of the family. I believe, therefore, that by the intervention—merciful or otherwise—of the Bruce, Sherborn, and Holgate families, between them, my brother was saved, or debarred, from going either into the Stock Exchange or one of the settled professions. Which kind of phraseology best suits the conjuncture I know not, but I think I know what my brother's own opinion would be, since it put the particular circumstances of that event of his life, in which, of all others, he would esteem himself most happy and fortunate—I mean his death—upon a footing of certainty.

"I have alluded to my brother's independence of home (or, I think, of any) influence. I look upon him as a salient illustration of Darwin's finding that the force of heredity is stronger, in the individual, than that of education and surroundings. So far back as I can remember—at least with any distinctness—he was always just himself, with a settled determination that, in its calm, unobtrusive force (giving the idea of inevitability) had in it something elemental. He may not have lisped Africa (which was far from the family thoughts) but, if not, he, at least, came so near to it, as to have made us all almost remember that he did. He seems to have brought with him into this world 'from afar,' a mind long made up as to the part he should play in it, and his career was more than half run before any circumstance admitted by him as deflective from its true course, arose..."

Mrs. Jones (Ann Selous) also paints a pleasing picture of the early life of the family in their London house:—