town he was taken by his godmother, at the age of seven or eight, to Portman Chapel, where he still remembers being much struck with the Rev. Mr. Reeves's explanation of the Atonement, which consisted in satisfying Divine justice by punishing the innocent for the guilty. He has often wondered since how anyone above the age of seven or eight could be contented with such an explanation. But whilst living to preach a very different doctrine within a stone's throw of Mr. Reeves's chapel, he has always expressed the highest regard for that excellent clergyman's personal character and pulpit abilities.

He suffered when a boy from two attacks of hip disease, the second of which was attended with such serious consequences that his life was despaired of by Sir Benjamin Brodie. As a last hope he was then taken to Brighton, where he gradually recovered a measure of health and soon returned to Lower Norwood. Although slightly lame he remained a vigorous cricketer, and climber, making for himself a large collection of birds' eggs in which he took the greatest delight. His father had early marked his strong musical faculty. As a child he had a clear soprano voice and shewed the keenest delight in harmony. When a mere baby of six, the violin shops excited his attention and roused his curiosity, and a succession of toy fiddles-subsequently merging into nursery shovels-fed an instinct which in a few years. was destined to develope rapidly under the tuition of a local organist.

At the age of fourteen he was a remarkable violin player, and became a favourite pupil of the eminent violinist Oury, an old pupil of Paganini, who taught him many of the Paganini traditions and artifices with which in later years he was destined to electrify the audiencies of the Cambridge University Concerts. His remembrance of the first appearance of the boy Joachim, the prodigious Bottesini, and the famous quartet parties at Willis's Rooms, consisting of Sainton, Piatti, Hill, and Cooper, is as keen as ever, as are also the evenings with Jullien's band at the Surrey Gardens. Mendelssohn's. death in 1847 made the deepest impression upon the boy, then nine years. old, and both at that time and for twenty years afterwards he was a thorough going Mendelssohnian.

His Latin

Meanwhile, his general education was far from sound. and Greek were in arrears, his arithmetic shocking, but he had learned to speak French fluently from an accomplished lady, Mdlle. Sophie Kammerer, whose devotion to him throughout the serious illness of his childhood was doubtless the means of saving his life. About the age of twelve he developed a love for reading, and went through the