ordinary power of versifying, and taught
his son from babyhood the words he wished him to remember, by joining
them to a grotesque rhyme; the child learned all his Latin declensions
in this way. His love of art had been proved by his desire to adopt it
as a profession; his talent for it was evidenced by the life and power
of the sketches, often caricatures, which fell from his pen or pencil as
easily as written words. Mr. Barrett Browning remembers gaining a very
early elementary knowledge of anatomy from comic illustrated rhymes
(now in the possession of their old friend, Mrs. Fraser Corkran) through
which his grandfather impressed upon him the names and position of the
principal bones of the human body.

Even more remarkable than his delight in reading was the manner in
which Mr. Browning read. He carried into it all the preciseness of the
scholar. It was his habit when he bought a book--which was generally
an old one allowing of this addition--to have some pages of blank paper
bound into it. These he filled with notes, chronological tables, or such
other supplementary matter as would enhance the interest, or assist the
mastering, of its contents; all written in a clear and firm though by
no means formal handwriting. More than one book thus treated by him
has passed through my hands, leaving in me, it need hardly be said,
a stronger impression of the owner's intellectual quality than the
acquisition by him of the finest library could have conveyed. One of the
experiences which disgusted him with St. Kitt's was the frustration
by its authorities of an attempt he was making to teach a negro boy
to read, and the understanding that all such educative action was
prohibited.

In his faculties and attainments, as in his pleasures and appreciations,
he showed the simplicity and genuineness of a child. He was not only
ready to amuse, he could always identify himself with children, his
love for whom never failed him in even his latest years. His more than
childlike indifference to pecuniary advantages had been shown in early
life. He gave another proof of it after his wife's death, when he
declined a proposal, made to him by the Bank of England, to assist in
founding one of its branch establishments in Liverpool. He never indeed,
personally, cared for money, except as a means of acquiring old, i.e.
rare books, for which he had, as an acquaintance declared, the scent
of a hound and the snap of a bulldog. His eagerness to posses