n an unusually serene and happy
home. In _Development_ he tells how, at five years of age, he was made
to understand the main facts of the Trojan War by his father's clever
use of the cat, the dogs, the pony in the stable, and the page-boy, to
impersonate the heroes of that ancient conflict. Latin declensions were
taught the child by rhymes concocted by his father as memory-easing
devices. Stories and even lessons were made intelligible and vivid by
colored maps and comic drawings. Until the boy was fourteen, his
schooling was of the most casual sort, his only formal training being
such as he received in the comparatively unimportant three or four years
he spent, after he was ten, at Mr. Ready's private school. His real
education came, through all his early life, from his home. What would
now be called nature-study he pursued ardently and on his own initiative
in the home garden and neighboring fields. His love for animals was
inherited from his mother and fostered by her. He used to keep, says
Mrs. Orr in her account of his life, "owls and monkeys, magpies and
hedge-hogs, an eagle, and even a couple of large snakes, constantly
bringing home the more portable animals in his pockets and transferring
them to his mother for immediate care." Browning says that his faculty
of observation at this time would not have disgraced a Seminole Indian.
In the matter of reading he was not entirely without advice and
guidance, but was, on the whole, allowed unusual freedom of choice. He
afterwards told Mrs. Orr that Milton, Quarles, Voltaire, Mandeville, and
Horace Walpole were the authors in whom, as a boy, he particularly
delighted. His love for art was established and developed by visits to
the Dulwich picture gallery, of which he afterwards wrote to Miss
Barrett with "love and gratitude" because he had been allowed to go
there before the age prescribed by the rules, and had thus learned to
know "a wonderful Rembrandt," a Watteau, "three triumphant Murillos," a
Giorgione Music Lesson, and various Poussins. His marked early
susceptibility to music is evidenced by an incident narrated by Mr.
Sharp: "One afternoon his mother was playing in the twilight to herself.
She was startled to hear a sound behind her. Glancing round she beheld a
little white figure distinct against an oak bookcase, and could just
discern two large wistful eyes looking earnestly at her. The next moment
the child had sprung into her arms, sobbing passionately at he