s little sketch should at least be free from
serious error, I made, the other day, a special pilgrimage to Vince's
birthplace--the pleasant town of Farnham in Surrey. I stood before the
lowly cottage in which he first drew breath; I sat in the little
room where his father and his mother taught him practical lessons
of truthfulness and sympathy; I looked into the little plain deal
cupboard his father made for him, in which he stored the books he
loved so well and studied so intently. I talked with his schoolfellows
and the companions of his boyish days, and listened to those who were
the chosen friends of his youth-hood, and I noted the brightening of
the eye, and the more fervid tones of the voice, as one after another
told me of the budding intellect, and of the germination of the warm
and tender spirit, of him they were all so proud of.

After a long continuance of cold and cheerless weather, the morning of
Saturday, the 26th of May, 1877, was bright and genial. An unclouded
sun, and a warm south-western wind, awoke the birds to melody, and
gave the flowers new fragrance. As the train bore me through pleasant
Surrey, the fields not only smiled--they absolutely seemed to laugh
with joy at the advent of the first day of summer, and when we stopped
at the pretty station of plutocratic Surbiton, the air was laden with
the perfume of lilacs and of hawthorn blossom. From a dense thicket,
nearly overhead, came cheerfully the melodious notes of "the careful
thrush," who, as Browning says--

"Sings his song thrice over,
Lest I should think he never could recapture
That first, fine, careless rapture."

As the train passes on, I see, beyond the silvery Thames, the stately
front of Hampton Court Palace. A little further on we pass Esher,
where, on a tree-girt hill, the lofty pediment of Claremont peeps
through the trees, and reminds me that here, sixty years ago, the
hopes of England were quenched by the death of the youthful Princess
Charlotte. Strange, that this house should have been the death-place
of the unthroned heiress of England, and, forty years afterwards, of
the dethroned crafty old French king, Louis Philippe.

When we stop at Woking Common, I feel at home. Here, half-a-century
ago, when there was not even a hut on the spot which is now a busy
town, I used to play as a boy. Yonder is the Basingstoke canal, where,
with willow wand and line of string from village shop, I used to
beguile the cre