ve it on Fleeming's word that what he did
was full of ingenuity--only, as if by some cross destiny, useless. These
disappointments he not only took with imperturbable good humour, but
rejoiced with a particular relish over his nephew's success in the same
field. "I glory in the professor," he wrote to his brother; and to
Fleeming himself, with a touch of simple drollery, "I was much pleased
with your lecture, but why did you hit me so hard with Conisure's"
(connoisseur's, _quasi_ amateur's) "engineering? Oh, what
presumption!--either of you or myself!" A quaint, pathetic figure,
this of uncle John, with his dung-cart and his inventions; and the
romantic fancy of his Mexican house; and his craze about the Lost
Tribes, which seemed to the worthy man the key of all perplexities; and
his quiet conscience, looking back on a life not altogether vain, for he
was a good son to his father while his father lived, and when evil days
approached, he had proved himself a cheerful Stoic.

It followed from John's inertia that the duty of winding up the estate
fell into the hands of Charles. He managed it with no more skill than
might be expected of a sailor ashore, saved a bare livelihood for John
and nothing for the rest. Eight months later he married Miss Jackson;
and with her money bought in some two-thirds of Stowting. In the
beginning of the little family history which I have been following to so
great an extent, the Captain mentions, with a delightful pride: "A Court
Baron and Court Leet are regularly held by the Lady of the Manor, Mrs.
Henrietta Camilla Jenkin"; and indeed the pleasure of so describing his
wife was the most solid benefit of the investment; for the purchase was
heavily encumbered, and paid them nothing till some years before their
death. In the meanwhile, the Jackson family also, what with wild sons,
an indulgent mother, and the impending emancipation of the slaves, was
moving nearer and nearer to beggary; and thus of two doomed and
declining houses, the subject of this memoir was born, heir to an estate
and to no money, yet with inherited qualities that were to make him
known and loved.

CHAPTER II

1833-1851

Birth and childhood--Edinburgh--Frankfort-on-the-Main--Paris--The
Revolution of 1848--The Insurrection--Flight to Italy--Sympathy with
Italy--The insurrection in Genoa--A Student in Genoa--The lad and his
mother.

Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (Fleeming, pronounced _Flemming_,