mfortably to the end of their lives,
and when mamma put hers in, which were meant for herself and papa, they
blazed away in the like manner." Before he was ten he could write, with
a really irritating precocity, that he had been "making some pictures
from a book called 'Les Francais peints par eux-memes.' ... It is full
of pictures of all classes, with a description of each in French. The
pictures are a little caricatured, but not much." Doubtless this was
only an echo from his mother, but it shows the atmosphere in which he
breathed. It must have been a good change for this art critic to be the
playmate of Mary Macdonald, their gardener's daughter at Barjarg, and to
sup with her family on potatoes and milk; and Fleeming himself attached
some value to this early and friendly experience of another class.

His education, in the formal sense, began at Jedburgh. Thence he went to
the Edinburgh Academy, where Clerk Maxwell was his senior and Tait his
classmate; bore away many prizes; and was once unjustly flogged by
Rector Williams. He used to insist that all his bad school-fellows had
died early, a belief amusingly characteristic of the man's consistent
optimism. In 1846 the mother and son proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Main,
where they were soon joined by the father, now reduced to inaction and
to play something like third fiddle in his narrow household. The
emancipation of the slaves had deprived them of their last resource
beyond the half-pay of a captain; and life abroad was not only desirable
for the sake of Fleeming's education, it was almost enforced by reasons
of economy. But it was, no doubt, somewhat hard upon the Captain.
Certainly that perennial boy found a companion in his son; they were
both active and eager, both willing to be amused, both young, if not in
years, then in character. They went out together on excursions and
sketched old castles, sitting side by side; they had an angry rivalry in
walking, doubtless equally sincere upon both sides; and indeed we may
say that Fleeming was exceptionally favoured, and that no boy had ever a
companion more innocent, engaging, gay, and airy. But although in this
case it would be easy to exaggerate its import, yet, in the Jenkin
family also, the tragedy of the generations was proceeding, and the
child was growing out of his father's knowledge. His artistic aptitude
was of a different order. Already he had his quick sight of many sides
of life; he already overflowed with