a couple of legs the
size of life drawn from one of Raphael's cartoons." His holidays were
spent in sketching; his evenings, when they were free, at the theatre.
Here at the opera he discovered besides a taste for a new art, the art
of music; and it was, he wrote, "as if he had found out a heaven on
earth." "I am so anxious that whatever he professes to know, he should
really perfectly possess," his mother wrote, "that I spare no pains";
neither to him nor to myself, she might have added. And so when he
begged to be allowed to learn the piano, she started him with
characteristic barbarity on the scales; and heard in consequence
"heart-rending groans" and saw "anguished claspings of hands" as he lost
his way among their arid intricacies.

In this picture of the lad at the piano there is something, for the
period, girlish. He was indeed his mother's boy; and it was fortunate
his mother was not altogether feminine. She gave her son a womanly
delicacy in morals, to a man's taste--to his own taste in later
life--too finely spun, and perhaps more elegant than healthful. She
encouraged him besides in drawing-room interests. But in other points
her influence was manlike. Filled with the spirit of thoroughness, she
taught him to make of the least of these accomplishments a virile task;
and the teaching lasted him through life. Immersed as she was in the
day's movements, and buzzed about by leading Liberals, she handed on to
him her creed in politics: an enduring kindness for Italy, and a
loyalty, like that of many clever women, to the Liberal party with but
small regard to men or measures. This attitude of mind used often to
disappoint me in a man so fond of logic; but I see now how it was
learned from the bright eyes of his mother, and to the sound of the
cannonades of 1848. To some of her defects, besides, she made him heir.
Kind as was the bond that united her to her son, kind, and even pretty,
she was scarce a woman to adorn a home; loving as she did to shine;
careless as she was of domestic, studious of public graces. She probably
rejoiced to see the boy grow up in somewhat of the image of herself,
generous, excessive, enthusiastic, external; catching at ideas,
brandishing them when caught; fiery for the right, but always fiery;
ready at fifteen to correct a consul, ready at fifty to explain to any
artist his own art.

The defects and advantages of such a training were obvious in Fleeming
throughout life. His thoroughnes