g the mountains, Italian
literature claimed his attention, and he entered upon its study with all
the ardor of a young and earnest student. An Abbate who recognized his
genius encouraged him with his assistance in the difficult art of
Italian versification, and, after a very brief stay in Italy, at the age
of seventeen, he wrote several sonnets which attracted considerable
attention among scholars. Very soon after acquiring the Italian
language, the great Florentine poet opened to him his mystic visions.
Dante became his worship, and his own spirit responded to that of the
author of the "Divina Commedia."

His growing taste led him to admire deeply all that is noble in Art, and
he soon prized with enthusiasm the great pictures of the Venetian, the
Tuscan, and the Roman schools. "His eyes," says his father, "were fixed
on the best pictures with silent, intense delight." One can imagine him
at this period wandering with all the ardor of youthful passion through
the great galleries, not with the stolid stony gaze of a coldblooded
critic, but with that unmixed enthusiasm which so well becomes the
unwearied traveller in his buoyant days of experience among the unveiled
glories of genius now first revealed to his astonished vision.

He returned home in 1828, and went to reside at Cambridge, having been
entered, before his departure for the Continent, at Trinity College. It
is said that he cared little for academical reputation, and in the
severe scrutiny of examination he did not appear as a competitor for
accurate mathematical demonstrations. He knew better than those about
him where his treasures lay,--and to some he may have seemed a dreamer,
to others an indifferent student, perhaps. His aims were higher than the
tutor's black-board, and his life-thoughts ran counter to the usual
college-routine. Disordered health soon began to appear, and a too rapid
determination of blood to the brain often deprived him of the power of
much mental labor. At Florence he had been seized with a slight attack
of the same nature, and there was always a tendency to derangement of
the vital functions. Irregularity of circulation occasioned sometimes a
morbid depression of spirits, and his friends anxiously watched for
symptoms of returning health. In his third Cambridge year he grew
better, and all who knew and loved him rejoiced in his apparent recovery.

About this time, some of his poetical pieces were printed, but withheld
from publicati