fight about the moral
tendencies afterwards."

"In fact," said I laughingly, "you mean to have high old times."

"Neither higher nor lower," was the answer, "than those people whom I can
find to have been the best in all ages."

Accordingly Ernest left England and visited "almost all parts of the
world, but only staying in those places where he found the inhabitants
unusually good-looking and agreeable." "At last in the spring of 1867 he
returned, his luggage stained with the variation of each hotel
advertisement 'twixt here and Japan. He looked very brown and strong,
and so well-favoured that it almost seemed as if he must have caught some
good looks from the people among whom he had been staying."

We are not told what particular countries Ernest went to; Japan is
mentioned, but less because Ernest went there than because the name of a
distant place was wanted to justify and complete the echo of the
description of Sir Walter Blunt in I. _Hen. IV._ i. 64:

Stained with the variation of each soil
Betwixt that Holmedon and this seat of ours.

Butler confided to me verbally that Ernest visited, among other places,
Piora, and that he stayed there "when the mowing grass was about." {8}

36. Oil Painting: inscribed, "S. Butler. Sketch of his own head. April
1878."

This is one of the series of portraits of himself referred to in the note
to no. 7. Another of these later portraits was given after his death to
Christchurch, New Zealand; and another to the Schools, Shrewsbury. This
one was given by Butler to me soon after it was painted, and it remained
in my possession till 1911, when I gave it to St. John's College. It is
reproduced as the frontispiece to vol. I. of the _Memoir_.

37. Oil Sketch: Calonico.

_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. v. On a panel with no. 38, Rossura, on the
other side.

38. Oil Sketch: Rossura. The altar by the porch of the church. 1878.

On a panel with no. 37, Calonico, on the other side.

39. Oil sketch on a panel: Rossura, from inside the porch looking out.

"I know few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura
church." (_Alps and Sanctuaries_, ch. iv.)

"The church is built on a slope, and the porch, whose entrance is on a
lower level than that of the floor of the church, contains a flight of
steps leading up to the church door. The porch is there to shelter the
steps, on and around which the people congregate and gossip before and
after servic