'I have often wondered,' adds Fitzjames, 'at my own vehement feelings on
these subjects, and I am not altogether prepared to say that they are
not more or less foolish. I have never seen war. I have never heard a
shot fired in anger, and I have never had my courage put to any proof
worth speaking of. Have I any right to talk of streets running with
blood? Is it not more likely that, at a pinch, I might myself run in
quite a different direction? It is one of the questions which will
probably remain unanswered for ever, whether I am a coward or not. But
that has nothing really to do with the question. If I am a coward, I am
contemptible: but Louis Philippe was a coward and contemptible whether I
am a coward or not; and my feelings on the whole of this subject are, at
all events, perfectly sincere, and are the very deepest and most
genuine feelings I have.' Fitzjames's only personal experience of
revolutionary proceedings was on the famous 10th of April, when he was
in London, but saw only special constables. The events of the day
confirmed him in the doctrine that every disorganised mob is more likely
to behave in the spirit of the lowest and most contemptible units than
in the spirit of what is highest in them.

I can only add one little anecdote of those days. A friend of my
brother's rushed into his rooms obviously to announce some very exciting
piece of news. Is the mob triumphant in Paris? 'I don't know,' was the
reply, 'but a point has been decided in the Gorham case.' Good
evangelical as Fitzjames then was, he felt that there were more
important controversies going on than squabbles over baptismal
regeneration. A curious set of letters written in his first vacation to
his friend Dr. Kitchin show, however, that he then took an eager
interest in this doctrine. He discusses it at great length in the
evangelical sense, with abundant quotations of texts.

While interested in these matters, winning fame at the Union and
enjoying the good opinion of the apostles, Fitzjames was failing in a
purely academical sense. He tried twice for a scholarship at Trinity,
and both times unsuccessfully, though he was not very far from success.
The failure excluded him, as things then were, from the possibility of a
fellowship, and a degree became valueless for its main purpose. He
resolved, therefore, to go abroad with my father, who had to travel in
search of health. He passed the winter of 1850-1 in Paris, where he
learnt French, a