of which was to found at New Harmony—­I think, though I am not sure whether Frances Wright’s colony was not another, separate from that of New Harmony—­an establishment which was in some way or other to contribute to the emancipation of the slaves, mainly, I imagine, by showing that under proper management they were not unfitted for freedom.  The fate of that philanthropic scheme is too well known to make it necessary for me to rehearse the story of it here, imperfectly known to me as it is.  The upshot was, that my mother and brother were induced to go to Cincinnati and attempt other plans, the final result of which was also a failure.  I had had no share in these Transatlantic projects, being at the time a scholar at Winchester in the college of William of Wykeham.  But between quitting Winchester, at the age of eighteen, and going to Oxford, I had a period of liberty of nearly a twelvemonth, the greater part of which I devoted to accompanying my father on a visit to Cincinnati.  And there I became acquainted with Powers, a very few years only my senior, whom I found already the valued friend of my mother and brother.

He was at that time—­I well remember the look of him—­a tall, lanky, but remarkably handsome lad, somewhat awkward in person, but with a calm but at the same time intellectually expressive beauty of feature which marked him as one of Nature’s noblemen.  His eyes were the most noticeable point about him.  They were magnificent—­large, clear, well-opened, and expressive of calm thought and the working of the intellect rather than of shrewdness or passion.  His manner, I remember, was marked by an exceeding simpleness, and a sort of innocent and dignified straightforwardness which much impressed me.  Altogether, my acquaintance with him was a contribution of a new sort to the education of my mind.  I had passed eight years in the acquisition of those things which an English “gentleman’s education” is supposed to offer.  These things (in the year 1829) consisted in a very fair knowledge of Latin and Greek.  Unquestionably, the eight years which I had spent in learning those languages had brought with them other advantages and other teachings of an altogether priceless sort.  But what they professedly had taught me, what I then considered as the net result of my eight years at school, was a competent knowledge of Latin and Greek, and nothing else.  Now, here was a young man of my own age, or little more, about whose idiosyncrasy there was something especially simpatico to me, as the Italians say—­who knew nothing whatever of the only things which I knew, but knew a whole world of things of which I was profoundly ignorant.  I was (of course) full of prejudices also—­ecclesiastical prejudices, class prejudices, political prejudices, caste prejudices—­all of which were as unintelligible to my new friend as they would have been to a red Indian.  He was singularly free from prejudice of any kind—­a sort of original, blank-paper mind, on which nothing