’One thing that specially impressed me was his reverent appreciation of the good he had gained from older friends.  He certainly had not imbibed any of the indifference to the opinion of elders ascribed to the youth of this generation.  “Dear old tutor,” his uncles, Sir John Coleridge and Dr. Coleridge, to whom he looked up with almost filial reverence, the beloved Uncle Frank, whose holy life and death he dwelt on with a sort of awe, how gratefully and humbly he spoke of the help he had got from them!  He was full of enthusiasm about music, painting, and art in general.  He would flow on to willing listeners of Mendelssohn and other great composers, and when he found that we hoped to visit Italy he was just as eager about pictures.  He owned that both at Dresden and at Rome he had weakened his eyes by constant study of his favourite masters.

’Altogether he gave me the impression of having had a very happy youth and having enjoyed it thoroughly.  His Eton and Oxford life, the society of men of thought at his father’s house, home interests, foreign travel, art, happy days with his brother Jem in the Tyrol, were all entertained as pleasant memories, and yet he was able without conscious effort or struggle to put them all aside for his work’s sake.

’The Bishop kindly gave us a passage to Wellington in the “Southern Cross,” and Mr. Patteson went with us in charge of the vessel.  We were five days at sea.  I used to lie on the deck, and watch with amused interest the struggle going on between his student habits and his practical duties, which were peculiarly distasteful to him.  He was never quite well at sea, but was headachy and uncomfortable.  He was scrupulously neat and clean, and the dirt and stiffness displeased him—­how much we never knew, till he spoke out one day when very ill at our house in 1870.  He was not apt at teaching, but he used conscientiously to hear a young lad spell and read daily.  He would come up with some book of thought in his hand, and seemed buried in it, till he suddenly would remember he ought to be directing or overlooking in some way.  This would happen half a dozen times in an afternoon.

’He shrank at this time from finding fault.  It was a positive distress to him.  At Wellington we parted.  He seemed a little depressed, I remember, as to what use he would be.  I said:  “Why, you will be the son Timothy!  This was after some years of partially failing health, when these feelings had become habitual.  I do not think they existed in his earlier voyages so long waited for.”  His face brightened up at the thought.  “Yes, if I can release the Bishop of some of his anxieties, that will be enough."’

No doubt he was depressed at parting with the Chief Justice and Mrs. Martin, who were thoroughly home-like friends, and whose return was then uncertain.  His success as a sea-captain however encouraged him, and he wrote as follows on his return:—­