That Long vacation of study was a great effort, and he felt it tedious and irksome, all the more from a weakness that affected his eyelids, and, though it did not injure his sight, often rendered reading and writing painful.  Slight ailments concurred with other troubles and vexations to depress his spirits; and besides these outward matters, he seems to have had a sense of not coming up to his ideal.  His standard was pitched higher than that of most men:  his nature was prone to introspection, and his constitutional inertness rendered it so difficult for him to live up to his own views, that he was continually dissatisfied with himself; and this, in spite of his sweet unselfish temper, gave his manner at home an irritability, and among strangers a reserve—­the very reverse of the joyous merry nature which used to delight in balls, parties, and gaieties.

Though an ardent friend, he became disinclined to enter into general society; nor was the distaste ever entirely overcome, though he never failed to please by the charm alike of natural manner and of Christian courtesy; the same spirit of gentleness and kindness very soon prevailed in subduing, even in family life, any manifestation of the tender points of a growing character.

In the autumn of 1849, he obtained a second class in the school of Literae humaniores, a place that fairly represented his abilities as compared with those of others.  When the compulsory period of study was at an end, his affection for Oxford and enjoyment of all that it afforded increased considerably, though he never seems to have loved the University quite as well as Eton.

As he intended to take Holy Orders, he did not give up his residence there; but his first use of his leisure was to take a journey on the Continent with his brother and Mr. Hornby.  It was then that, as he afterwards wrote, his real education began, partly from the opening of his mind by the wonders of nature and art, and partly from the development of his genius for philology.  Aptitude for language had already shown itself when his sister Fanny had given him some German lessons; and even on his first halt at Cologne, he received the compliment, ‘Sie sprechen Deutsch wohl’ and he found himself talking to a German on one side and a Frenchman on the other.

His letters throughout his foreign travels are more copious than ever, but are chiefly minute descriptions of what he saw, such as would weary the reader who does not want a guide-book even full of individuality.  Yet they cannot be passed by without noticing how he fulfilled the duty of study and endeavour at appreciation which everyone owes to great works of art, instead of turning aside with shallow conceit if he do not enter into them at first sight.