After this adventure, the party broke up, James Patteson returning home with Mr. Hornby, while Coley, who hoped to obtain a Fellowship at Merton, and wished in the meantime to learn German thoroughly in order to study Hebrew by the light of German scholarship, repaired to Dresden for the purpose; revelling, by the way, on the pictures and glass at Munich, descriptions of which fill three or four letters.  He remained a month at Dresden, reading for an hour a day with a German master, and spending many hours besides in study, recreating himself with German newspapers at the cafe where he dined, and going to the play in the evening to hear colloquialisms.  The picture galleries were his daily enjoyment, and he declared the Madonna di San Sisto fully equal to his anticipations.  There is that about the head of the Virgin which I believe one sees in no other picture, a dignity and beauty with a mixture of timidity quite indescribable.’

Returning home for Christmas, Coley started again in January 1851, in charge of a pupil, the son of Lord John Thynne, with whom he was to go through Italy.  The journey was made by sea from Marseilles to Naples, where the old regime was still in force.  Shakespeare and Humboldt were seized; and after several hours’ detention on the score of the suspicious nature of his literature, Mr. Patteson was asked for a bribe.

The climate was in itself a great charm to one always painfully susceptible to cold; and, after duly dwelling on the marvels of Vesuvius and Pompeii, the travellers went on to Rome.  There the sculptures were Coley’s first delight, and he had the advantage of hints from Gibson on the theory of his admiration, such as suited his love of analysis.  He poured forth descriptions of statues and pictures in his letters:  sometimes apologising.—­’You must put up with a very stupid and unintelligible sermon on art.  The genius loci would move the very stones to preach on such a theme.  Again:  The worst is, that I ought to have months instead of days to see Rome in.  I economise my time pretty well; but yet I find every night that I can only do a little of what I propose in the morning; and as for my Italian, an hour and a half a day is on an average more than I give to it.  I suffer a good deal from weakness in the eyes; it prevents my working at night with comfort.  I have a master every other day.  I tried to draw, but it hurt me so much after looking about all day that I despair of doing anything, though I don’t abandon the idea altogether.’

There are many letters on the religious state of Rome.  The apparently direct supplications to the Saints, the stories told in sermons of desperate sinners—­saved through some lingering observance paid to the Blessed Virgin, and the alleged abuse of the Confessional, shocked Patteson greatly, and therewith he connected the flagrant evils of the political condition of Rome at that time, and arrived at conclusions strongly adverse to Roman Catholicism as such, though he retained uninjured the Catholic tone of his mind.