256 PRÆTERITA-II

and broken white light of storm round the distant gate and scarcely visible church, were but too true symbols of the time that was coming upon us; but neither he nor I were given to reading omens, or dreading them. I suppose he had been struck by the power of the drawing, and he always liked soldiers. I was disappointed, and saw for the first time clearly that my father’s joy in Rubens and Sir Joshua could never become sentient of Turner’s microscopic touch. But I was entirely grateful for his purpose, and very thankful to have any new Turner drawing whatsoever; and as at home the “Gosport,” so in St. Aldate’s the “Winchelsea,” was the chief recreation of my fatigued hours.

14. This Turner gift, however, was only complimentary. The same day my father transferred into my name in the stocks as much as would bring in at least £200 a year, and watched with some anxiety the use I should make of this first command of money. Not that I had ever been under definite restriction about it: at Oxford I ran what accounts with the tradesmen I liked, and the bills were sent in to my mother weekly; there was never any difficulty or demur on either side, and there was nothing out of the common way in Oxford I wanted to buy, except the engraving of Turner’s Grand Canal, for my room wall,-and Monsieur Jabot, the first I ever saw of Töpffer’s rival-less caricatures,¹ one day when I had a headache. For anything on which my state or comfort in the least depended, my father was more disposed to be extravagant than I; but he had always the most curious suspicion of my taste for minerals, and only the year before, in the summer term, was entirely vexed and discomfited at my giving eleven shillings for a piece of Cornish chalcedony. That I never thought of buying a mineral without telling him

¹ [Histoire de M. Jabot. The character reappears in the Voyages en Zigzag. For a further reference to Töpffer, see below, § 210 n.; and for other notices of him, see Love’s Meinie (Vol. XXV. p. 115 n.) and Art of England, § 145 (Vol. XXXIII. p. 362).]

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