Sometimes he would wander in the court at night, annoying the sleepers by his tapping on the stone flags. Was it as a just retribution that one night his sleep was hopelessly broken by the continuous singing of a nightingale near his window? At last he could stand it no longer, and sought for a missile to drive the bird away; his soap proving the only available ammunition, he hurled it at the offending mistrel, and routed him completely. But though the blind man achieved his purpose without injury to the nightingale, later he had a long and futile hunt for his cherished bit of soap, and his lusty voice was heard echoing along the historic Cambridge walls, ‘Oh, I say, who will lend me some soap?’ until that essential was provided by a neighbour. He worked in the mornings, and between tea and dinner, the afternoons were given up to exercise, and the evenings to conversations interminable. [Sidenote: Work and Walks.] His favourite walk was over the Gog Magogs, the Cambridge Hills. They are perhaps the lowest hills to be dignified with the name, but he insisted that the air was purer on their summit than anywhere else, because there was practically nothing between him and the Ural Mountains. He would call attention to the outlook towards the distant towers of Ely Cathedral, and invariably paused at certain points ‘to look at the view.’ Through life he took the keenest joy in walking to some place where the scenery was beautiful, and, helped by his friends’ description, he would see with their eyes. His love of Nature was intense; he would often describe a sunset with such vividness that he himself forgot whether he had actually seen it before he was blind, or had only beheld it in his mind’s eye. The fascination political economy had for him grew as he worked. To him it was never the dry and impersonal science which freezes so many enthusiasms, but the science which is necessary knowledge for the statesman who wishes to better the condition of the man furthest down. We have seen how Fawcett’s interest in the market folk at Salisbury began when he was a child. The sight of many industrious, hard-working people unable to support themselves in spite of the greatest frugality, and having nothing better to look forward to than the poorhouse, had left an indelible impression; he wanted to free these people so that they might have rational lives with a fair return for their hard work. His father’s political example and his own sympathetic nature and wish to serve had made him from his youth a Radical. He had a passion for justice and a zeal to redress wrongs and to liberate the poor from the bondage in which their ignorance kept them. He regarded political economy and kindred studies as means to his end, and Parliament as the ultimate stronghold, from which he could direct his campaign. This was his prime object, and while achieving it he gathered on his way all the happiness and merriment that was honourably to be had.