speak truth.’ He was sent early to the Free School at Ottery S. Mary, where he lived in his master’s house. This was the Rev. George May Coleridge, nephew of that poet who has made classic the lovely neighbourhood to all readers of English. He survived until 1847, dear to all the Froudes. (Perhaps it is not generally known that Mr. James Anthony Froude, then in deacon’s orders, was responsible for Mr. Coleridge’s funeral sermon at S. Mary Church, Torquay.) Hurrell was as happy at his first School as a dreamy rebel boy always subject to moods and to home-sickness could well be. Everything was done, at any rate, to keep him happy. His own memories of the green village, with its great minster and its bright stream, seem to have been pleasant ones. A lady who was but a young child during his last months at Dartington recalls his frank smile at drawing in a lottery a picture of Ottery Church, which she had coveted, lotteries not being abhorred then, as now, by Christian folk. Had the winner known of the little girl’s envy, he would certainly have parted with his treasure on the spot; for he was a born de-collector. Hurrell began, almost as soon as he could hold a pen, to draw well, and to write agreeable letters. At thirteen he was sent to Eton. A year or two before, that is, in or about 1814, he sat for his portrait to that lovable interesting man and capable artist, William Brockedon, Archdeacon Froude’s particular protégé and most grateful friend.[10] It may have been begun as one of many thank-offerings; for some reason, it was left unfinished. Brockedon was a patient person, by all accounts. Perhaps wild little Master Froude, for all his innocent looks, may have been, in the immortal words of Pet Marjorie, ‘whot human nature cant indure.’ The Archdeacon, too, was critical, and thought his friend happiest in sketch-work, and that to finish, with him, was, sometimes, to over-refine. Who could have foreseen that the abandoned canvas was long to take on unique accidental value to persons then unborn who should be interested in his sitter? For though that childish sitter was to live over a score of years longer, and endear himself to men of a certain school of thought for ever, there was no discoverable hand but William Brockedon’s to tell them how he looked. There was not known until the other day a single other portrait, not so much as a silhouette, of a draughtsman associated with so many, both at home and at College, who could draw. [Illustration: DARTINGTON PARSONAGE, AS IT WAS THROUGHOUT HURRELL FROUDE’S LIFETIME _From a water-colour drawing by Arthur Holdsworth Froude_]