“The young one,” he writes to his sister, “is like his mamma, they say, and is going to be dark, which will be a good contrast to Herbert, who is a regular Saxon. I want his (Herbert’s) yellow hair to grow long that it may be done into a pigtail; I think it would look quaint and create a sensation among the Cockneys, but I’m afraid I shan’t get my own way. To return to the new arrival, you will be happy to hear that he inherits your talent for music; he is always meandering with his hands as if he was playing the violoncello; it is a positive fact, I assure you, and makes me laugh to bursting point. A—— must have been more struck with my performances than I had credited. I feel quite flattered to possess an infant phenomenon who played (or would have played) the violoncello, if we had let him, from his birth. In the meantime that instrument has been somewhat neglected by me. A——, the baby, and the partridges (what a conjunction), divide my allegiance. However, my music mania is as strong as ever, in spite of the rather excruciating tones which all beginners draw from the instrument: they tell me that the sounds resemble the bellowings of a bereaved cow; luckily the house is a large one.” He took to farming also, as another outlet for superfluous energy, but without much greater success than generally falls to the lot of amateurs. Indeed, his long winter absences from England kept him from gaining anything more than a superficial knowledge of agriculture, such as is disclosed in the following note to his mother, in answer to inquiries as to crops and prospects:— “Farming is better certainly this year than the last, but we farmers always grumble, as you know, and I don’t like to say anything until the new wheat is threshed. You ought to sow your tares and rye immediately, and they will do very well after potatoes; they ought to be well manured. If you mean by ‘rye’ Italian rye-grass, I don’t exactly know when it is best to sow it; in the spring I believe, but I have never had any yet, and you must ask about it. One thing I know, that it ought to have liquid manure, to be put on directly after cutting; this will give you a fresh crop in a little more than a month.” When the Volunteer movement began, he threw himself into it at once; for no man was more impatient of, or humiliated by, the periodical panics which used to seize the country. He helped to raise a corps in his own neighbourhood, of which he became captain, and went to one of the first classes for Volunteers at the School of Musketry, to make himself competent to teach his men. As to the result he writes:— “UNDERCLIFF, _1860_.