‘I certainly was not made to sit at home in contented ignorance of the wonders of art and nature, nor can I believe that the restlessness of curiosity I feel was implanted in my disposition to be a source of uneasiness rather than of enjoyment. Under this conviction I peruse the authors of France and Italy, with the idea that the language I am now reading I may one day be compelled to speak, and that what is now a source of elegant and refined entertainment may be one day the medium through which I shall disclose my wants and obtain a supply of the necessaries of daily life. This is the most enchanting of my day dreams; it has been for some years past my inseparable companion. And, apt as are my inclinations to fluctuate, I cannot recollect this to have ever undergone the slightest abatement[34].’ The letter from which we have selected the above passage was written to his uncle in 1816; in another, written a few months later to his friend Mr Candler, he enters more fully into his difficulties and prospects. The earlier portion of the letter is well worth perusal for the insight it affords into the extent of his reading and the originality of his criticisms; but it is the concluding paragraph which is specially interesting to a biographer. We do not know to what influences the change was due, but it is evident that his mind was passing through a period of unrest; his old determinations had been, at least for the moment, uprooted, and he looked forward with uncertain eyes to an unknown future. ‘My disinclination to the Church,’ he says, ‘has grown from a motive into a reason.’ The Bar had evidently been suggested to him as the only alternative, and on that dismal prospect he dilates with unwonted bitterness. It would take him away from all the pursuits he loved most dearly, and put in their place ‘the routine of a barren and uninteresting occupation,’ in which not only would the best years of his life be wasted, but—and this is what he seems to have dreaded most—his loftier aspirations would be degraded, and, when he had become rich enough to return to literature, he would feel no inclination to do so. The Fellowship examination of 1818 having ended in Thirlwall’s election, he was free to go abroad, and at once started alone for Rome. At that time Niebuhr was Prussian Envoy there, and Bunsen his Secretary of Legation. Thirlwall was so fortunate as to bring with him a letter of introduction to Madame Bunsen, who had been a Miss Waddington, cousin to Professor Monk, and had married Bunsen about a year before Thirlwall’s visit. The following amusing letter from Madame Bunsen to her mother gives an interesting picture of Thirlwall in Rome: