Old Friends at Cambridge and ElsewhereClark, John Willis
History
Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere
Clark, John Willis
University of Cambridge -- History
While these questions were pending between father and son, the pecuniary
embarrassments to which we have already alluded entered upon an acute
stage, and in 1829 the whole family left England for five years. If Mr
Milnes ever submitted his own actions to the test of rigorous
examination, he must have concluded that he had himself brought about
the very result which he was most anxious to prevent; for it was this
enforced residence on the Continent which, more than any other
influence, shaped the character of his son. Mr Milnes evidently wished
him to become a country gentleman like himself, and, if he must write,
to be ‘a pamphleteer on guano and on grain.’ Instead of this, while he
kept his loyalty to England with unbroken faith, he divested himself of
English narrowness, and acquired that intimate knowledge of the other
members of the European family, and, we may add, that catholicity of
taste, for which he was so conspicuous. Probably no public man of the
present century understood the Continent so well as Milnes. In many ways
he was a typical Englishman; but he was also a citizen of the world.
The first resting-place of the family was Boulogne, and there Milnes
made his first acquaintance with Frenchmen and their literature. The
romantic school was beginning to engross public attention, and Victor
Hugo—then, as afterwards, the ‘stormy voice of France’—became his
favourite French poet. But, great as was the interest which Milnes felt
in France, he was too eager for knowledge to be content with one
language and one literature, and, rejecting his father’s suggestion that
he should spend some time in Paris, he spent most of the summer and
autumn of 1830 at Bonn, in order to learn German. We suspect that he
must have taken this step at the suggestion of Thirlwall, for it was he
who introduced him to Professor Brandis, and probably also to the
veteran Niebuhr. Thence, his family having migrated to Milan, he crossed
the Alps, and made his first acquaintance with Italy, which became, we
might almost say, the country of his adoption. He felt a deep sympathy
for the Italian people in their aspirations for liberty, and though, as
was natural at his age, he enjoyed the society of the Austrian
vice-regal Court, he longed to see the foreigner expelled from Italy.
Other Italian cities were visited in due course, and, lastly, Rome.
Where-ever he went, he managed, with a skill that was peculiarly his
own, to know the most interesting people, and to be welcomed with equal
warmth by persons of the most opposite opinions. It was no small feat to
have known both Italians and Austrians at Milan; but at Rome, besides
his English acquaintances, he formed lasting friendships with the
Chevalier Bunsen and his family, and with Dr Wiseman, M. Rio, M.
Montalembert, and other catholics of distinction. The Church of Rome
must always have great attractions for a young man of deep feeling and
with no settled principles of faith, and we gather that Milnes was at
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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