His desire, when he first made it known, was not encouraged. 'My wishes,' he said, 'were knocked on the head in a calmer manner than I could have expected from my somewhat rapid but too indulgent sire.' He lingered on at Bradenham till even his literary work had to end. He could not 'write a line without effort,' and he wandered aimlessly about the woods; 'solitude and silence' not making his existence easy, but at least tolerable. [Sidenote: FOREIGN TOUR] The objection to his travelling had been perhaps financial. If this was the difficulty it was removed by his friends the Austens, who, we are briefly told, came to his assistance and enabled him to carry out his purpose. He found a companion ready to go with him in Mr. William Meredith, a young man of talent and good fortune who was engaged to be married to his sister. They started in June 1830, and their adventures are related in a series of brilliant and charming letters to his family, letters which show the young Disraeli no longer in the mythological drapery of 'Vivian Grey' and 'Contarini Fleming,' but under his own hand as he actually was. Spain was their first object. The Disraelis retained their pride in their Spanish descent in a dim and distant fashion, and had not forgotten that in right of blood they were still Spanish nobles. Steam navigation was in its infancy, but small paddle-wheeled vessels ran from London to Cork and Dublin, touching at Falmouth, from which outward-bound ships took their departure. They reached Falmouth with no worse adventure than a rough passage, and Disraeli was flattered to find that the family fame had so far preceded him. He met a Dr. Cornish there, who was full of admiration for 'Vivian Grey,' 'knows my father's works by heart and thinks our revered sire the greatest man that ever lived.' From Gibraltar on July 1 he wrote to his father himself:-- 'The rock is a wonderful place, with a population infinitely diversified--Moors with costumes radiant as a rainbow in an Eastern melodrama, Jews with gabardines and skull caps, Genoese highlanders and Spaniards whose dress is as picturesque as those of the sons of Ivor.... In the garrison are all your works, in the merchants' library the greater part. Each possesses the copy of another book supposed to be written by a member of our family which is looked upon at Gibraltar as one of the masterpieces of the nineteenth century. At first I apologised and talked of youthful blunders and all that, really being ashamed, but finding them, to my astonishment, sincere, and fearing they were stupid enough to adopt my last opinion, I shifted my position just in time, looked very grand, and passed myself off for a child of the sun, like the Spaniards in Peru.'