And so was mine. They made the female fashions for 1851 quite deplorable by contrast--especially the shoes, and the way of dressing the hair; we almost came to the conclusion that female beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. It awes and chastens one so! and wakes up the knight-errant inside! even the smartest French boots can't do this! not the pinkest silken hose in all Paris! Not all the frills and underfrills and wonderfrills that M. Paul Bourget can so eloquently describe! My father had taken a house for us in Brunswick Square, next to the Foundling Hospital. He was about to start an English branch of the Vougeot-Conti firm in the City. I will not trouble the reader with any details about this enterprise, which presented many difficulties at first, and indeed rather crippled our means. [Illustration: "'QUAND ON PERD, PAR TRISTE OCCURRENCE, SON ESPÉRANCE, ET SA GAÎTÉ, LE REMÈDE AU MÉLANCOLIQUE C'EST LA MUSIQUE ET LA BEAUTÉ'" ] My mother was anxious that I should go to one of the universities, Oxford or Cambridge; but this my father could not afford. She had a great dislike to business--and so had I; from different motives, I fancy. I had the wish to become a man of science--a passion that had been fired by M. Dumollard, whose special chemistry class at the Pension Brossard, with its attractive experiments, had been of the deepest interest to me. I have not described it because Barty did not come in. Fortunately for my desire, my good father had great sympathy with me in this; so I was entered as a student at the Laboratory of Chemistry at University College, close by--in October, 1851--and studied there for two years, instead of going at once into my father's business in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, which would have pleased him even more. At about the same time Barty was presented with a commission in the Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, and joined immediately. Nothing could have been more widely apart than the lives we led, or the society we severally frequented. I lived at home with my people; he in rooms on a second floor in St. James's Street; he had a semi-grand piano, and luxurious furniture, and bookcases already well filled, and nicely colored lithograph engravings on the walls--beautiful female faces--the gift of Lady Archibald, who had superintended Barty's installation with kindly maternal interest, but little appreciation of high art. There were also foils, boxing-gloves, dumbbells, and Indian clubs; and many weapons, ancient and modern, belonging more especially to his own martial profession. They were most enviable quarters. But he often came to see us in Brunswick Square, and dined with us once or twice a week, and was made much of--even by my father, who thoroughly disapproved of everything about him except his own genial and agreeable self, which hadn't altered in the least.