My brother died on the 23rd of December, 1834, and was buried at Bruges, in the Protestant portion of the city cemetery. Had his life been much prolonged, I think that that of my mother must have sunk under the burthen laid upon it. I hastened to cross the Channel as soon as I heard of my brother’s death, but did not arrive in time for his funeral. A few days later I was, I find, consulting a Bruges physician, a Dr. Herbout, whom I still remember perfectly well, about the health of my father, which had recently been causing my mother some anxiety. Herbout was an old army doctor who had served under Napoleon. It is probable that he was more of a surgeon than a physician. His opinion was that my father’s condition, though not satisfactory, did not indicate any cause for immediate alarm. I remained at Bruges till the first week in April. That is to say, the Château d’Hondt was my home during those months, but the monotony of it was varied by frequent visits to Ostend, which Mrs. Fauche always found the means of making agreeable. One week of the time also was spent in a little tour through those parts of Belgium which I had not yet seen, in company with my old friend, and the reader’s old acquaintance, Fanny Bent. It was an oddly constituted travelling party--the young man full of strength, activity, and eagerness to see everything that indefatigable exertion could show him, and the very plain, Quaker-like, middle-aged old maid, absolutely new to Continental ways and manners and habits. Yet few people, I think, have ever seen the many interesting sights of the region we travelled over more completely than I and Fanny Bent. The number of towers (Antwerp among them) to the tops of which I took her, as recorded in my diary, seems preposterous. But Fanny Bent bravely stuck to her work, and where I led she followed. I have since squired many fairer and younger dames, but never one so bravely determined on doing all that was to be done. And very much we both enjoyed it. Almost immediately after my return from this little excursion I received a letter from an old Wykehamist schoolfellow, the Rev. George Hall, of Magdalen, son of the head of Pembroke at Oxford, offering me a mastership in King Edward’s Grammar School, at Birmingham. The head master of that school was at that time Dr. Jeune, a Pembroke man, and thence a close friend of George Hall, who himself held one of the masterships, which he was about to resign. The salary of the mastership offered me was 200_l._ a year, with, of course, prospects of advancement. I at once determined to accept it, and with the promptitude which in those days characterised me (at least in all cases in which promptitude involved immediate locomotion), I decided to leave Bruges for Birmingham on the morrow. I slept at Ostend the next night, and the following day crossed to Dover with my friend Captain Smithett, of the _Arrow_, “the only other passengers,” says my diary, “being a maniac and a corpse.”