" One can imagine him
at this period wandering with all the ardor of youthful passion through
the great galleries, not with the stolid stony gaze of a coldblooded
critic, but with that unmixed enthusiasm which so well becomes the
unwearied traveller in his buoyant days of experience among the unveiled
glories of genius now first revealed to his astonished vision.
He returned home in 1828, and went to reside at Cambridge, having been
entered, before his departure for the Continent, at Trinity College. It
is said that he cared little for academical reputation, and in the
severe scrutiny of examination he did not appear as a competitor for
accurate mathematical demonstrations. He knew better than those about
him where his treasures lay,--and to some he may have seemed a dreamer,
to others an indifferent student, perhaps. His aims were higher than the
tutor's black-board, and his life-thoughts ran counter to the usual
college-routine. Disordered health soon began to appear, and a too rapid
determination of blood to the brain often deprived him of the power of
much mental labor. At Florence he had been seized with a slight attack
of the same nature, and there was always a tendency to derangement of
the vital functions.
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