A Writers Recollections, vol 1 | Page 7

reject the warning voice of that man, if he entreats you solemnly not to take a precipitate step. Give yourself time. Try a change of scene. Go for a month or two to France or Germany. I am sure you wish to satisfy your friends that you are acting wisely, considerately, in giving up what you have.
_Spartam quam nactus es, orna_--was Niebuhr's word to me when once, about 1825, wearied with diplomatic life, I resolved to throw up my place and go--not to New Zealand, but to a German University. Let me say that concluding word to you and believe me, my dear young friend,
Your sincere and affectionate friend
BUNSEN.
P.S.--If you feel disposed to have half an hour's quiet conversation with me alone, pray come to-day at six o'clock, and then dine with us quietly at half-past six. I go to-morrow to Windsor Castle for four days.
Nothing could have been kinder, nothing more truly felt and meant. But the young make their own experience, and my father, with the smiling open look which disarmed opposition, and disguised all the time a certain stubborn independence of will, characteristic of him through life, took his own way. He went to New Zealand, and, now that it was done, the interest and sympathy of all his family and friends followed him. Let me give here the touching letter which Arthur Stanley, his father's biographer, wrote to him the night before he left England.
UNIV. COLL., OXFORD, _Nov. 4, 1847._
Farewell!--(if you will let me once again recur to a relation so long since past away) farewell--my dearest, earliest, best of pupils. I cannot let you go without asking you to forgive those many annoyances which I fear I must have unconsciously inflicted upon you in the last year of your Oxford life--nor without expressing the interest which I feel, and shall I trust ever feel, beyond all that I can say, in your future course. You know--or perhaps you hardly can know--how when I came back to Oxford after the summer of 1842, your presence here was to me the stay and charm of my life--how the walks--the lectures--the Sunday evenings with you, filled up the void which had been left in my interests[1], and endeared to me all the beginnings of my College labors. That particular feeling, as is natural, has passed away--but it may still be a pleasure to you to feel in your distant home that whatever may be my occupations, nothing will more cheer and support me through them than the belief that in that new world your dear father's name is in you still loved and honored, and bringing forth the fruits which he would have delighted to see.
Farewell, my dear friend. May God in whom you trust be with you.
Do not trouble yourself to answer this--only take it as the true expression of one who often thinks how little he has done for you in comparison with what he would.
Ever yours,
A. P. STANLEY.
[Footnote 1: By the sudden death of Doctor Arnold.]
But, of course, the inevitable happened. After a few valiant but quite futile attempts to clear his land with his own hands, or with the random labor he could find to help him, the young colonist fell back on the education he had held so cheap in England, and bravely took school-work wherever in the rising townships of the infant colony he could find it. Meanwhile his youth, his pluck, and his Oxford distinctions had attracted the kindly notice of the Governor, Sir George Grey, who offered him his private secretaryship--one can imagine the twinkle in the Governor's eye, when he first came across my father building his own hut on his section outside Wellington! The offer was gratefully refused. But another year of New Zealand life brought reconsideration. The exile begins to speak of "loneliness" in his letters home, to realize that it is "collision" with other kindred minds that "kindles the spark of thought," and presently, after a striking account of a solitary walk across unexplored country in New Zealand, he confesses that he is not sufficient for himself, and that the growth and vigor of the intellect were, for him, at least, "not compatible with loneliness."
A few months later, Sir William Denison, the newly appointed Governor of Van Diemen's Land, hearing that a son of Arnold of Rugby, an Oxford First Class man, was in New Zealand, wrote to offer my father the task of organizing primary education in Van Diemen's Land.
He accepted--yet not, I think, without a sharp sense of defeat at the hands of Mother Earth!--set sail for Hobart, and took possession of a post that might easily have led to great things. His father's fame preceded him, and he was warmly welcomed. The salary was good and the field free. Within a few months