They seemed to pass a fresh
custom-house every day, but, by tipping the searchers, generally got
through without inconvenience. The bread was sour and the Italian
butter rank and cheesy--often uneatable. Beggars ran after the
carriage all day long and when they got nothing jeered at the
travellers and called them heretics. They spent half the winter in
Rome, and the children were taken up to the top of St. Peter's as a
treat to celebrate their father's birthday. In the Sistine Chapel
they saw the cardinals kiss the toe of Pope Gregory XVI, and in the
Corso, in broad daylight, they saw a monk come rolling down a
staircase like a sack of potatoes, bundled into the street by a man
and his wife. The second half of the winter was spent in Naples.
This early introduction to the land which he always thought of and
often referred to as his second country made an ineffaceable
impression upon him.
In January, 1846, he went to school at Allesley, near Coventry,
under the Rev. E. Gibson. He seldom referred to his life there,
though sometimes he would say something that showed he had not
forgotten all about it.
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