at Eton; the business of education (for younger brothers were pressing on their heels) commenced to occupy his attention. Few men have given more thought to their children, or lavished more on their bringing up.
He lived partly in London, where he had taken a house in Sussex Gardens; partly at Little Bealings in the neighbourhood of Ipswich, where his father had bought a property called 'The Grove'; partly at Purfleet and at Southill in Bedfordshire, where he was the guest of the late Mr. William Whitbread, who, in his second marriage, became the husband of Mrs. Colvin's widowed half-sister, Mrs. Macan. Two summers were spent in the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Colvin's birthplace. In September, 1843, he made a tour in Scotland, revisiting his old home at St. Andrews and other familiar haunts, and sending to his wife a diary of his experiences. A glimpse of this diary may be hazarded here, for it gives some sketch and description of that ancient city, as Mr. Colvin, who had known it from 1812 to 1821, again found it in 1843. St. Andrews, in 1843, boasted 'a direct coach to Edinburgh, as well as two to Dundee; a going ahead quite unthought of in my early time.' As no one had told him of these coaches, 'I came in the antique manner, by coach to Cupar from Edinburgh, thence to St. Andrews by post chaise. Yet the old way was the most propitious to my purpose. I passed all the well-known towns and marks; the road to Dundee so often
