were spent in the galleries; the mother now as ever leading him on in all noble culture. 'Richard,' writes his brother, 'intensely enjoyed the artistic atmosphere of the place.' He learned to recognise the different schools and artists by patiently looking at their works.
At Florence, too, Richard first entered the world. The mother took care that the best houses should be open to her son. So to balls, Richard Bourke and his next brother went; and to all the haunts of men and women in that friendly society of winter refugees. 'Before he returned to England,' writes his brother, 'he had become a man.'
This was in May 1840. Richard, now in his nineteenth year, set up a hunter out of his slender allowance, with an occasional second horse — a sufficiently unpretending stud, but one which he made the most of by hard riding and knowledge of the country. In December he received a captain's commission in the Kildare Militia, of which his great-uncle, the Earl of Mayo, was colonel. In 1841 he entered Trinity College, Dublin, but did not reside; and, after the usual course of study with a tutor, took an uneventful degree. During this time he lived much with his grand-uncle, the Earl of Mayo, at Palmerstown, in County Kildare. Hayes and County Meath begin to fade into the distance. But in 1842 the death of a dearly-loved brother, from the after-effects of a Roman fever, called forth a burst of home feeling, and is recorded in a little poem, which retains the pathos of
