At the Union , the politically-minded were holding forth on Russell and Palmerston :sx on Bentinck and Disraeli :sx on the Bank Charter Act , the new Factory Act , the famine in Ireland .sx For the literary there were Vanity Fair and The Princess and a host of other novelties to add to their own writings and societies and papers and minutes-of-the-last-meeting :sx for the sporting there were horses and hounds , boxing and football ; there was the river with its bare willow trees :sx the shouting coaches on the tow-path :sx the smooth passing of the eights .sx And through it all , the ordinary individuals like Frank went their own ways of excitement and boredom , walking and talking , riding and rowing , drinking and reading , while the trees round the meadows grew bare , and white patches of frost spread over the grass by night , and ebbed back again in the morning with the long , retreating shadows .sx Once a week he hunted , rising in a chilly greyness and jogging home in the evening through damp lanes that smelled of Autumn :sx he walked in the muddy paths beyond Marston , or on Cumnor or Shotover , among fields and hedges and villages that ignored the new world of telegraphs and railways :sx he drank in noisy rooms and walked home with a swimming head through streets that were empty and dark and ringing .sx He read large books that bored him greatly :sx he wrote essays that bored his tutors still more ; he made lists of things he must do some day very soon - and suddenly it was the end of the term , and he was home again with his mother and Gerald , shooting rabbits in the grey , cold park and kicking is heels through long winter evenings .sx When he met Mary they were easy and natural and unmoved .sx After all , it seemed that his mother had been right to smile .sx Christmas passed , and the New Year - how strange to write 1848 - and then he was back at Oxford .sx A week of snow transformed the town to a fantastic vision of white and grey , some mediaeval stronghold of tower and turrets and gargoyles all wreathed and covered with whiteness .sx Then the snow was gone :sx there were tales of floods along the Thames :sx the floods were gone , and the world was clean and young , with buds on the bushes and new green on the hills .sx There came the last awful weeks of struggling to re-capture the slipping days , and then it was Easter :sx it was the summer term , with heavy green trees banked up behind the buildings , fields yellow with buttercups , bushes white with may , long twilight evenings when the bats flickered over the grey Cherwell .sx In the middle of the term he went down for a week , for Gerald's wedding :sx a week when his home was transformed with life and bustle , and the Rawton's untidy grounds trimmed , their old house swept and garnished .sx The wedding-service brought his old emotions surging back , but the wedding feast allayed his sorrow .sx Yet before he returned to Oxford he saw his mother packing her belongings - she was going to settle in Bath - and realised that in future he must visit his home as his brother's guest .sx A few hectic weeks :sx long days of schools :sx a day or two of strange relief ; and then the sudden realisation that it was all over and that a new life was about to begin .sx His last day was a whirl of activity his last evening he spend in farewells , a little drunk and very sentimental , and the next morning , heavy-eyed and sleepy , he rattled up to Paddington by the new Great Western Railway .sx He spent the summer with an Uncle in Yorkshire , in a gaunt , windy house near the sea .sx His host rarely appeared save at meal-times , when he made gruff , elderly conversation :sx his hostess spent most of her waking hours in the management of the rambling house and garden , and there was no one else in the place , for the only son was a cavalry-officer far away in the South of England .sx Frank boated and walked and rode for miles along the bare dunes by the sea , but the time hung heavily on his hands , and , as was his habit in this place , he spent many hours in the chilly library , where , as a boy , he had so often burrowed and rummaged for poetry or travel or adventure to pour like magic oils on his little flame of romance .sx This time he began to take an interest in the affairs of the outer world .sx For the last few years he had been vaguely conscious of great things happening , disturbing and strange , but only now did he begin to realise what they had been .sx In the month of March , while the spring had been so busy in the Oxford meadows , Europe had broken into a blaze of revolt .sx Italy - Austria - France .sx He had read , of course , of Louise Philippe driven from his throne :sx escaping in disguise to England , leaving Paris in anarchy behind him .sx He had read of battles and sieges in North Italy and Sicily , and then all these remote events had been blotted out by the tales of the Chartists and their nefarious plans :sx by news of the Young Irelanders , and grim accounts of the Irish famine .sx All Europe was ablaze .sx .. but in one's last terms at Oxford one had other things to think of .sx The Government looked after things at home :sx no one could bother about Austria or Sicily .sx .sx .. He had read the papers for a while and then dropped them .sx Now his uncle's conversation brought these things back to mind .sx The old man - like his other nephew , Gerald - was a staunch Tory , who found the modern world little to his taste .sx He had not yet forgotten the black treachery of Peel two years before , and regarded the present Whig ministry with strong suspicion .sx Russell was a weakling and Palmerston a knave :sx Free Trade was ruining the gentry and the Queen was under the thumb of Albert and his Germans :sx there was no hope save Lord George Bentinck , whose views on politics were as sound as his views on horse flesh .sx Through his Uncle's eyes Frank watched the events of the summer :sx the 23rd of June in Paris :sx Custozza and Somma Campagna in Italy :sx the troubles nearer home in Ireland ; the Battle of Ballingarry ; and the discovery in London of Cuffey and Lacy with their bombs and guns and pistols .sx Evil days indeed - and then things took a turn ; grapeshot and bayonets settled Paris :sx Charles Albert signed an armistice :sx Ferdinand recovered Sicily :sx The Chartists were broken :sx Ireland , if starving , was at peace :sx there was no more silly talk about national defence and a shilling in the pound income tax :sx perhaps the world was recovering its sanity .sx It was sheer perversity which made Frank doubt - if not question in words - the more violent of his Uncle's assertions , for , in the presence of such bluff conversation , no imaginative young man could fail to think of himself as Liberal .sx The pose , once adopted , was attractive to maintain .sx He was of a romantic and sentimental nature , reading his adventures and travels , or drawing from the poems of Shelley glowing , anarchistic dreams which he carefully hid from his relations .sx People , indeed , saw little of what was in his heart .sx They took him very much for granted :sx a familiar figure , small and dark , with a quiet , shy voice and a grave face quickly flushed by pain or pleasure .sx Not even he himself quite realised how close he was still to that schoolboy who had modelled himself on pictures of Shelley :sx how much of his time , even now , was spent in bright dreams and visions ; how often he returned to those early fairylands full of silver nights and scarlet soldiers , of drums and horses and noble deeds .sx He had thought so much of romance and courage and beauty :sx Spenserian dreams wildly compounded from Shakespeare and Mallory , Byron and Scott ; sterner imaginings where Wellington and Moore and Clive and Sir John Franklin met with Achilles and with Drake .sx Now all these dreams of India with its elephants and moghals , or Europe with its courts and camps and battlefields had dwindled and faded to London and the Law .sx Stiff-bound books and dusty papers :sx dark rooms and noisy streets :sx he had at last become reconciled to the prospect and come to take it for granted , only occasionally clutching at the bright things which were vanishing .sx Where he had played years ago as a child , where the woods and copses had made him a Canada , the dunes and rank grasses a desert of India , he sat and watched the clouds and told himself that he had grown up .sx But London that early autumn was hot and noisy and full of dust :sx it made him think longingly of Magdalen park and the cool walks of Mesopotamia .sx There was the Temple , so unlike Oxford and yet so curiously reminiscent of it :sx there were his rooms and books :sx there were friends to meet and to go about with .sx Connections to the family asked him out and he made many acquaintances in stiff , glittering drawing-rooms :sx old men in high stocks , aloof and terrifying :sx rich mothers who eyed him suspiciously :sx young ladies of devastating polish and elegance , moving with the erect grace of swans , a rustle of skirts and a gleam of bare shoulders , speaking to him , it seemed , from a mysterious world unreal and fragile as spun glass or flower-petals .sx Among the men of his acquaintance there were all sorts and degrees :sx young guardsmen who talked of horses and of actresses :sx cosmopolitans whose conversation was shot with glittering phrases of French and Italian , who knew the gossip of Berlin and Paris , the latest story of Plon Plon ; the truth about the Spanish marriage and the Praslin murder :sx literary men who spoke familiarly of Thackeray and Boz , who had the latest news from the Casa Guidi .sx And then he met Ugo , and in a month the rest were forgotten .sx There was his liking for Ugo himself and there was his love for Margherita , so closely interwoven that he could never disentangle them .sx At first he had listened to Ugo as a novel , stimulating discovery , who told strange stories of the outer world in picturesque broken English :sx as their friendship ripened he began to feel pity and protectiveness towards the lonely youth who was fighting his way in offices and lodgings , in a strange land and a strange tongue .sx Then he met Margherita , exotic as almond-blossom in a dingy little room which she filled with her presence , and at once the whole Capelli family seemed to be caught up on to another plane - creatures of the world blinding and romantic .sx She was a thing of southern sun and Mediterranean foam , remote as a goddess ; and yet she was so human that her eyes haunted him night and day , and he ached with longing merely to lay his hand on her smooth , round arm .sx And in this light which was shed upon the family , Ugo too stood forth transformed .sx His words suddenly took a new meaning , became real and important .sx In him also was romance - dreams and hopes chafing against reality .sx His father had died in prison :sx his family had been driven from Italy which was now a land of tyranny and murder , and of all this he spoke with the grief and pain of an exile and with all an exile's little bitternesses .sx He would talk of the great hills of his country , of white towns against a deep blue sky , of white oxen ploughing a brown curve of field ; he would remember the sunlight on the vines and olives , the sound of cicadas on hot afternoons and the flicker of lizards on sunbaked walls .sx He would remember Rome with its fountains and shady streets , golden buildings and wide , crowded squares :sx all its familiar sights and sounds and smells .sx And then suddenly he would begin to complain of his own lot , or to jibe at the English climate and food , people and policy .sx