He grew up a student of basilican lore, of choir-screens, of Persian
frescoes, and an ardent lounger in the somewhat musty precincts of Chaldea
and Byzantium and Babylon. Early Christian Symbolism, a dispute over the
site of a Greek temple, the derivation of the lotus column, the
restoration of a Gothic buttress--these were the absorbing questions of
his youth, with now and then a lighter moment spent in analytical
consideration of the extra-mural decorations of St. Mark's. The world
buzzed along after its own fashion, not disturbing him, and his
absorptions permitted only a faint consciousness of the despair of his
relatives regarding his mind. Arrived at middle-age, and a little more, he
found himself alone in the world (though, for that matter, he had always
been alone and never of the world), and there was plenty of money for him
with various bankers who appeared to know about looking after it.
Returning to the town of his nativity after sundry expeditions in Syria--
upon which he had been accompanied by dusky gentlemen with pickaxes and
curly, long-barrelled muskets--he met, and was married by, a lady who was
ambitious, and who saw in him (probably as a fulfilment of another
Kismetic punishment) a power of learning and a destined success. Not long
after the birth of their only child, a daughter, he was "called to fill
the chair" of archaeology in a newly founded university; one of the kind
which a State and a millionaire combine to purchase ready-made.
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