[311] impression that James was generally despondent. His fervor and enthusiasm never abandoned him; but he could not resist occasional attacks of melancholy. In the autumn of 1854 he sailed for Europe, accompanied by two classmates and intimate friends,—Horace Furness and Atherton Blight. It was James's especial plan to study agricultural chemistry as a preparation for his chosen profession; and with this view he attended the lectures of Professor Liebig at Munich and Professor Rose at Berlin. On his way to the former city, he stopped to examine the famous agricultural school of Hohenheim; and he afterwards spent a winter of study in Munich. His friend Horace Furness wrote to James's sister, after his death:—
What was always so peculiarly charming to me in Jim's character was, that with his great physical strength and love of out-door life and athletic exercises, wherein he always showed to such manly advantage, he united the most refined tastes and an almost feminine delicacy. I remember so vividly how once in Munich, on a very warm, enervating spring day, he walked between five and six miles to gather a handful of little blue gentians, and when he brought them home to our rooms, he hung over them with the keenest delight. He used to drink in the beauty of a summer landscape with more rapture than any man I ever met. I shall never forget the almost crazy joy with which he greeted the first sight in our lives of that exquisite little pink-fringed bellflower that grows almost in the very ice of the glaciers,—I think it is Soldanella glacialis; and how appreciative he was in poetry and music. Indeed, his was a most rare combination of the manly and tender; and I do not think that there ever lived a more pure-minded young man. His character was as stainless as a saint's.In the spring and summer the friends made a tour embracing the Tyrol, of which the following letter gives some glimpses.
