He was, in fact, an inveterate hater, a miser even in misanthropy, and hoarded up a grudge as he did a guinea.  Thus, though my mother was an only sister, he had never forgiven her marriage with my father, against whom he had a cold, still, immovable pique, which had lain at the bottom of his heart, like a stone in a well, ever since they had been school boys together.  My mother, however, considered me as the intermediate being that was to bring every thing again into harmony, for she looked upon me as a prodigy—­God bless her.  My heart overflows whenever I recall her tenderness:  she was the most excellent, the most indulgent of mothers.  I was her only child; it was a pity she had no more, for she had fondness of heart enough to have spoiled a dozen!

I was sent, at an early age, to a public school, sorely against my mother’s wishes, but my father insisted that it was the only way to make boys hardy.  The school was kept by a conscientious prig of the ancient system, who did his duty by the boys intrusted to his care; that is to say, we were flogged soundly when we did not get our lessons.  We were put into classes and thus flogged on in droves along the highways of knowledge, in the same manner as cattle are driven to market, where those that are heavy in gait or short in leg have to suffer for the superior alertness or longer limbs of their companions.

For my part, I confess it with shame, I was an incorrigible laggard.  I have always had the poetical feeling, that is to say, I have always been an idle fellow and prone to play the vagabond.  I used to get away from my books and school whenever I could, and ramble about the fields.  I was surrounded by seductions for such a temperament.  The school-house was an old-fashioned, white-washed mansion of wood and plaister, standing on the skirts of a beautiful village.  Close by it was the venerable church with a tall Gothic spire.  Before it spread a lovely green valley, with a little stream glistening along through willow groves; while a line of blue hills that bounded the landscape gave rise to many a summer day dream as to the fairy land that lay beyond.

In spite of all the scourgings I suffered at that school to make me love my book, I cannot but look back upon the place with fondness.  Indeed, I considered this frequent flagellation as the common lot of humanity, and the regular mode in which scholars were made.  My kind mother used to lament over my details of the sore trials I underwent in the cause of learning; but my father turned a deaf ear to her expostulations.  He had been flogged through school himself, and swore there was no other way of making a man of parts; though, let me speak it with all due reverence, my father was but an indifferent illustration of his own theory, for he was considered a grievous blockhead.