290.  I effected every thing without scolding, and even without command.  My children are a family of scholars, each sex its appropriate species of learning; and, I could safely take my oath, that I never ordered a child of mine, son or daughter, to look into a book, in my life.  My two eldest sons, when about eight years old, were, for the sake of their health, placed for a very short time, at a Clergyman’s at MICHELDEVER, and my eldest daughter, a little older, at a school a few miles from Botley, to avoid taking them to London in the winter.  But, with these exceptions, never had they, while children, teacher of any description; and I never, and nobody else ever, taught any one of them to read, write, or any thing else, except in conversation; and, yet, no man was ever more anxious to be the father of a family of clever and learned persons.

291.  I accomplished my purpose indirectly.  The first thing of all was health, which was secured by the deeply-interesting and never-ending sports of the field and pleasures of the garden.  Luckily these things were treated of in books and pictures of endless variety; so that on wet days, in long evenings, these came into play.  A large, strong table, in the middle of the room, their mother sitting at her work, used to be surrounded with them, the baby, if big enough, set up in a high chair.  Here were ink-stands, pens, pencils, India rubber, and paper, all in abundance, and every one scrabbled about as he or she pleased.  There were prints of animals of all sorts; books treating of them:  others treating of gardening, of flowers, of husbandry, of hunting, coursing, shooting, fishing, planting, and, in short, of every thing, with regard to which we had something to do.  One would be trying to imitate a bit of my writing, another drawing the pictures of some of our dogs or horses, a third poking over Bewick’s Quadrupeds and picking out what he said about them; but our book of never-failing resource was the French MAISON RUSTIQUE, or FARM-HOUSE, which, it is said, was the book that first tempted DUQUESNOIS (I think that was the name), the famous physician, in the reign of Louis XIV., to learn to read.  Here are all the four-legged animals, from the horse down to the mouse, portraits and all; all the birds, reptiles, insects; all the modes of rearing, managing, and using the tame ones; all the modes of taking the wild ones, and of destroying those that are mischievous; all the various traps, springs, nets; all the implements of husbandry and gardening; all the labours of the field and the garden exhibited, as well as the rest, in plates; and, there was I, in my leisure moments, to join this inquisitive group, to read the French, and tell them what it meaned in English, when the picture did not sufficiently explain itself.  I never have been without a copy of this book for forty years, except during the time that I was fleeing from the dungeons of CASTLEREAGH and SIDMOUTH, in 1817; and, when I got to Long Island, the first book I bought was another MAISON RUSTIQUE.