26 Recollections of a Valetudinarian. JuLY, 



he had seen more of it certainly not, geographically speaking. It is 

 said of Lord Anson, that " he had been round the world, but never in it;" 

 of Napoleon, that "he had passed over the world, but never through it." 

 Now I have been " in the world," and ' ' out of the world," and almost 

 "round the world," for I have crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and seen both 

 seas at once, have peeped down the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and stood 

 on the top of Mount Calvary, where the standard of Mahomet waves 

 over the tomb of our Saviour. Surely many people have inflicted books 

 on society with much less provocation ; so why should not I succeed ? 



ft Truth," they say, " is not to be told at all times ;" and although I 

 have not been sworn before a magistrate " to tell the whole truth, and 

 nothing but the truth," which is sometimes imprudent, and always diffi- 

 cult, when writing about oneself, still I will endeavour to adhere to it as 

 closely as I can. Without boasting, like Rousseau, that. " my book should 

 on comparison with that of the recording angel, be found exactly to cor- 

 respond," I will not be more lenient to my own faults and foibles than I 

 am to those of others ; and I hope that if my theory be less beautiful, my 

 conduct will be considered more consistent, than that of an author who 

 wrote whole volumes on education, and sent his own children to " Les 

 Enfans trouves." Without further apology or preamble, therefore, I 

 will promise to be as scandalous as I dare, as entertaining as I can, and 

 if the reader likes my terms, " aliens" if not, he is here at liberty to 

 throw away the book. I was born in the house of my maternal grand- 

 father, which was situated in the heart of the city of London. He was 

 a very rich man, had made most of his own money by his exertions in 

 early life, and had a proportionate dislike to parting with any of it. He 

 was rather pompous in his manners, had an immense idea of his own 

 consequence, which was certainly very great in his own family, and had 

 a general habit of aggrandizing every thing that directly or indirectly 

 belonged to himself. Among many other peculiarities, it was his most 

 particular desire that neither of his daughters should marry any of his 

 majesty's officers, a class of persons to whom he had a great dislike ; 

 consequently two out of three married captains in the royal navy from 

 pure contradiction ; such is human nature ! 



All infants are pretty much alike, notwithstanding many fond parents 

 flatter themselves that they can descry " papa's eyes" and " mamma's 

 nose," the moment they are born. In my opinion, and I speak from 

 experience, having a little progeny of my own, they all bear an infinite 

 resemblance to a skinned rabbit. I never knew but one exception, and 

 she was too beautiful to live. Every one's infancy also is too much alike 

 to require any particular description; we are all put first into long 

 clothes, then into short, then into shorter ; we all imbibe pretty much 

 the same quantity of pap and barley- sugar, until age promotes us to 

 bread and butter and rhubarb and magnesia. Then comes education, 

 beginning with our alphabet, and thence arises all the good or evil that 

 influences our after life. Not that I mean to say a great deal does not 

 depend on the way in which a child is brought up, even from its earliest 

 infancy, as one sees the greatest difference in children. No one, I am 

 sure, could have been brought up worse than I was, although my father 

 was at sea and I had no mother to spoil me. I had two aunts, however, 

 who vied with each other in that particular, and what they left undone 

 was amply supplied by my grandfather : so that in time I became the 



