8o RISEN B V PERSE VERANCE. 



I could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket and 

 tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the 

 birds in Kew Gardens awaked me in the morning, when off I 

 started to Kew, reading my little book. The singularity of 

 my dress, the simplicity of my manner, my confident and lively 

 air, and, doubtless, his own compassion besides, induced the 

 gardener, who was a Scotsman, to give me victuals, find me 

 lodging, and set me to work. And it was during the period 

 that I was at Kew that the present king and two of his brothers 

 laughed at the oddness of my dress while I was sweeping the 

 grass plat round the foot of the pagoda. The gardener, seeing 

 me fond of books, lent me some gardening books to read ; but 

 these I could not relish after my Tale of a Tub, which I carried 

 about with me wherever I went ; and when I, at about twenty 

 years old, lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of 

 Fundy, in North America, the loss gave me greater pain than 

 I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds. This circum- 

 stance, trifling as it was, and childish as it may seem to relate 

 it, has always endeared the recollection of Kew to me.' 



At sixteen he attempted to make off to sea ; at seventeen he 

 went to London, where he supported himself for some time as 

 a copying clerk ; at twenty-two he enlisted as a private soldier, 

 and rose to the rank of sergeant-major. His regiment was the 

 53d, then commanded by one of the king's sons, the Duke of 

 Kent, and he went with it to British America, Thus, from a 

 very tender age he was left entirely to his own guidance and 

 mastership, and thus was nourished the self-depending, deter- 

 mined character which nerved him for his lifelong struggle. 

 The little illustrative snatches of personal history, especially of 

 his young days, which he has incidentally giyen, are the most 

 attractive part of his writings, and these, fortunately, mingle 



