EARLY EDUCATION 9 



kneeling at the bedside of the sick and dying. I 

 remember when telling a long-absent friend, and one who 

 knew her well, of the place, time, and manner of her 

 death, " Then, sir," said he to me, " departed one of 

 God's best-created beings." She died before a sad 

 fatality buried all my father's property in one whirlpool 

 of destruction ; and thus, through the mercy of the 

 Almighty, was spared the misery of witnessing or 

 sharing the fallen estate and almost utter destitution of 

 her family. 



I shall now proceed to give a short account of the 

 education, if it deserve the name, that in my boyhood 

 I received, as that generally, if not necessarily, follows 

 the birth and j)arentage of any one who is desirous of 

 inviting the public attention. It must have been very 

 early in my life when I was placed in a small village school 

 at Sutton Veyney, about three miles from Warminster, in 

 Wiltshire ; and I could not have stayed there long, as I 

 have but an indistinct recollection of it, except upon 

 one occasion — a visit of my father to the school, when my 

 master, with his hand upon my head, addressing him, 

 said, "This will make a f^prask boy, sir ! " 



I did not then know what this provincialism was 

 intended to convey, any more than I did the cause of my 

 removal; but soon after I, found myself at a large 

 school at Twyford, near Winchester, the same village in 

 which Alexander Pope first received the rudiments of 

 those classical acquirements that enabled him to astonish 

 the world with the productions of his immortal pen. 



I cannot define the period of my sojourn at this 

 romantic little village, with the silver Itchen washing its 



