10 HAMPSHIRE HILLS 



flowery meads, upon whose banks we frequently met the 

 Winchester College boys, as they were termed, and were 

 as frequently warned by our ushers of the impropriety of 

 provoking a collision with them ; neither can I state 

 what progress I made in those studies that are intended 

 to prejDare the mind for something more extensive than 

 the mere knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic ; 

 but I can recollect nothing to justify the favourable 

 opinion of my capacity which I foolishly fancied my 

 first master had implied. In after-life I met with many 

 of my then school-fellows, who had attained to decent 

 positions ; and one or two in particular, who had risen to 

 respectable rank in the army. 



I was next removed to a school on the skirts of the 

 market-town of Petersfield, in Hampshire, which I believe 

 availed me but little. I stopped here a twelvemonth ; 

 and my master, as I thought, was more fond of surveying 

 the beauties of nature, which here abound, than drilling 

 into obtuse Hampshire boys the mysteries of syntax and 

 prosody. But if I did not advance in knowledge of the 

 classics, I learned, either from him or through the innate 

 love of nature I possessed, how to appreciate the beauties 

 of that salubrious valley, which, surrounded on all sides 

 by what appears to be stupendous hills, seems marked 

 out by nature for the enjoyment of ease and retirement. 

 Often, from the top of Sheet or Ptam's Hill, would I stop 

 to observe the fantastic forms the South Downs take on 

 their range towards the east, wondering whether the great 

 Csesar passed with his legions through any part of this 

 district, on his march in pursuit of the flying Britons ; 

 next looked with that delight brilliant objects always 



