KNOWLEDGE 61 



want of that knowledge which in my youth I coukl so 

 readily and would so eagerly have pursued, and with 

 proper care, perhaps, have attained. I envied those who, 

 with more ample fortune and with abler friends, had had 

 the means, the opportunity, and the inclination, to render 

 themselves familiar with art and science — their intelli- 

 gence first scanning- the trackless desert — then the wide 

 expanse of ocean — and last the starry heavens : thus 

 laying up for themselves ' treasures upon earth ' that 

 none but themselves can fully enjoy ; for how little must 

 be my knowledge of a subject like this, compared to the 

 information possessed by one who, one hundred years ago, 

 could compute the time of this eclipse so exactly as to 

 foretell it to the very minute — I mean Sir Isaac Newton. 

 But the time and the opportunity have gone, never to be 

 recalled. I have no alternative but to be content with 

 my own ignorance." 



It was somewhere about this time that the following 

 incident occurred : — 



On taking the reins at Henley, and looking round, I 

 observed on the roof, sitting on the near side, an elderly 

 gentleman, with a youth of rather forbidding appearance, 

 apparently about twenty years of age. I had long been 

 accustomed to speculate on the character of my com- 

 panions, and though I jumped to conclusions that were 

 not always borne out by the results, still I was in the 

 main not far wrons;. 



I remember a porter I had on my last drag, who, with 

 no other information than the brass plate on a passenger's 

 portmanteau, would address him in language that imj)lied 

 a long, though respectful acquaintance with the gentle- 



