6 REMINISCENCES, ETC. 



and carefully cherished during a long and uninterrupted 

 intimacy, he pointed out an old yew-tree which had wit- 

 nessed the infliction of corporal chastisement on him by his 

 father for some fault of which he persisted in declaring he 

 was innocent. " It was under that tree," he said, " that I 

 then made a solemn vow never to do anything from violence 

 or compulsion, and on that principle I have always acted in 

 after-life." I have reason to believe, adds his friend, that 

 he observed this vow as religiously as did the youthful 

 Hannibal the famous oath imposed upon him when only nine 

 years old by his father Hamilcar. Acts of parental severity 

 were, in conformity with the lesson he learnt on this me- 

 morable occasion, condemned by Mr. Smith, and his maxim 

 was that kindness and reason will always effect more with 

 children than the use of the birch. He occasionally adverted 

 to the above circumstance in another way. There was a pic- 

 ture of him over the anteroom at Tedworth, painted when he 

 was about four years old. His white felt wide-awake is in one 

 hand, the other resting on the back of a large greyhound, the 

 only dog of that description Mr. Smith said he ever had. The 

 countenance of the youngster rather shows that something 

 has gone wrong with him. Mr. Smith's friends used jokingly 

 to remark this to him, and he said that, just before this 

 picture was taken, his father met his nurse and himself 

 near the yew-tree before mentioned, when the nurse said, 

 " I can do nothing with Master Smith, Sir ; he will do 

 nothing he is told." His father without another word 

 laid the child across his knee, and gave him a severe whip- 

 ping. This, Mr. Smith remarked, appeared to him so 

 extremely unjust, — namely, to inflict punishment before his 

 parent heard what he had to say, that he from that hour 

 determined never again to do what he was told under a 

 threat of compulsion. 



The first accident Avhich ever befell him was some time 

 before the above flagellation, and al/nost in his earliest 

 childhood. His mother found him lying on his nurse's lap, 



