266 
MEMOIR OF H. C. WATSON, ESQ. 
thing. He was at that time about three or four years old, and it greatly puzzled 
his very juvenile mind how “ Toby” (his fathers favourite Horse) was to accom¬ 
plish his journey; the solution of the difficulty being at last hit upon, by the 
brilliant conception that “ Toby” should ride on the top of the carriage. 
The first inhabitant of Congleton known to young Watson, was a gardener 
who had become a sort of fixture on the property purchased.by his father; and 
he and this gardener soon became most attached friends. The circumstance 
probably contributed, in connection with his mothers taste for floriculture, to give 
young Watson a partiality for flowers; as a child at home, and subsequently as a 
schoolboy, his garden was the chief amusement of his play-hours. A moderate 
endowment of Veneration, combined with his early bias to plants, probably pre¬ 
served him from the family taste for Topography, Heraldry, Antiquities, and 
other things of past days. 
Like all other boys in and about Congleton, young Watson was sent to the 
Grammar School of the town, as a day-scholar, where were assembled the lads 
of all grades, from the sons of the country squires to those of the petty shopkeepers 
and artizans, to -be drilled with Bibles and Latin Grammars; for both of which 
young Watson speedily acquired a most intense hatred, the Bible, like the 
Grammar, being injudiciously converted into a task-book. This school was con¬ 
ducted in the ordinary routine of old Grammar-schools, and young Watson left 
it after a few years, with the reputation of being an incorrigible dunce. 
Fortunately he was next placed under the care of the Rev. J. Bell, of Alderley, 
where a better system prevailed, though still too much based on a preference to Greek 
and Latin before all useful knowledge. But the latter then had some, and proba¬ 
bly now has more, place in the school routine. Under a better system of manage¬ 
ment and instruction, he gradually emerged from the degraded class of dunce-ship, 
and finally sat for two years at the head of Mr. Bell's school of thirty-two boys. 
It is well worthy of note, that at the first school, which he left with the character 
of a dunce, he had been beaten weekly, not to say daily; whilst during the six 
years he remained . with Mr. Bell, he never received a blow from his master. 
Though Mr. Bell, like most clerical teachers, was a stickler for scholastic learning, 
he had the good judgment and kindness to allow his pupils the use of books on 
science, history, and amusement, from his own private library; a privilege of 
which young Watson often availed himself on Winter evenings, as a relief 
from the eternal dullness of Greek and Latin—Greek and Latin—Greek and Latin. 
At the age of nearly seventeen, he finally left school, still a raw lad, ignorant 
of the world, of the arts and institutions of his own country, and ignorant almost 
of all the practical duties of life ; but at the same time full of absurdities about the 
greatness of Greece and Rome, the quarrels and amours of their gods and goddesses, 
and the vast importance of Latin versification ; the small relief to this beautiful 
