"I do not remember," he says, "in any part of my life, to have been so conscious of intellectual improvement as I was during the year and a half before I was placed at Westminster; an improvement derived not from books or instruction, _but from constantly exercising myself in English verse_; and from the development of mind which that exercise produced, I can distinctly trace my progress by help of a list, made thirty years ago, of all my compositions in verse, which were then in existence, or which I had at that time destroyed."--(Vol. i. p. 117). Before entering Westminster, our autobiographer takes a retrospective glance at his home in Bristol, and gives a most graphic description of his aunt, Miss Tyler. That lady has earned an immortality which she little dreamt of, and would have hardly coveted. Already every English reader knows Miss Tyler. She will live for ever as a type of that class of ladies, whether spinsters or married, who let their love of order and cleanliness grow into a disease--ladies who keep the best rooms in their house in such a superstitious neatness, that they are no longer habitable. The disorder usually drives people from their pleasant and spacious drawing-room into close back-parlours, deserving of a visit from the Sanitary Commission. In the case of Miss Tyler, it drove her from the parlour to the kitchen, from the best kitchen into what should have been the scullery. We hope those ladies in whom the disease has not yet attained such a height may take warning by the terrible example of Miss Tyler. For the rest, she was a woman of violent temper, and of a proud imperious disposition.