needed to be snuffed incessantly, and it was my ambition to be allowed to snuff them; but when I tried I snuffed the candle out, and never again got the chance, my mother was inexorable. We were a large family, boisterous, full of animal spirits & health, sometimes very friendly together while at other times we would quarrel. Yet I never remember a single instance of corporal punishment or indeed any kind of punishment but once, and then I was the victim. My mother induced my father to commence my education, and he began by something in arithmetic, and I failed miserably as I would at the present moment. Up to that moment I had been the pride of my father: not only was I his eldest son and the heir to the family property, but he was convinced I was exceedingly like his brother Tom, who in his course at Trinity College, Dublin, had never been beaten in mathematics. When therefore I failed in arithmetic the blow was too much for his fond hopes, and he gave me a box on my ear. He had no sooner done so than he shook hands with me and hoped I was not offended, and then glided out of the room. I was not offended but very much astounded. I wonder if he told my mother. At any rate, years afterwards when I was a full grown man, I heard her regretting that she could never induce my father to teach any of us. He said he had no patience. At last I went to school. It was a boarding-school at Seaforth, Liverpool, and was kept by three maiden ladies: it was a very fashionable school. We were nice little boys with short jackets and wide white collars. Never was any boy so happy as I was in the prospect of that school. My uncle took me to Liverpool; and when he suggested that I stay with him a day longer I would not, I wanted to get into that school. I was not ten minutes inside the walls when I think I was about the most miserable boy in all England, and believed the cloud would never, never lift. I looked at all the other boys and wondered again and again how they could be so cheerful. My father was evangelical as was then fashionable in the best intellectual circles. He must have said something about hell in my hearing, yet, I did not make any real acquaintance with that dismal and absurd doctrine till I went to Miss Davenport's school. The school was managed upon the highest principles of duty, no prizes were ever given for all must work from sake of duty, and we slept with our Bibles under our pillows with directions to read them as soon as we awoke in the morning; but hell was the driving force. Miss Emma Davenport, who was the chief of the school, often spoke of it.