I am speaking, however, now, of matters relating to a more advanced age than that to which I have yet brought myself:—age in which all these sights were only a pleasant amazement to me, and panoramic apocalypse of a lovely world. Up to that age, at least, I cannot but hope that my readers will agree with me in thinking the tenour of my life happy, and the modes of my education, on the whole, salutary. Admitting them to have been so, I would now question farther; and, I imagine, such question cannot but occur to my readers’ minds, also,—how far education, and felicities, of the same kind, may be attainable for young people in general. Let us consider, then, how many conditions must meet; and how much labour must have been gone through, both by servile and noble persons, before this little jaunty figure, seated on its box of clothes, can trot through its peaceful day of mental development. I. A certain number of labourers in Spain, living on dry bread and onions, must have pruned and trodden grapes;—cask-makers, cellarmen, and other functionaries attending on them. II. Rough sailors must have brought the wine into the London Docks. III. My father and his clerks must have done a great deal of arithmetical and epistolary work, before my father could have profit enough from the wine to pay for our horses, and our dinner. IV. The tailor must have given his life to the dull business of making clothes—the wheelwright and carriage-maker to their woodwork—the smith to his buckles and springs—the postillion to his riding—the horse-breeder and breaker to the cattle in his field and stable,—before I could make progress in this pleasant manner, even for a single stage. V. Sundry English Kings and Barons must have passed their lives in military exercises, and gone to their deaths in military practices, to provide me with my forenoons’ entertainments in ruined castles; or founded the great families whose servants were to be my hosts. VI. Vandyck and Velasquez, and many a painter before them, must have spent their lives in learning and practising their laborious businesses. VII. Various monks and abbots must have passed their lives in pain, with fasting and prayer; and a large company of stonemasons occupied themselves in their continual service, in order to provide me, in defect of castles and noblemen’s seats, with amusement in the way of abbeys and cathedrals.