imagination, I did not succumb to the persistent onslaught of the educational efforts destined to turn the current of my thoughts into a perfectly alien channel. In vain was I tied down to science and mathematics, logarithms and equations will forever be to me lifeless, meaningless abstractions, and it took me much less time than I had spent in acquiring it, to forget the velocity of a body falling through space! As for doing a simple sum in addition, I might as well never have learned the process at all for the little I know about it now. But the art of inventing a story, of calling up imaginary beings, of following them through the vicissitudes of their career, and weaving all this together to a plot--that was mine then and is still mine, notwithstanding all that was done to crush it out of me. What should I have done on the long tedious journeys, had I not been able to amuse myself by the delightful stories I thought out. Sitting cramped in my corner of the travelling-carriage or railway compartment, afraid even to stretch my limbs lest the movement should disturb one or other of the invalids, I owe it to my imagination alone, that child as I was, I did not fall into hopeless melancholy. It was this same happy faculty of creating for myself an ideal atmosphere, and peopling this new world with my best-beloved heroes, and the no less heroic creations of my own brain,--this it was which lent so great a charm to many of our resorts,--standing us in good stead for instance, in investing with beauty the rather tame, stiff garden of a London square, so unsuited for the abode of mystery or romance. Apart from our intimacy with the Bunsen family, our stay in London possessed indeed few attractions for us. There was no relaxation of the customary strictness with which we were treated, on the contrary, there seemed to be an accumulation of wearisome restrictions and petty annoyances attendant on the stay in strange houses. Even when there was a garden, we might hardly play there, certainly not dig in it, nor run across the lawn, and as for venturing to gather a flower, I was haunted by visions of angry men pursuing us with thick sticks, ever since the day when the landlord had shaken his finger at us, just for touching his orange-trees! It was a little better in Hastings, where we had the beautiful open sea, and the beach on which we could play undisturbed. But our pleasure there was damped by our perpetual anxiety and sadness on my mother’s behalf, whose illness had already entered then on its most distressing stage. From the window I could see her carried in and out of the sea, sometimes alas! to lie in convulsions on the beach, the servants standing round holding up umbrellas to protect her from the gaze of inquisitive onlookers. I stood sad and helpless at the window, unable to understand the unfeeling curiosity of these strangers. It was not quite so bad on their part though, as the behaviour of two Germans