My mother was of a weak and nervous constitution, and I inherited in some degree, when a child, her complaint, for I was very delicate, although remarkable for activity and high spirits. I remember about a month before I first went to school, which was at the early age of only five years and a half, I rode to Magdalen-hill fair near Winchester, a distance of thirty-one miles, and back again the same day, with my father. To ride sixty-two miles in one day for a boy not five years and a half old, which I did without any apparent fatigue, was considered rather an extraordinary omen of my future capability for active exertion. I was sent to a boarding-school at Tilshead in Wiltshire, at five and a half years of age, and, my father told me at my departure, "that I was going to begin a little world for myself." Before I mounted my poney he seriously gave me his blessing and his parting advice, which was delivered in a very emphatic manner, my mother anxiously listening, while a tear glistened in her eye. "Go," said he, "my dear, and may heaven bless and direct all your actions, so that you may grow up to be an honest, a brave, and a good man; but remember well what I now say: you must fight your own battles amongst your schoolfellows as well as you can. If I ever hear that you are quarrelsome I shall detest you, but if I find that you are a coward I will disown and disinherit you." This was the language of one of the best of fathers to his son, a child of five years and a half old, and it speaks volumes as to the character of the man and the parent. This school, which was situated in a healthy village upon Salisbury Plain, consisted of a master and an usher, who had the care and instruction of sixty-three boys. The scholars were better fed than taught; but as a healthy situation was more looked to than their education, by the parents of those children who were sent there, the discipline was calculated to give general satisfaction. We learned to read (the Bible), to write, and cast accounts, and at the end of one year I was taken from this school. Beyond the common-place events incident to an early initiation into the tricks and frolics of a school-boy, there occurred, during my stay at this place, nothing worthy of being introduced here; with the exception, however, of one very important circumstance, relative to the strict discipline maintained by my father, in all cases where there was the slightest deviation from truth. A violation of truth was always sure to be punished by him with the greatest severity. As the circumstance to which I allude made a strong and lasting impression upon my mind, and in a great measure laid the foundation for my general rule of action ever since, I shall faithfully record it.