The incident was the occasion of great and mysterious interest, for a long time afterwards, in the quiet country neighborhood. No imagination could conceive who the wonderful speaker might be, and many insisted it must have been, indeed, "an angel from heaven." Some years afterwards, at the session of a Constitutional Convention in Massachusetts, Mr. King rose to make a motion. He had no sooner begun, than a Quaker member started up from a back seat, and, carried away by the first glimpse at solution of the long-standing mystery, cried out, "That's the man that spoke in our meetin'." Provision for the instruction of youth was liberal, and not long previously the most famous, and I believe the longest established academy of the day, flourished in the immediate neighborhood, in all its glory. Of the school-books then in use, I cannot but think that one in particular, Murray's English Reader, was a better manual than any other which has since been produced. For it was mainly made up of extracts from the writings of the best authors, in the best age of English literature, and I can answer that its lessons were calculated to make impressions on the youthful mind, never to be forgotten. But the prevalent idea, of late years, seems to have been to nationalize school-books, so as to narrow their teachings, and thus to make our future fellow-citizens partisans instead of men. But literature and learning are confined to no age or nation; and meaning in no sense to say a word which could abate the ardor of manly patriotism in any bosom, it is certain that much is to be learned from the history of other people beside our own; and I suppose there are standards of high intellectual attainment in the past,--in poetry and eloquence, and various ranges of thought and expression,--which never have been and are not likely to be surpassed. The deluge of modern transitory literature had not then begun to flow. But, to say nothing of the "Scottish Chiefs," and "Thaddeus of Warsaw," over the pages of which, doubtless, millions of youthful eyes have formerly shed copious tears, we had Miss Edgeworth's writings, those of Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, the novels of Charlotte Smith, the Memoirs of Baron Trenck, and, perused a little stealthily, Peregrine Pickle and Roderick Random; and in poetry Henry Kirke White and Montgomery were favorites; nor am I ashamed to say, that Cottle's "Alfred" was read aloud at our fireside of evenings, with an interest due to the story, perhaps, as much as to its poetical ability. Original American productions were few; the importation of new works from abroad was not large, and the demand for reprints a good deal limited. But we had the well-known books of sterling value at command, and our publishers occasionally favored us with new editions. One of my early studies was Guthrie's Grammar of Geography, a ponderous volume of English manufacture, which belonged in our family; and I was fascinated with Pope at almost as early an age as that in