grey stone, and then to fall upon the pleasant flowers around me. I loved silence, for nothing that fell on the ear seemed in accordance with what so charmed the eye; and thus a positive evil found entrance in the midst of much enjoyment. I acquired that habit of dreamy excursiveness into imaginary scenes, and among unreal personages, which is alike inimical to rational pursuits and opposed to spiritual- mindedness. To a period so early as the middle of my fourth year I can revert with the most perfect, most vivid recollection of my habitual thoughts and feelings; and at that age, I can unhesitatingly declare, my mind was deeply tinctured with a romance not derived from books, nor from conversation, but arising, as I verily believe, out of the singular adaptation to each other of my natural taste and the scenery amidst which it began to develop itself. Our abode was changed to another part of the city before this period arrived; but the bishop's garden was still our haunt, and my supreme delight. An immense orchard, shrubbery, and flower-garden were attached to my father's new residence, to which he had removed on account of its proximity to the church of which he was rector. This, too, was an old- fashioned house, mantled with a vine, and straggling out, in irregular buildings, along the slope of the garden. The centre of an immense grass-plot, studded with apple, pear, and plum trees, was occupied by the most gigantic mulberry I ever beheld, the thick trunk of which resembled that of a knotted oak, while in its forest of dark branches nestled a number of owls and hats. Oh, how I loved to lurk beneath its shadow on a summer evening, and await the twilight gloom, that the large owl might come forth and wheel around the tree, and call out his companions with a melancholy hoot; while the smaller bat, dipping lower in his flight, brushed by me, accustomed to my presence. I had entered betimes upon the pernicious study of nursery tales, as they then were, and without having the smallest actual belief in the existence of fairies, goblins, or any such things, I took unutterable delight in surrounding myself with hosts of them, decked out in colors of my own supplying, gorgeous or terrible beyond the conception of my classic authorities. The faculty of realizing whatever I pictured to myself was astonishingly great; and you must admit that the localities in which I was placed were but too favorable to the formation of a character which I have no doubt the enemy was secretly constructing within me, to mislead, by wild, unholy fiction, such as should come within the range of its, influence. To God be all the glory that I am not now pandering with this pen to the most grovelling or the most impious of man's perverted feelings.