the plain duty of every child was to learn how to read; and the more hopelessly dull I showed myself to be, the more imperative became the need of forcing some information into me,--information which I received as responsively as does a Strasbourg goose its daily share of provender. For two bitter years I had for my constant companion that hated reader, which began with such isolated statements as “Ann has a cat,” and ended with a dismal story about a little African boy named Sam; Mr. Rider Haggard not having then instructed us as to what truly remarkable titles little African boys enjoy. If, to this day, I am disposed to underrate the advantages of education, and to think but poorly of compulsory school-laws and the march of mind, it is because of the unhappy nature of my own early experiences. Having at last struggled into some acquaintanceship with print, the next book to which I can trace a moral downfall is “Sandford and Merton,” left on the nursery shelves by an elder brother, and read many times, not because I especially liked it, but because I had so little to choose from. Those were not days when a glut of juvenile literature had produced a corresponding indifference, and a spirit of languid hypercriticism. The few volumes we possessed, even those of a severely didactic order, were read and re-read, until we knew them well by heart. Now up to a certain age I was, as all healthy children are, essentially democratic, with a decided preference for low company, and a secret affinity for the least desirable little girls in the neighborhood. But “Sandford and Merton” wrought a pitiable change. I do not think I ever went so far as to dislike the Rev. Mr. Barlow after the very cordial and hearty fashion in which Dickens disliked him, and I know I should have been scandalized by Mr. Burnand’s cheerful mockery; but, pondering over the matter with the stolid gravity of a child, I reached some highly unsatisfactory conclusions. It did not seem to me then, and it does not seem to me now, exactly fair in the estimable clergyman to have refused the board which Mr. Merton was anxious to pay, and then have reproached poor Tommy so coldly with eating the bread of dependence; neither did it seem worth while for a wealthy little boy to spend his time in doing--very inefficiently, I am sure--the work of an under-gardener. Harry’s contempt for riches, and his supreme satisfaction with a piece of bread for dinner, struck me as overdrawn; Tommy’s mishaps were more numerous than need be, even if he did have the misfortune to be a gentleman’s son; and the complacency with which Mr. Barlow permitted him to give away a whole suit of clothes--clothes which, according to my childish system of ethics, belonged, not to him, but to his mother--contrasted but poorly with the anxiety manifested by the reverend mentor over his own pitiful loaf of bread. Altogether, “Sandford and Merton” affected me the wrong way;