A natural turn for reading and intellectual pursuits probably preserved me from the moral shipwreck, so apt to befall those who are deprived in early life of the paternal pilotage. At the very least, my books kept me aloof from the ring, the dog-pit, the tavern, and the saloon, with their degrading orgies. For the closet associate of Pope and Addison--the mind accustomed to the noble, though silent, discourse of Shakespeare and Milton--will hardly seek, or put up with, low company and slang. The reading animal will not be content with the brutish wallowings that satisfy the unlearned pigs of the world. Later experience enables me to depose to the comfort and blessing that literature can prove in seasons of sickness and sorrow--how powerfully intellectual pursuits can help in keeping the head from crazing, and the heart from breaking,--nay, not to be too grave, how generous mental food can even atone for a meagre diet--rich fare on the paper for short commons on the cloth. Poisoned by the malaria of the Dutch marshes, my stomach, for many months, resolutely set itself against fish, flesh, or fowl; my appetite had no more edge than the German knife placed before me. But, luckily, the mental palate and digestion were still sensible and vigorous; and whilst I passed untasted every dish at the Rhenish _table d'hôte_, I could yet enjoy my _Peregrine Pickle_, and the feast after the manner of the ancients. There was no yearning towards calf's head _à la tortue_, or sheep's heart; but I could still relish Head _à la Brunnen_ and the _Heart of Midlothian_. Still more recently, it was my misfortune, with a tolerable appetite, to be condemned to lenten fare, like Sancho Panza, by my physician--to a diet, in fact, lower than any prescribed by the poor-law commissioners; all animal food, from a bullock to a rabbit, being strictly interdicted; as well as all fluids stronger than that which lays dust, washes pinafores, and waters polyanthus. But 'the feast of reason and the flow of soul' were still mine. Denied beef, I had _Bul_wer and _Cow_per,--forbidden mutton, there was _Lamb_,--and in lieu of pork, the great _Bacon_ or _Hogg_. Then, as to beverage, it was hard, doubtless, for a Christian to set his face like a Turk against the juice of the grape. But, eschewing wine, I had still my _Butler_; and in the absence of liquor, all the _choice spirits_ from Tom Browne to Tom Moore. Thus, though confined, physically, to the drink that drowns kittens, I quaffed mentally, not merely the best of our own home-made, but the rich, racy, sparkling growths of France and Italy, of Germany and Spain--the champagne of Molière, and the Monte Pulciano of Boccaccio, the hock of Schiller, and the sherry of Cervantes. Depressed bodily by the fluid that damps everything, I got intellectually elevated with Milton, a little merry with Swift, or rather jolly with Rabelais, whose Pantagruel, by the way, is quite equal to the best gruel with rum in it.