between himself and the others. I liked his language, too, and his manners; and soon finding out that my imagination was of a very irritable nature, he kindly, but perhaps injudiciously, supplied it with plenty of food, either by telling me tales of the wars of La Vendée, or by lending me books which he received from a circulating library to which he subscribed. Although French notions of delicacy and morality are very different from our own, it is but fair to say, that in every other respect but that of furnishing excitement to a fancy already too excitable, he showed much care and prudence in the books which he selected for me. Poetry he gave me abundantly, both French and English, but it was of the best kind, and with books of travels he also supplied me, which sometimes certainly raised my curiosity on points that might as well have been left to elucidate themselves, but which had no tendency to weaken my mind or corrupt my morals. I was idle enough, certainly, but I was tolerably quick in intellect, and consequently contrived to please all the different masters in a certain degree, though those I liked best were certain both to command more of my attention and respect than the others. At the end of six months I returned home for the holidays, and, on the very first interrogation in reference to my progress at school, established, to my mother's full satisfaction, the fact of my being a miracle of genius and application. Mr. Somers, the banker, had come down himself to bring me home in his carriage, and after leaving me some hours with my mother he returned to dine, bringing with him his little daughter as a playfellow for me. He was a kind good-hearted man; and, after asking we several questions, to satisfy himself that I had not misused my time, _he_ also declared himself perfectly satisfied. I remarked, that both he himself, his servants, and his daughter, who was then about six years old, were all in mourning, and I afterwards found that he had lost his wife some months before. I need dwell no further on my life at school, though the mixed character of the studies which I there pursued, and the nature of the books with which the good-natured Frenchman supplied me, gave that desultory character to my mind which it has never lost. I had a great greediness for information, without much regularity of arrangement or steadiness of pursuit; and when I left that school, which was at the end of two years and a half, I knew a great many things that other boys did not know, and a great deal less of many things than they did know.