WORDSWORTH. “I AM now,” the old man continued, “approaching the most important period of my life. My school-days glided away peaceably, and in some measure, profitably. I was quite able and willing to learn every thing required of me by my masters, and had plenty of time to spare to follow all those various sports and amusements which occupy the time and thoughts of rustic lads in mountain regions. Bird-nesting, fishing, wrestling, hunting, came each in their turn with the change of the seasons; and I was growing up a hale, strong youth, happy in my home, and in good humour with myself and all the world: and, sir, I cannot help remarking, by the way, that good humour, like charity, ‘begins at home;’ for I never knew any one yet who was dissatisfied and out of sorts with persons or things around him, who had not first quarrelled with himself.” “I really think there is much truth in that remark of yours,” said I. “Depend upon it there is,” he continued. “Well, my happiness at that period of my life might be said, as far as human happiness could be,—to be perfect. But yet the religious state of my mind was not quite satisfactory. I had learned, and not only well remembered, but understood, every thing with regard to religion which was taught us at school; and that, believe me, was not little. We were taught to repeat our Catechism, with Archbishop Wake’s explanation of it, every week. We read the Bible as a school-book, till we could almost repeat it from beginning to end; and every story in it was as familiar to my mind as the Lord’s Prayer. I know many have a strong objection to the use of the Bible as a school-book, but I confess I am not among the number. On the contrary, I hold that familiarity with the Scriptures in childhood is the only way in which a knowledge of them can be so deeply impressed upon the memory, as that the passages which we want shall always be at hand to serve us at every turn. As we get older we may understand what we read better, but we do not remember it so clearly or so long. What I read _now_, slips away almost as soon as the book is laid down; but what I learned _then_, is as fresh in my memory as my school-day sports, or my first companions in life. I know it is objected, that an early familiarity with the Scriptures is apt to bring them into contempt, and that we are liable to attach false meanings to passages, which sometimes cling to us through the rest of our lives. But surely, if this be the effect, the fault is rather in those who put the Scriptures into our hands, than in our early youth, in which we first begin to read them. I only know that I learned to reverence even the outside of the book of GOD’s Word from my poor mother’s reverent manner of using it. She never opened the volume without an expression of countenance which showed that she felt herself at that moment to be in the more immediate presence of