It is certain that the little Bysshe was an unhappy child at Sion House, even to the time of his withdrawal from the school, when he had grown almost too tall, though certainly not too robust, to be called 'little.' But miserable children are curiously, pathetically clever in escaping from their misery. The smart of them over, Bysshe soon dismissed from his mind those disagreeable visits to the Doctor's study. In the pages of his ghost-stories and banditti-stories, his tales of satanic malice and knightly heroism, he forgot all about those very unkind boys. Most of those delightful books he borrowed from the circulating library, but doubtless he had in his schoolroom 'locker' his own copies of his favourite novels. It cannot be questioned he had a peculiar and inalienable copy of _Zofloya, or The Moor_, which, yielding flowers of romance to be found in the ineffably absurd novels which he published in the opening term of his literary career, gave him also fine pieces of descriptive writing that, after doing service in _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_, were worked with skilful art into the lofty song of _Laon and Cythna_. The urchin enjoyed his frequent walks under the playground's southern wall with his cousin Tom Medwin, till the latter left Dr. Greenlaw's sadly plebeian school, and went off to the public school which prepared him for Oxford. Though he cannot rely so confidently as he could wish on Tom Medwin's assurance, the present writer likes to imagine Mr. Medwin had better ground than his treacherous memory for saying that, when they were schoolfellows at Sion House, he and his young cousin more than once played the truant; and rowing on the river more than once to Kew, went on one occasion by water to Richmond, where they visited the theatre and saw Mrs. Jordan in the 'Country Girl.' One would fain believe this of the little boy who, on growing to be a man, disliked the theatre almost as cordially as he had in former time hated Professor Sala's dancing academy.