8

SCHOOL TEACHING.

twelve to one at writing, and from two to four at Latin and Greek again, and from four to five or six at writing and arithmetic again, with only one halfholiday in the week, to give them daily tasks to be learned out of school hours. The Saturday halfholiday had its task, and the Sunday beside, in what related to public worship-the whole a tolerably heavy exaction, over and above the school. Thus it was that youth was deprived of wholesome exercise. The task lay heavy on the mind. The system borrowed from the old monkery-the system of making youth love learning by every means that reason can allege to make it distasteful-was followed up by the clergy at the head of scholastic establishments, and after all, young men went to college who did not know the true meaning of common English words. To be a good classic by the longest way of teaching was the desideratum which caused such melancholy displays of ignorance as many men of means and property showed to the country, during a large part of the last and commencement of the present centuries. The lads of the old grammar schools, at twenty years old, knew nothing but the classics and how to falsify their poetry.

I was educated partly at home and partly at school. I was at first under my father's tuition. I remember while on a visit to my grandmother, she possessed an old history of the Turks. It was that

SELF-TAUGHT READING.

9

of Knolles, a folio, with pictures of the different Ottoman rulers. I have not Johnson's life at hand, but I think it was the same book he had read with delight in early life. It was a very old but clearlyprinted work, and many of the words were spelled in the old way, but I must have mastered them pretty well, as I contrived to entertain the old lady by my readings, or spellings, or both in connection. However it might have been, I certainly learned to read out of that work during my long visits to a strong-minded female.

I have stated elsewhere that I had gone through Corderius in my eighth year. I now find I had done so in my seventh, for in my eighth I was reading Virgil, not I am certain as the Roman poet ought to be read. I had begun in 1792, and in the following year my father complained of my dulness. He kept a journal until his death in 1807, and I found in it a note to that effect. He was a good scholar, and understood Hebrew, in addition to Latin and Greek; he also spoke French. I dare say I tried his patience sufficiently, for I was at the time little inclined to learn. I longed to be free, and as there was no clock in the room where I studied, and he was generally present, I marked on a wall outside the window where the shadow of a chimney fell at twelve o'clock, and spent much time which should

"Recollections."

have been devoted to my tasks, in looking off my book and observing how near to the mark of my emancipation the shadow had approached. Not but that at times I worked well enough, but my young mind was not always in the same capacity for the reception of facts, or the remembrance of what it was desirable I should retain.

My English reading about this time was a life of Alexander the Great, and a History of France. Cook's Voyages were then read as a novelty; what of novelty is there now in those discoveries? Then, New Holland was scarcely known, and my horror at the Zealand cannibalism I even now remember. Yet is New Holland become peopled since, better ruled, and more free than all or any of the thirty-nine states of the German Confederation, and more populous than thirty-three of them, and New Zealand is become an important English colony. In a score or two of years the land of savages so recently, will be more free and populous than the Confederate states of Germany have been found after as many ages.

I can remember the noise made about mesmerism, not from the name, but from seeing people put to sleep as if by a miracle. A careful investigation had taken place some time before by unprejudiced persons, and the nine wonders were put down, to be revived at a day which affects to be much wiser.

MEDICAL QUACKERY.

11

The whole was soon declared to be operative only upon the nervous system of particular individuals. This was about 1794. It was revived in Dr. Perkins' metallic tractors, which were sold for a guinea a set, and they too had their dupes for a time, numbers being cured by the application of those bits of common metal colored over, and said to possess astonishing virtue, a piece of imposture of which the wide swallow of the sagacious public took the hook in the customary way at all times. At length two medical men of Bath, one of whom I had the honor subsequently of knowing, got facsimilies of the tractors made of hard wood, and coloured like the genuine. These were found to produce the same effects, and some persons in the hospitals were cured by them, thus showing that upon the belief of their efficacy depended the curative process. From that time where the faith was wanting the good work could not be operated.

My studies were increased by the addition of arithmetic, and drawing. I soon got into division, and found myself shading my pencillings with India ink. There was a bitter frost soon after, for I remember knocking down the poor half-starved birds. with a stick. This was the season of 1795-6, when water was frozen in all the rooms of the house, a thing unknown before in the extreme west.

I was now set to read upon Indian antiquities.

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12

เ

MR. BABINGTON.

I heard great talk of missions to India on all sides, on account of which, I imagine I was set to learn the History of India, and to study the use of the globes. At the same time I was construing Erasmus. My idleness was a subject of complaint in my tenth year; what should I not be from that cause when older!' Yet there was added to my other studies that of geometry, having got out of the rule-of-three in arithmetic. I read as a lesson Sheridan's elocution, Pope's satires, and other works aloud, as part of my daily duty. I read Homer a little at that time. I have never considered myself a good, even a tolerable Grecian. I got the sense of the author as far as I believed myself correct, and was content.

At this time when a mere boy there came to the town, waiting for a packet, a very agreeable clergyman. He was going to embark for Lisbon, on account of his health. He appeared a man of learning from what I heard my father say of him, for he was often with him before he sailed, to return no more, for he died there. His manners were remarkably kind, and won my heart at once, and I was not when a lad always pleased with a stranger. His name was Babington. He was a great friend of Mr. Wilberforce, and also of Mr. Thornton. He had come from Leicestershire. How long he survived at Lisbon I do not know, as his memory would not perhaps have