a young person about sixteen, the daughter of M. Venel, a celebrated surgeon at Orbe. She had never left her home before; in truth, her own education was by no means finished, but my parents hoped to train and educate her in what they wished.

I had a pretty little bedroom assigned to me, looking out on a lovely view; and my mother made me a present of a cabinet bookcase, which, after the lapse of sixty-six years, stands this day in my room. It is almost the only relic left of my early and much loved home. The room opposite was our pleasant schoolroom, and through it was a bedroom occupied by my sister and the governess. These three rooms, and the staircase leading to them, formed our apartments. At the bottom of the staircase was a little unoccupied room, which looked out on a flat roof covering some of the offices. It used to be a great delight to me, as soon as I had learnt my geography or Latin, to spread out the map on this roof, and call to Polly King, the little girl I have mentioned, and shout out my lesson and teach it to her; in which lesson, when next she came to wait on me, I failed not to examine her.

We used to delight in our rambles about the beautiful hills, and woods, and meadows of Barr. Nor must I forget, as one of my great pleasures, that of occasionally meeting in our walks the Swiss bonne who attended my little brothers and sisters. She was gifted with a clear, deep, and sonorous voice; my governess possessed great taste, and was not deficient in a knowledge of music; both passionately loved their country. How often would they sit on some fallen tree under the lofty pines I have de

scribed as near the flag-staff, where, after long conversing on their fatherland, its magnificent Alps, its wide-spread lakes, its pastures and its chalets, they would sing in parts the "Ranz des Vaches." Never can I forget the deep pathos of that song; every note thrilled through the soul; and I think a Swiss could scarcely have felt it more than I; whilst the mountains, clad in snow, or bright in varied light, the lake of Geneva, with the Rhone gliding through it, the Jura, Lausanne, the rocks of Meillerie and Yverdun, seemed to rise before my mind almost with the vividness of sight; and, even to the present day, Switzerland seems to me rather like a home of my heart known in childhood, than a picture of the imagination. How well I remember, when at the close of one of these times, my young governess burst into tears, and exclaimed, "He does not know the glories of God who has not seen Switzerland!"

My father was extremely fond of botany; and during our walks we were constantly occupied in looking for new plants, which my French governess would afterwards draw under his direction. We were likewise employed in learning entomology. We sallied forth with our little boxes covered with glass slides, in which to put the insects we might catch, being always careful to add some of the leaves of the plants on which they were found, that they might have a happy time whilst we took them home; and at breakfast, or after dinner or tea, we brought them to my father's or my mother's table, with our books of natural history and a microscope, and after we had learnt all we could concerning them, we released our little prisoners. Then my parents would tell us interesting stories, explain

ing the uses to which God had appointed even these minute creatures, and adding many exhortations to show kindness towards them. I well remember the intense interest with which I once examined a wasp's nest, and also the rose-like nest of the paper bee. It was a great pleasure to me to observe and watch the various birds with which Barr abounded. One day, I found in our walk a little magpie not fully grown, which had received some hurt. We took him home to nurse, and tried to tame him. My father read to me an account of the natural history of this bird; and I was much delighted with the description of Plutarch's magpie, which imitated all the evolutions of a flourish of trumpets, and from that time I determined to commence the education of my magpie. Every day I found a great spur to learning my own Latin vocabulary in trying to teach it to my little pet; and as we happened to have a grey parrot at the same time, it was an object of great interest to see which of my pupils would make most progress; and when my governess laughed at me for expecting that my magpie should excel Plutarch's, and my parrot equal Prince Maurice's, I used to say, "Lord Chatham says: "I trample on impossibilities; and what man has done, man may do.'"

About this time my mother used to read with us daily "Les Veillées du Château." We were particularly delighted with the history of Alphonse; for my mother, like Madame de Genlis, never allowed us to read fairy tales, because they had no foundation in truth. My father gave us the explanation of all the wonders we read of in Alphonse; and when my mother also read to us one

account after another of burning mountains, showers of blood, hills of loadstone, and I was told all these things were true, I was in astonishment that we never met with any of them. I expected every morning, when we began our walk, that we should certainly fall in with some of these wonders, and was greatly disappointed when day after day passed without bringing them. I have often since thought that my dear mother was perhaps mistaken in thinking that fairy tales and the "Arabian Nights" would have imbued her children's minds with false views of nature; whereas, in point of fact, a child told that the wonders of a fairy tale are a fiction, allows for its machinery as grown people do for that of Homer or Virgil; but, being told that all these wonders are actual facts, he is really led to take a totally false measure of the probability of their occurrence: and thus it was with us; we were made so familiar with the exceptions in what is called nature, that we learnt to expect them as the rule.

Another very favourite book with me at that time was Mrs. Barbauld's "Prose Hymns for Children." I cannot express the delight it often was to me to walk out alone and look at the beautiful hills, and wood, and water, or the flowers, and the happy birds, and insects, and to think that God had made them all in wisdom and in love; that He was my Father, and that I might speak to Him; and I thought if this world were beautiful, how much happier must it be in a still brighter world with Him above. I recollect one afternoon watching a funeral procession; it was a rustic funeral of a young person whom I had known; all the attendants were in white. I now recall the pro

cession slowly winding along the meadow. As I followed it with my eye, the thought arose, "Oh! happy person! then she is with God, and she really sees that beautiful world which I can only imagine."

Many passages, which my mother selected to read to me from Stretche's "Beauties of History," "Plutarch's Lives," and the "History of the Barmachides," had much effect in the formation of my character. I loved to read of the wife of Tigranes, Panthea and Abradates, of the history of Cyrus, of Arria and Pætus, of Aristides, and of Regulus. This kind of reading, whilst it inculcated an abhorrence of much evil, likewise fostered the pride and self-esteem of the natural heart, strengthened the false idea of the dignity and excellence of unassisted human nature, and tended to develope a presumptuous self-confidence, which afterwards expanded in most evil and unhappy fruits. How little do even the wisest of parents feel, perhaps, that it is necessary not only that their children should acquire a knowledge and admiration of apparent good, but that they should watch the root from which it really springs; and often have I, in after life, found in my own case that apparent indifference to the world was strongly mingled with a presumptuous reliance on self. I learnt to despise the good opinion of others, and forgot that, in self-approbation, I was seeking the approval of one as weak and ignorant as any of the herd I despised, and of which I really formed an unit.

I remember the great pleasure I often had at Barr when the scene was enlivened by the hounds quietly led forth, and the huntsmen and gentlemen in their scarlet dresses; but sometimes, when I heard the hounds rush by in full