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302 not forgotten it, because I have not forgotten you that at the age of four years I had the reputation of being the most troublesome and vociferous reader you had ever seen. The crude notions which I acquired by my habits of early reading, wandered a long time in my mind, like the clouds in space when they meet with no point of support to form a nucleus, till some little book which accident placed in my hands came to fill a vacuum, or some other, later, to explain a passage not well understood. I had many historical notions at that age, when the generality of children are thinking only of their plays; and now that I have visited Rome I have been able to recognize at first sight, by the image engraven in my memory from the earliest childhood, in which I passed hours poring over a Roman Guide Book, and which was the first book I owned, the monuments I met with. I do not know how nor when I read an account of the ruins of Pompeii, but not being able to keep to myself the novelty and wonder it excited, I attacked people in the street to tell them the portentous story. I told it thus to our cousin M., and instead of standing with open mouth as I had promised, he burst into a fit of laughter; and whenever he saw me where people were assembled, he made me tell the story of Pompeii for the general diversion. I have now seen that Pompeii which so preoccupied my childhood, and it reminds me of the incredulity of M." From this digression we return to his little book.

"Apart from a natural faculty of comprehending what I read, I had a secret background of images of which the public was ignorant. My poor father, ignorant himself, but solicitous that his children should not be so, sharpened at home this rising thirst for knowledge, and made me read, without pity for my tender years, the 'Critical