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93 mother and he were so little asunder, that all her acquisitions were incidentally, and almost without design, communicated to him. If the difference between him and other children was at all to be attributed to any other cause, than his own ardour and industry, it is in this point, that his domestic circumstances might be considered as favourable. His instructors were not pertinacious or scholastic in the exercise of their office; but they had his welfare too much at heart, ever to have neglected their charge.

But the most singular instance of a fertile imagination, united with the power of making all he met with in books or conversation his own, remains yet behind. This was the idea of a visionary country, called Allestone, which was so strongly impressed on his own mind, as to enable him to convey an intelligible and lively transcript of it in description. Of this delightful territory he considered himself as king. He had formed the project of writing its