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348 upon the hob; a cup would be buried for weeks if it had come in contact with the unclean lip of a stranger, and so sacred in her eyes was her cherry wood arm-chair, that "if any visitor who was not in her especial favour sat thereon, the leathern cushion was always sent into the garden to be aired and purified before she would use it again." The grounds about the house abounded with fruit trees, and the fragrant jessamine clustered over the steps that led from the parlour to the garden. This was a favourite spot with young Southey, where he would often sit for hours, indulging in the vague and strange reveries of childhood. The house was tastefully filled with antique furniture, a few prints adorned the walls, and a curtain guarded from flies and profanation, Gainsborough's portrait of its eccentric mistress. Here wearily passed the days of the child-poet; he was allowed no playmates; he experienced no sympathy; he was debarred from the exercises natural to his age, as no speck of dirt was ever allowed to soil his immaculate attire. He slept with his aunt, who was a late riser, and morning after morning had he to lie in painful tranquillity, fearing lest he might disturb her by some involuntary motion; occupied in tracing fanciful combinations in the folds of the curtains, and watching the countless motes dancing in the sunbeams that crept through the chinks of the shutters.

The wife of Francis Newberry, a son of Goldsmith's publishing patron, was a friend of Miss Tyler's, and she presented the nephew with twenty of those famous juvenile works, so popular, before it was the custom to torture the minds of children with elementary treatises on statics and political economy. To the eager perusal of these treasures Southey ascribed much of his early predilection for books. He was frequently taken to the theatre, for which amusement Miss Tyler had a strong partiality, and would