They told me that he was tall and strong, and ruddy of face; that my
beak nose is like his, my square forehead, my firm chin. After he
reached America he wrote to me. I have the letters yet, written in a
large open hand, characteristic of an adventurous nature. Though he was
my father, he was only a person in the world after all. I was surrounded
by my mother's people. They spoke of him infrequently. What had he done?
Did they disapprove his leaving England? Had he been kind to my mother?
But all the while I had my mother's picture beside me. And my
grandmother spoke to me almost daily of her gentleness, her
high-mindedness, her beauty, and her charm.

I was raised in the English church. I was taught to adore Wellington, to
hate Napoleon as an enemy of liberty, a usurper, a false emperor, a
monster, a murderer. I was sent to Eton and to Oxford. I was
indoctrinated with the idea that there is a moral governance in the
world, that God rules over the affairs of men. I was taught these
things, but I resisted them. I did not rebel so much as my mind
naturally proved impervious to these ideas. I read the _Iliad_ and the
_Odyssey_ with passionate interest. They gave me a panoramic idea of
life, men, races, civilizations. They gave me understanding of Napoleon.
What if he had sold the Louisiana territory to rebel America, and in
order to furnish that faithless nation with power to overcome England in
some future crisis? Perhaps this very moral governance that I was taught
to believe in wished this to happen. But if the World Spirit be nothing
but the concurrent thinking of many peoples, as I grew to think, the
World Spirit might irresistibly wish this American supremacy to be.

And now at eighteen I am absorbed in dreams and studies at Oxford. I
have many friends. My life is a delight. I arise from sleep with a song,
and a bound. We play, we talk, we study, we discuss questions of all