Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the
conqueror's aim in an object that action only can achieve, and the book
under his pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose. And how
the stern Destinies that shall govern the man weave their first delicate
tissues amidst the earliest associations of the child! Those idle tales
with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled my infancy,--tales of
wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure,--had left behind them seeds long
latent, seeds that might never have sprung up above the soil, but that
my boyhood was so early put under the burning-glass, and in the quick
forcing house, of the London world. There, even amidst books and study,
lively observation and petulant ambition broke forth from the lush
foliage of romance,--that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And
there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements of individual
man, had called anew state of being, turbulent and eager, out of the old
habits and conventional forms it had buried,--ashes that speak where the
fire has been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, be the
attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on the struggles
against a rash and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to
overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied, is a terrible
unsettler,--

"Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow."

To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined
routine--how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered
monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his
wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful;
but now that my return to the University must be attended with positive
privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and
repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet