and without having the smallest actual belief in the existence of
fairies, goblins, or any such things, I took unutterable delight in
surrounding myself with hosts of them, decked out in colors of my own
supplying, gorgeous or terrible beyond the conception of my classic
authorities. The faculty of realizing whatever I pictured to myself was
astonishingly great; and you must admit that the localities in which I
was placed were but too favorable to the formation of a character which
I have no doubt the enemy was secretly constructing within me, to
mislead, by wild, unholy fiction, such as should come within the range
of its, influence. To God be all the glory that I am not now pandering
with this pen to the most grovelling or the most impious of man's
perverted feelings.

But above all other tastes, all other cravings, one passion reigned
supreme, and that acme of enjoyment to me was music. This also was met
by indulgence as unlimited as its cravings; for not only did my father
possess one of the finest voices in the world, and the very highest
degree of scientific knowledge, taste, and skill in the management of
it, but our house was seldom without an inmate in the person of his most
intimate friend and brother clergyman, a son of the celebrated composer
Mr. Linley, who was as highly gifted in instrumental as my father was in
vocal music. The rich tones of his old harpsichord seem at this moment
to fill my ear and swell my heart; while my father's deep, clear, mellow
voice breaks in, with some noble recitative or elaborate air of Handel,
Haydn, and the rest of a school that may be superseded, but never, never
can be equalled by modern composers. Or the harpsichord was
relinquished to another hand, and the breath of our friend came forth
through the reed of his hautboy in strains of such overpowering melody,
that I have hid my face on my mother's lap to weep the feelings that
absolutely wrung my little heart with excess of enjoyment. This was not