bread used than what was made from two bags of flour. The 6th of November
was annually celebrated as long as my father lived, by a dinner which he
gave to his neighbours and friends, and one thing was never forgotten,
which was a bumper toast to the memory of Colonel Thomas and Miss Margery
Hunt; which generally concluded by the production of the sword, which
Charles the second took from his side and presented to the Colonel on his
arrival in France, which my father with great pride exhibited to his
friends, frequently accompanied by some part of the foregoing narrative.

My mother was of a weak and nervous constitution, and I inherited in some
degree, when a child, her complaint, for I was very delicate, although
remarkable for activity and high spirits. I remember about a month before
I first went to school, which was at the early age of only five years and
a half, I rode to Magdalen-hill fair near Winchester, a distance of
thirty-one miles, and back again the same day, with my father. To ride
sixty-two miles in one day for a boy not five years and a half old, which
I did without any apparent fatigue, was considered rather an extraordinary
omen of my future capability for active exertion. I was sent to a
boarding-school at Tilshead in Wiltshire, at five and a half years of age,
and, my father told me at my departure, "that I was going to begin a
little world for myself." Before I mounted my poney he seriously gave me
his blessing and his parting advice, which was delivered in a very
emphatic manner, my mother anxiously listening, while a tear glistened in
her eye. "Go," said he, "my dear, and may heaven bless and direct all your
actions, so that you may grow up to be an honest, a brave, and a good man;
but remember well what I now say: you must fight your own battles amongst
your schoolfellows as well as you can. If I ever hear that you are
quarrelsome I shall detest you, but if I find that you are a coward I will
disown and disinherit you." This was the language of one of the best of
fathers to his son, a child of five years and a half old, and it speaks