feelings. While my brothers were playing on the green before the
minster, the servant who attended us has often, by my earnest
entreaties, suffered me to remain beneath the great eagle which stood in
the centre of the aisle, to support the book from which the clergyman
read the lessons of the day; and nothing could keep me away, even in the
coldest seasons, but the stern looks of an old man, whom I named Black
John from the colour of his beard and complexion, and whose occupations
within the sacred precincts were those of a bell-ringer and sexton.

As soon as I had learned to read, my great delight was that of learning
epitaphs and monumental inscriptions. A story of melancholy import never
failed to excite my attention; and before I was seven years old I could
correctly repeat Pope's "Lines to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady;"
Mason's "Elegy on the Death of the Beautiful Countess of Coventry," and
many smaller poems on similar subjects. I had then been attended two
years by various masters. Mr. Edmund Broadrip taught me music, my father
having presented me with one of Kirkman's finest harpsichords, as an
incitement to emulation. Even there my natural bent of mind evinced
itself. The only melody which pleased me was that of the mournful and
touching kind. Two of my earliest favourites were the celebrated ballad
by Gay, beginning, "'Twas when the sea was roaring," and the simple
pathetic stanzas of "The Heavy Hours," by the poet Lord Lyttelton.
These, though nature had given me but little voice, I could at seven
years of age sing so pathetically that my mother, to the latest hour of
her life,' never could bear to hear the latter of them repeated. They
reminded her of sorrows in which I have since painfully learned to
sympathise.

The early hours of boarding-school study I passed under the tuition of
the Misses More, sisters to the lady of that name whose talents have