anxious precautions to hinder
the fatal intelligence from reaching him were on the point of being
defeated by the arrival of a letter of condolence and consolation from
an injudicious but well-meaning friend, when, on discovering its
purport, she had sufficient address to substitute the lively dictates of
her own invention for the real contents of the epistle, and by this
affectionate delusion not merely to satisfy the curiosity but to cheer
the spirits of her dying husband.

So great was her solicitude for the improvement of her son, that she
declined the pressing instances of the Countess of Macclesfield to
reside under her roof, lest she should be hindered from attending
exclusively to that which was now become her main concern. To the many
inquiries which the early vivacity of the boy prompted him to put to
her, the invariable answer she returned was, _read and you will know_.
This assurance, added to the other means of instruction, from which her
fondness, or more probably her discernment, induced her to exclude every
species of severity, were so efficacious that in his fourth year he was
able to read at sight any book in his own language. Two accidents
occurred to hinder this rapid advancement from proceeding. Once he
narrowly escaped being consumed by flames from having fallen into the
fire, while endeavouring to scrape down some soot from the chimney of a
room in which he had been left alone; and was rescued only in
consequence of the alarm given to the servants by his shrieks. At
another time, his eye was nearly put out by one of the hooks of his
dress, as he was struggling under the hands of the domestic who was
putting on his clothes. From the effects of this injury his sight never
completely recovered.

In his fifth year he received a strong impression from reading the
twentieth chapter of the Apocalypse. The man must have a cold
imagination who would deny that this casual influence might have first
disclosed not only the lofty and ardent spirit, but even that insatiable
love of learning, by which he was afterwards distinguished above all his
contemporaries. Amidst the general proscription of reading adapted to
excite wonder, that germ of knowledge, in the minds of our children, it
is lucky that the Bible is still left them.

At the end of his seventh year he was placed under the tuition of Dr.
Thackeray, the master of Harrow school; but had not been there two years
before a fracture of his thigh bone, t