ers to exquisite
perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than
boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own,
few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music,
her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of
dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this
was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which
was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to act
upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale and
slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.

"Tonics!" said Mr. Squills; "and don't let him sit over his book. Send
him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are
growing too large;" and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his
hand on my forehead. "Gad, sir, here's an ideality for you; and, bless
my soul, what a constructiveness!"

My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with
his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was
gone.

"My dear," then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning
my aching ideality--"my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good
earnest."

"Bless me, Austin!--at his age?"

"He is nearly eight years old."

"But he is so forward."

"It is for that reason he must go to school."

"I don't quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me;
but you who are so clever--"

My father took my mother's hand: "We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
We send him to school to be taught--"

"By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--"

"By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again," said my father,
almost sadly. "My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year,
and you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed,
and asked why. What did the gardener say? 'To prevent their bearing
too soon.' There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
produce, that the plant may last."

"Let me go to school," said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
itself answered him.

CHAPTER VI.

A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for th