ington House Academy--Revisited and
Described--Letter from a Schoolfellow--C. D.'s
Recollections of School--Schoolfellow's
Recollections of C. D.--Fac-simile of Schoolboy
Letter--Daniel Tobin--Another Schoolfellow's
Recollections--Writing Tales and getting up
Plays--Master Beverley
Scene-Painter--Street-acting--The Schoolfellows
after Forty Years--Smallness of the World--In
Attorneys' Offices--At Minor Theatres--The
Father on the Son's Education--Studying
Short-hand--In British Museum Reading
Room--Preparing for the Gallery--D. C. for C.
D.--A Real Dora in 1829--The same Dora in
1855--Dora changed into Flora--Ashes of Youth
and Hope.

IN what way these strange experiences of his boyhood affected him
afterwards, this narrative of his life must show; but there were
influences that made themselves felt even on his way to manhood.

What at once he brought out of the humiliation that had impressed him so
deeply, though scarcely as yet quite consciously, was a natural dread of
the hardships that might still be in store for him, sharpened by what he
had gone through; and this, though in its effect for the present
imperfectly understood, became by degrees a passionate resolve, even
while he was yielding to circumstances, _not to be_ what circumstances
were conspiring to make him. All that was involved in what he had
suffered and sunk into, could not have been known to him at the time;
but it was plain enough later, as we see; and in conversation with me
after the revelation was made, he used to find, at extreme points in his
life, the explanation of himself in those early trials. He had derived
great good from them, but not without alloy. The fixed and eager
determination, the restless and resistless energy, which opened to him
opportunities of escape from many mean environments, not by turning off
from any path of duty, but by resolutely rising to such excellence or
distinction as might be attainable in it, brought with it some
disadvantage among many noble advantages. Of this he was himself aware,
but not to the full extent. What it was that in society made him often
uneasy, shrinking, and over-sensitive, he knew; but all the danger he
ran in bearing down and overmastering the feeling, he did not know. A
too great confidence in himself, a sense that everything was possible to
the will that would make