rly scenes
and circumstances which surrounded us. It was in the loneliness of my
unchecked wanderings that my early affection for my own thoughts
was conceived. In the seclusion of nature--in whatever court she
presided--the education of my mind was begun; and, even at that early
age, I rejoiced (like the wild heart the Grecian poet [Eurip. Bambae,
1. 874.] has described) in the stillness of the great woods, and the
solitudes unbroken by human footstep.

The first change in my life was under melancholy auspices; my father
fell suddenly ill, and died; and my mother, whose very existence seemed
only held in his presence, followed him in three months. I remember
that, a few hours before her death, she called me to her: she reminded
me that, through her, I was of Spanish extraction; that in her country,
I received my birth, and that, not the less for its degradation and
distress, I might hereafter find in the relations which I held to it a
remembrance to value, or even a duty to fulfil. On her tenderness to me
at that hour, on the impression it made upon my mind, and on the keen
and enduring sorrow which I felt for months after her death, it would be
useless to dwell.

My uncle became my guardian. He is, you know, a member of parliament
of some reputation; very sensible and very dull; very much respected by
men, very much disliked by women; and inspiring all children, of either
sex, with the same unmitigated aversion which he feels for them himself.

I did not remain long under his immediate care. I was soon sent to
school--that preparatory world, where the great primal principles of
human nature, in the aggression of the strong and the meanness of the
weak, constitute the earliest lesson of importance that we are taught;
and where the forced _primitiae_ of that less universal knowledge which
is useless to the many who in after life, neglect, and bitter to the
few who improve it, are the first motives for which our minds are to be
broken to terror, and our hearts initiated into tears.

Bold and resolute by temper, I soon carved myself a sort of career among
my associates. A hatred to all oppression, and a haughty and unyielding
character, made me at once the fear and aversion of the greater powers
and principalities of the school; while my agility at all boyish games,
and my ready assistance or protection to every one who required it, made
me proportionally popular with, and courted by, the humbler multitude of
the subo