e not always so in their
effects. For my own part, for years after the first bitter lesson of my
life became connected with that city, I could not think of it without
pain, or hear its name spoken without suffering a depression of spirits,
as difficult to throw off as are the heavy clouds that follow in the
track, and hide the little light of a December sun. At school, I remember
well how grievously I wept upon the map on which I first saw the word
written, and how completely I expunged the characters from the paper,
forbidding my eyes to glance even to the county from which I had erased
them. Time passes, hardening the heart as it rolls over it, and we afford
to laugh at the strong feelings and extravagant views of our youth. It is
well, perhaps, that we do so; and yet on that subject a word or two of
profitable matter might be offered, which shall be withholden now. For
many years I have battled through the world, an orphan, on my own
account; and it is not surprising that the vehemence of my early days
should have gradually sobered down before the stern realities that have
at every step encountered me. Long before I received the unwelcome
intelligence, that it was literally incumbent upon me to revisit the spot
of my beloved mother's dissolution, the mention of its name had ceased to
evoke any violent emotion, or to affect me as of old. I say _unwelcome_,
because, notwithstanding the stoicism of which I boast, I felt quite
uncomfortable enough to write to my correspondent by the return of post,
urging him to make one more endeavour to complete my business without my
aid, and to spare, if possible, my personal attendance. I gave no reason
for this wish. I did not choose to tell a falsehood, and I had hardly
honesty to acknowledge, even to myself--the truth. I failed, however, in
my application, and with any but a cheerful mind, I quitted London on my
journey. Thirty years before I had travelled to ---- in a stupendous
machine, of which now I recollect only that it seemed to take years out
of my little life in arriving at its destination, and that, on its broad,
substantial rear, it bore the effigy of "_an ancient Briton_." Locomotion
then, like me, was in a state of infancy. On the occasion of my second
visit to the city, I had hardly time to wonder at the velocity with which
I was borne along. Distance was annihilated. The two hundred miles over
which _the ancient Briton_ had wearisomely laboured, were reduced to
twent