sphere in which the fretted Gothic steeple lay imbedded
and asleep.

It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner
experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its
concerns. Steeped in misery as I am--misery, alas! only too real--I
shall be pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary,
in the weakness of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly
trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy,
adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when
and where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which
afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.

The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were
extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar
and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed
the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week--once every
Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to
take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields--and
twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to
the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of
this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a
spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote
pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the
pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign,
with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely
powdered, so rigid and so vast,---could this be he who, of late, with
sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand,
the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly
monstrous for solution!

At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was
riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron
spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never
opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already
mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a
plenitude of mystery--a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more
solemn meditation.

The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious
recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the
play-ground. It was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well