astonished at; but that, at
all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more
pleasantly habitable, to pull Warwick castle down."

* * * * *

"Contented, by reason of these occasional glimpses of the rivers of
Paradise, I lived until I was more than four years old in Hunter
Street, Brunswick Square, the greater part of the year; for a few
weeks in the summer breathing country air, by taking lodgings in small
cottages (real cottages, not villas, so-called) either about
Hampstead, or at Dulwich, at 'Mrs. Ridley's,' the last of a row in a
lane which led out into the Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself
full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my
chief remaining impressions of those days are attached to Hunter
Street. My mother's general principles of first treatment were, to
guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or danger,
and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was
neither fretful or troublesome. But the law was, that I should find my
own amusement. No toys of any kind were at first allowed, and the pity
of my Croydon aunt for my monastic poverty in this respect was
boundless. On one of my birthdays, thinking to overcome my mother's
resolution by splendor of temptation, she bought the most radiant
Punch and Judy she could find in the Soho bazaar, as big as a real
Punch and Judy, all dressed in scarlet and gold, and that would dance,
tied to the leg of a chair. I must have been greatly impressed, for I
remember well the look of the two figures, as my aunt herself
exhibited their virtues. My mother was obliged to accept them, but
afterward quietly told me it was not right that I should have them,
and I never saw them again.

"Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for an instant
to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such things as one saw in
toyshops. I had a bunch of keys to play with, as long as I was capable
only of pleasure in what glittered and jingled, as I grew older I had
a cart and a ball, and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of
well-cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but I still think, entirely
sufficient possessions, and being always summarily whipped if I cried,
did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon attained
serene and secure methods of life and motion, and could pass my days
contentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colors of my