educated in France, had seen Napoleon, and
often described him to me. She told me many old French fairy-tales, and
often sang a ballad (which I found in after years in the works of
Cazotte), which made a great impression on me--something like that of
"Childe Roland to the dark tower came." It was called _Le Sieur
Enguerrand_, and the refrain was "_Oh ma bonne j'ai tant peur_."

That these and many other influences of culture stirred me strangely even
as a child, is evident from the fact that they have remained so vividly
impressed on my memory. This reminds me that I can distinctly remember
that when I was eight years of age, in 1832, my grandmother, Mrs. Oliver
Leland, told my mother that the great German poet Goethe had recently
died, and that they bade me remember it. On the same day I read in the
_Athenaeum_ (an American reprint of leading articles, poems, &c., from
English magazines, which grandmother took all her life long) a
translation of Schiller's "Diver." I read it only once, and to this day
I can repeat nearly the whole of it. I have now by me, as I write, a
silver messenger-ring of King Robert, and I never see it without thinking
of the corner of the room by the side-door where I stood when grandmother
spoke of the death of Goethe. But I anticipate.

My father was a commission merchant, and had his place of business in
Market Street below Third Street. His partner was Charles S. Boker, who
had a son, George, who will often be mentioned in these Memoirs. George
became in after life distinguished as a poet, and was Minister for many
years at Constantinople and at St. Petersburg.

From Mrs. Rodgers' my parents went to Mrs. Shinn's, in Second Street. It
also was a very old-fashioned house, with a garden full of flowers, and a
front doorstep almost on a level with the ground. The parlour had a
large old fireplace, set with blue tiles of the time of Queen Anne, and
it was my delight to study and have explained to me from them the story
of Joseph and his brethren and AEsop's fables. Everything connected with
this house recurs to me as eminently pleasant, old-fashioned, and very
respectable. I can remember something very English-like among the
gentlemen-boarders who sat after dinner over their Madeira, and a
beautiful lady, Mrs. Stanley, who gave me a sea-shell. Thinking of it
all, I seem to have lived in a legend by Hawthorne.

There was another change to a Mrs. Eaton's boarding-house in Fifth
Str