rd, not publicly
circulated, our recital is partly gathered. Companions of his childhood
have often told us well-remembered incidents of his life, and this is
the too brief story of his earthly career.

When about eight years of age, Arthur resided some time in Germany and
Switzerland, with his father and mother. He had already become familiar
with the French language, and a year later he read Latin with some
facility. Although the father judiciously studied to repress his son's
marked precocity of talent, Arthur wrote about this time several plays
in prose and in rhyme,--compositions which were never exhibited,
however, beyond the family-circle.

At ten years of age he became a pupil at a school in Putney, under the
tuition of an excellent clergyman, where he continued two years. He then
took a short tour on the Continent, and, returning, went to Eton, where
he studied nearly five years. While at Eton, he was reckoned, according
to the usual test at that place, not a first-rate Latin student, for his
mind had a predominant bias toward English literature, and there he
lingered among the exhaustless fountains of the earlier poetry of his
native tongue. One who knew him well in those years has described him to
us as a sweet-voiced lad, moving about the pleasant playing-fields of
Eton with a thoughtful eye and a most kindly expression. Afterwards, as
Tennyson, singing to the witch-elms and the towering sycamore, paints
him, he mixed in all the simple sports, and loved to gather a happy
group about him, as he lay on the grass and discussed grave questions of
state. And again,--

"Thy converse drew us with delight,
The men of rathe and riper years:
The feeble soul, a haunt of fears,
Forgot his weakness in thy sight."

His taste for philosophical poetry increased with his years, and
Wordsworth and Shelley became his prime favorites. His contributions to
the "Eton Miscellany" were various, sometimes in prose and now and then
in verse. A poet by nature, he could not resist the Muse's influence,
and he expressed a genuine emotion, oftentimes elegantly, and never
without a meaning.

In the summer of 1827 he left Eton, and travelled with his parents eight
months in Italy. And now began that life of thought and feeling so
conspicuous to the end of his too brief career. Among the Alps his whole
soul took the impress of those early introductions to what is most
glorious and beautiful in Nature. After passin