study of the Oriental languages, but for the advice of a relative, who
begged him seriously to turn his attention to history. The paragraph
which follows must speak for itself as a true record under a feigned
heading.

"The groundwork of my early character was plasticity and fickleness.
I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with
my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the
study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous
habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail to make as
gross mistakes in the pursuit of this as of other branches of
knowledge. I imagined, on setting out, a system of strict and
impartial investigation of the sources of history. I was inspired
with the absurd ambition, not uncommon to youthful students, of
knowing as much as their masters. I imagined it necessary for me,
stripling as I was, to study the authorities; and, imbued with the
strict necessity of judging for myself, I turned from the limpid
pages of the modern historians to the notes and authorities at the
bottom of the page. These, of course, sent me back to my monastic
acquaintances, and I again found myself in such congenial company to
a youthful and ardent mind as Florence of Worcester and Simeon of
Durham, the Venerable Bede and Matthew Paris; and so on to Gregory
and Fredegarius, down to the more modern and elegant pages of
Froissart, Hollinshed, Hooker, and Stowe. Infant as I was, I
presumed to grapple with masses of learning almost beyond the
strength of the giants of history. A spendthrift of my time and
labor, I went out of my way to collect materials, and to build for
myself, when I should have known that older and abler architects had
already appropriated all that was worth preserving; that the edifice
was built, the quarry exhausted, and that I was, consequently, only
delving amidst rubbish.

"This course of study was not absolutely without its advantages.
The mind gained a certain proportion of vigor even by this exercise
of its faculties, just as my bodily health would have been improved
by transporting the refuse ore of a mine from one pit to another,
instead of coining the ingots which lay heaped before my eyes.
Still, however, my time was squandered. There was a constant want
of fitness and concentration of my energies. My dreams of education
were