ess, who would have relieved him of his esculent, and made the
best of his way home, with it dangling at his neck. Mr. Allan's anger was
aroused, and he proceeded instantly to the school-room, and after
lecturing the astonished dame upon the enormity of such an insult to his
son and to himself, demanded his account, determined that the child
should not again be subject to such tyranny. Who can estimate the effect
of this puerile triumph upon the growth of that morbid self-esteem which
characterized the author in after life?

In 1816, he accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Allan to Great Britain, visited the
most interesting portions of the country, and afterward passed four or
five years in a school kept at Stoke Newington, near London, by the Rev.
Dr. Bransby. In his tale, entitled "William Wilson," he has introduced a
striking description of this school and of his life here. He says:

"My earliest recollections of a school life are connected with a
large, rambling Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of
England, where were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and
where all the houses were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a
dream-like and spirit-soothing place, that venerable old town. At this
moment, in fancy, I feel the refreshing chilliness of its
deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance of its thousand
shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the deep
hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each, hour, with sullen and
sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the
fretted Gothic steeple lay embedded 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
recognize the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterward
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. The prison-like rampart forme