education. Fain would I have gone like other lads of my age to
public school and college; but on this point, as on most others, he was
inflexible. Himself an obscure physician in a remote country town, he
brought me up with no other view than to be his own successor. The
profession was not to my liking. Somewhat contemplative and nervous by
nature, there were few pursuits for which I was less fitted. I knew
this, but dared not oppose him. Loving study for its own sake, and
trusting to the future for some lucky turn of destiny, I yielded to that
which seemed inevitable, and strove to make the best of it.

Thus it came to pass that I lived a quiet, hard-working home life, while
other boys of my age were going through the joyous experience of school,
and chose my companions from the dusty shelves of some three or four
gigantic book-cases, instead of from the class and the playground. Not
that I regret it. I believe, on the contrary, that a boy may have worse
companions than books and busts, employments less healthy than the study
of anatomy, and amusements more pernicious than Shakespeare and Horace.
Thank Heaven! I escaped all such; and if, as I have been told, my
boyhood was unboyish, and my youth prematurely cultivated, I am content
to have been spared the dangers in exchange for the pleasures of a
public school.

I do not, however, pretend to say that I did not sometimes pine for the
recreations common to my age. Well do I remember the manifold
attractions of Barnard's Green. What longing glances I used to steal
towards the boisterous cricketers, when going gravely forth upon a
botanical walk with my father! With what eager curiosity have I not
lingered many a time before the entrance to a forbidden booth, and
scanned the scenic advertisement of a travelling show! Alas! how the
charms of study paled before those intervals of brief but bitter
temptation! What, then, was pathology compared to the pig-faced lady, or
the Materia Medica to Smith's Mexican Circus, patronized by all the
sovereigns of Europe? But my father was inexorable. He held that such
places were, to use his own words, "opened by swindlers for the ruin of
fools," and from one never-to-be-forgotten hour, when he caught me in
the very act of taking out my penny-worth at a portable peep-show, he
bound me over by a solemn promise (sealed by a whipping) never to repeat
the offence under any provocation or pretext whatsoever. I was a tiny
fellow in pinafores w