s of
quarrels and bloodshed, and that I might read no more of it unless I
felt inclined. But I now did feel inclined very strongly, and read on
with increasing astonishment and delight. I was intoxicated with the
fiery narratives of the blind minstrel,--with his fierce breathings of
hot, intolerant patriotism, and his stories of astonishing prowess;
and, glorying in being a Scot, and the countryman of Wallace and the
Graham, I longed for a war with the Southron, that the wrongs and
sufferings of these noble heroes might yet be avenged. All I had
previously heard and read of the marvels of foreign parts, of the
glories of modern battles, seemed tame and commonplace, compared with
the incidents in the life of Wallace; and I never after vexed my mother
by wishing myself big enough to be a sailor. My Uncle Sandy, who had
some taste for the refinements of poetry, would fain have led me on from
the exploits of Wallace to the "Life of the Bruce," which, in the form
of a not very vigorous imitation of Dryden's "Virgil," by one Harvey,
was bound up in the same volume, and which my uncle deemed the
better-written life of the two. And so far as the mere amenities of
style were concerned, he was, I daresay, right. But I could not agree
with him. Harvey was by much too fine and too learned for me; and it was
not until some years after, when I was fortunate enough to pick up one
of the later editions of Barbour's "Bruce," that the Hero-King of
Scotland assumed his right place in my mind beside its Hero-Guardian.
There are stages of development in the immature youth of individuals,
that seem to correspond with stages of development in the immature youth
of nations; and the recollections of this early time enable me, in some
measure, to understand how it was that, for hundreds of years, Blind
Harry's "Wallace," with its rude and naked narrative, and its
exaggerated incident, should have been, according to Lord Hailes, the
Bible of the Scotch people.

I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after
mastering that grand acquirement of my life,--the art of holding
converse with books; and was transferred straightforth to the grammar
school of the parish, at which there attended at this time about a
hundred and twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more,
much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the
counting, seeing that it consisted of only _lassies_. And here, too, the
early