often enough would send me to the bookseller's
with a written order for books. This was to prevent my forgetting. But
when he found that such a thing as "forgetting" in the case of a book, was
wholly out of the question for me, the trouble of writing was dismissed.
And thus I had become factor-general on the part of my guardian, both for
_his_ books, and for such as were wanted on my own account in the natural
course of my education. My private "little account" had therefore in fact
flowed homewards at Christmas, not (as I anticipated) in the shape of an
independent current, but as a little tributary rill that was lost in the
waters of some more important river. This I now know, but could not then
have known with any certainty. So far, however, the affair would gradually
have sunk out of my anxieties as time wore on. But there was another item
in the case, which, from the excess of my ignorance, preyed upon my
spirits far more keenly; and this, keeping itself alive, kept also the
other incident alive. With respect to the debt, I was not so ignorant as
to think it of much danger by the mere amount: my own allowance furnished
a scale for preventing _that_ mistake: it was the principle, the having
presumed to contract debts on my own account, that I feared to have
exposed. But this other case was a ground for anxiety even as regarded the
amount; not really; but under the jesting representation made to me, which
I (as ever before and after) swallowed in perfect faith. Amongst the books
which I had bought, all English, was a history of Great Britain,
commencing of course with Brutus and a thousand years of impossibilities;
these fables being generously thrown in as a little gratuitous _extra_ to
the mass of truths which were to follow. This was to be completed in sixty
or eighty parts, I believe. But there was another work left more
indefinite as to its ultimate extent, and which from its nature seemed to
imply a far wider range. It was a general history of navigation, supported
by a vast body of voyages. Now, when I considered with myself what a huge
thing the sea was, and that so many thousands of captains, commodores,
admirals, were eternally running up and down it, and scoring lines upon
its face so rankly, that in some of the main "streets" and "squares" (as
one might call them) their tracks would blend into one undistinguishable
blot,--I began to fear that such a work tended to infinity. What was
little England to the uni