a jest, remark; but the serious spirit of infancy adopted
it in earnest. Children are all classics; a bottle would have seemed an
intermediary too trivial--that divine refreshment of whose meaning I had
no guess; and I seized on the idea of that mystic shoe-horn with
delight, even as, a little later, I should have written flagon, chalice,
hanaper, beaker, or any word that might have appealed to me at the
moment as least contaminate with mean associations. In this string of
pictures I believe the gist of the psalm to have consisted; I believe it
had no more to say to me; and the result was consolatory. I would go to
sleep dwelling with restfulness upon these images; they passed before
me, besides, to an appropriate music; for I had already singled out from
that rude psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds of all,
not growing old, not disgraced by its association with long Sunday
tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion
thought:--

"In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by."

The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of what
was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. If these pleased me,
it was unconsciously; I listened for news of the great vacant world upon
whose edge I stood; I listened for delightful plots that I might
re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and circumstances that I might
call up before me, with closed eyes, when I was tired of Scotland, and
home and that weary prison of the sick-chamber in which I lay so long in
durance. "Robinson Crusoe"; some of the books of that cheerful,
ingenious, romantic soul, Mayne Reid; and a work rather gruesome and
bloody for a child, but very picturesque, called "Paul Blake"; these are
the three strongest impressions I remember: "The Swiss Family Robinson"
came next, _longo intervallo_. At these I played, conjured up their
scenes, and delighted to hear them rehearsed unto seventy times seven. I
am not sure but what "Paul Blake" came after I could read. It seems
connected with a visit to the country, and an experience unforgettable.
The day had been warm; H---- and I had played together charmingly all
day in a sandy wilderness across the road; then came the evening with a
great flash of colour and a heavenly sweetness in the air. Somehow my
playmate had vanished, or is out of the story, as the sagas say, but I
was sent into the village on an errand; and, taking a book of fairy
tales,