educational
advantages were of the noblest and best, home-training largely
predominating. In the ninth chapter he refers in a simple matter-of-fact
way to his early studies: "Mamma devotes her time in teaching me and in
reading instructive books with me. Papa tells me about the productions
of the earth, rivers, mountains, valleys, mines, and, most wonderful of
all, the formation of the human body." Further on we read: "Nothing of
any great importance occurred now for some time. My life was spent
quietly in the country, as the child of a Wiltshire clergyman ought,
mamma devoting her time in teaching me, and my daily play going on the
same, till at last papa and mamma took me to the splendid capital of
England." However much this brilliant transition may have dazzled him,
he still prefers his quiet country home, arguing thus: "As to living
there [in London], I should not like it. The reason why--because its
noisy riots in the streets suit not my mood like the tranquil streams
and the waving trees I love in England's country.... 'Tis true--oh, how
true!--in the poetic words of Mr. Shakespeare, 'Man made the town, God
made the country.'"

Despite the stilted style and absurdly pompous descriptions, with an
occasional terrible breakdown, Charlie's love of Nature, and especially
of the animal creation, seems to have been most genuine. He speaks of
"the wide ocean which when angry roars and clashes over the beach, but
when calm crabs are seen crawling on the shore and the sun shines bright
over the waves," and of "the billows rolling over each other and foaming
over the rough stones," with an apparently real enthusiasm. The softer
emotions of his nature were engrossed in this way, as we infer from the
negative evidence afforded by his autobiography that he reached his
seventh year without any experience of the tender passion.

His physiological ideas in the speculations regarding the origin of a
baby-brother are naively expressed: "One day I was told that a baby was
born [this was when he was three years and a half old], and upon going
into mamma's bedroom I saw a red baby lying in an arm-chair wrapped in
swaddling-clothes. It puzzled me very much to think how he came into the
world: it was mysterious, very, and I cannot make it out now. My first
thought was, that he must have had airy wings, and after he had come
they had disappeared. My second thought was that he was so very little
as to be able to come through the keyhole,