n as far as my very
limited circle of ideas would permit; but, unlike my brother, who was at
this time at school, and whose rapid progress in every branch of
instruction astonished and delighted his preceptors, I took no pleasure
in books, whose use, indeed, I could scarcely comprehend, and bade fair
to be as arrant a dunce as ever brought the blush of shame into the
cheeks of anxious and affectionate parents.

But the time was now at hand when the ice which had hitherto bound the
mind of the child with its benumbing power was to be thawed, and a world
of sensations and ideas awakened to which it had hitherto been an entire
stranger. One day a young lady, an intimate acquaintance of our family,
and godmother to my brother, drove up to the house in which we dwelt; she
staid some time conversing with my mother, and on rising to depart she
put down on the table a small packet, exclaiming, "I have brought a
little present for each of the boys: the one is a History of England,
which I intend for my godson when he returns from school, the other is--"
and here she said something which escaped my ear, as I sat at some
distance, moping in a corner:--"I intend it for the youngest yonder,"
pointing to myself; she then departed, and, my mother going out shortly
after, I was left alone.

I remember for some time sitting motionless in my corner, with my eyes
bent upon the ground; at last I lifted my head and looked upon the packet
as it lay on the table. All at once a strange sensation came over me,
such as I had never experienced before--a singular blending of curiosity,
awe, and pleasure, the remembrance of which, even at this distance of
time, produces a remarkable effect upon my nervous system. What strange
things are the nerves--I mean those more secret and mysterious ones in
which I have some notion that the mind or soul, call it which you will,
has its habitation; how they occasionally tingle and vibrate before any
coming event closely connected with the future weal or woe of the human
being. Such a feeling was now within me, certainly independent of what
the eye had seen or the ear had heard. A book of some description had
been brought for me, a present by no means calculated to interest me;
what cared I for books? I had already many into which I never looked but
from compulsion; friends, moreover, had presented me with similar things
before, which I had entirely disregarded, and what was there in this
particular book,