e yet encountered, and I am never going to do anything else,
henceforward." Fortunately for myself, I have not quite kept that
promise, though the printed page has never ceased to be a joy.

In my father's shop we sold not only such serious literature as the
population cared to buy, but we dealt, too, in the ephemeral. Mr J. F.
Smith wove stories for _Cassell's Illustrated Family Journal_ and the
_London Journal_ which would have made the fortune of a modern man; and
there was one writer in _Reynolds' Miscellany_ who was most delightfully
fertile in horrors. In one chapter he buried a nobleman alive in the
family vault, and described his sensations in his coffin so poignantly
that for weeks I was afraid to go to sleep lest I should dream about
him. My father was an uncommonly well-read man; but he made no attempt
to regulate my studies, except that now and then he would suggest to
me that I was wasting time in the perusal of rubbish; and I do suppose
that, as a boy, I read as much actually worthless stuff as anybody
ever did within an equal time. But I do not know whether, after all, it
matters very greatly what a child reads, so long as he has full and free
access to the best of books.

Amongst my earliest literary treasures was a fat, close-printed volume,
the binding of which had been torn away. I do not suppose it had ever
been issued in the form of a single volume; but it contained _Roderick
Random_, _Gil Blas_, _The Devil on Two Sticks_ and _Zadig_; _or,
the Book of Fate_, and it was my companion through many hundreds of
delightful hours. It is both curious and touching to remember the
innocence with which one's childish fancy ranged through those pages. I
have not turned back to look at my old friend, Asmodeus, for a good many
years; but there is one episode in the story of the unroofed city in
which an artist is unable to take his mistress to a ball because she has
no stockings, and the brilliant idea occurs to him that he should paint
a pair upon her legs. There is a special sly mention of the work upon
the garter; and the whole business used to seem to me most magnificently
comic. There was no more of a suggestion of an impropriety about it than
there was about my breakfast bowl of bread and milk. It was just simply,
innocently, and gloriously funny; and it has long been my belief that
the time at which it is best that a reader should make acquaintance with
our rather indelicate old classics is the time of inn