rnal things,
delighting intensely in natural objects, and yet feeling an infinite
chagrin and remorse at his own idleness and ignorance. We find him
highly imaginative; making miniature lakes by sinking an iron vessel
filled with water in a heap of stones, and gazing therein with wondrous
enjoyment at the reflection of the sun and skies overhead; and
exhibiting a strange passion for looking on the faces of those who had
died violent deaths, although these dead men's features would haunt his
imagination for weeks afterward.

He did not, indeed, at this period, possess the elements of an ordinary
education. A very simple circumstance sufficed to apply the spark which
fired his latent energies, and nascent poetical tendencies: and he
henceforward became a different being, elevated far above his former
self. He called one evening, after a drinking bout on the previous
night, on a maiden aunt, named Robinson, a widow possessed of about L30
a year, by whom he was shown a number of "Sowerby's English Botany,"
which her son was then purchasing in monthly parts. The plates made a
considerable impression on the awkward youth, and he assayed to copy
them by holding them to the light with a thin piece of paper before
them. When he found he could trace their forms by these means his
delight was unbounded, and every spare hour was devoted to the agreeable
task. Here commenced that intimate acquaintance with flowers, which
seems to pervade all his works. This aunt of Ebenezer's, (good soul!
would that every shy, gawky Ebenezer had such an aunt!) bent on
completing the charm she had so happily begun, displayed to him still
further her son's book of dried specimens; and this elated him beyond
measure. He forthwith commenced a similar collection for himself, for
which purpose he would roam the fields still more than ever, on Sundays
as well as week days, to the interruption of his attendances at chapel.
This book he called his "Dry Flora," (_Hortus Siccus_) and none so proud
as he when neighbors noticed his plants and pictures. He was not a
little pleased to feel himself a sort of wonder, as he passed through
the village with his plants; and, greedy of praise, he allowed his
acquaintance to believe that his drawings were at first hand, and made
by himself from nature. "Thomson's Seasons," read to him about this time
by his brother Giles, gave him a glimpse of the union of poetry with
natural beauty; and lit up in his mind an ambition whi