considerable and constant
exercise, and he walked habitually before breakfast, generally in the
green lanes towards Hornsey. In these walks I always accompanied him,
and with my earliest recollections of green fields and wild flowers,
is mingled that of the account I gave him daily of what I had read the
day before. To the best of my remembrance, this was a voluntary rather
than a prescribed exercise. I made notes on slips of paper while
reading, and from these in the morning walks, I told the story to him;
for the books were chiefly histories, of which I read in this manner
a great number: Robertson's histories, Hume, Gibbon; but my greatest
delight, then and for long afterwards, was Watson's _Philip the Second
and Third_. The heroic defence of the Knights of Malta against the
Turks, and of the revolted Provinces of the Netherlands against Spain,
excited in me an intense and lasting interest. Next to Watson, my
favourite historical reading was Hooke's _History of Rome_. Of Greece
I had seen at that time no regular history, except school abridgments
and the last two or three volumes of a translation of Rollin's
_Ancient History_, beginning with Philip of Macedon. But I read with
great delight Langhorne's translation of Plutarch. In English history,
beyond the time at which Hume leaves off, I remember reading Burnet's
_History of his Own Time_, though I cared little for anything in it
except the wars and battles; and the historical part of the _Annual
Register_, from the beginning to about 1788, where the volumes my
father borrowed for me from Mr. Bentham left off. I felt a lively
interest in Frederic of Prussia during his difficulties, and in Paoli,
the Corsican patriot; but when I came to the American War, I took my
part, like a child as I was (until set right by my father) on the
wrong side, because it was called the English side. In these frequent
talks about the books I read, he used, as opportunity offered, to give
me explanations and ideas respecting civilization, government, morality,
mental cultivation, which he required me afterwards to restate to him
in my own words. He also made me read, and give him a verbal account of,
many books which would not have interested me sufficiently to induce me
to read them of myself: among other's Millar's _Historical View of the
English Government_, a book of great merit for its time, and which he
highly valued; Mosheim's _Ecclesiastical History_, McCrie's _Life of
John Knox_,