not in the least apologizing, is
also noticeable.

This was some six months after his little brother Edward's death; three
months after that of Hester, his little sister next in the family series
to him: troubled days for the poor Mother in that small household on
Blackheath, as there are for mothers in so many households in this
world! I have heard that Mrs. Sterling passed much of her time alone, at
this period. Her husband's pursuits, with his Wellesleys and the like,
often carrying him into Town and detaining him late there, she would
sit among her sleeping children, such of them as death had still spared,
perhaps thriftily plying her needle, full of mournful affectionate
night-thoughts,--apprehensive too, in her tremulous heart, that the head
of the house might have fallen among robbers in his way homeward.

CHAPTER IV. UNIVERSITIES: GLASGOW; CAMBRIDGE.

At a later stage, John had some instruction from a Dr. Waite at
Blackheath; and lastly, the family having now removed into Town, to
Seymour Street in the fashionable region there, he "read for a while
with Dr. Trollope, Master of Christ's Hospital;" which ended his school
history.

In this his ever-changing course, from Reece at Cowbridge to Trollope
in Christ's, which was passed so nomadically, under ferulas of various
color, the boy had, on the whole, snatched successfully a fair share
of what was going. Competent skill in construing Latin, I think also an
elementary knowledge of Greek; add ciphering to a small extent, Euclid
perhaps in a rather imaginary condition; a swift but not very legible or
handsome penmanship, and the copious prompt habit of employing it in all
manner of unconscious English prose composition, or even occasionally
in verse itself: this, or something like this, he had gained from his
grammar-schools: this is the most of what they offer to the poor young
soul in general, in these indigent times. The express schoolmaster is
not equal to much at present,--while the _un_express, for good or
for evil, is so busy with a poor little fellow! Other departments of
schooling had been infinitely more productive, for our young friend,
than the gerund-grinding one. A voracious reader I believe he all along
was,--had "read the whole Edinburgh Review" in these boyish years, and
out of the circulating libraries one knows not what cartloads; wading
like Ulysses towards his palace "through infinite dung." A voracious
observer and participator in all