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trivial, and even ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy,
adventitious importance, as connected with a period and a locality when
and where I recognise the first ambiguous monitions of the destiny which
afterwards so fully overshadowed me. Let me then remember.
The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were
extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar
and broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed
the limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week--once every
Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to
take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields--and
twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to
the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of
this church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a
spirit of wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote
pew in the gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the
pulpit! This reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign,
with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely
powdered, so rigid and so vast,---could this be he who, of late, with
sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand,
the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly
monstrous for solution!
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was
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