When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious blessing of an only child.

The ordinary vivacity of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful.

The absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious, whether to my imagination or my reason.

The wild fables muttered to me by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter's hearth,--the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave, sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,--tended to feed a passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking.

I had learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to imitate, to reproduce.