My father's health required 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.