He explored its recesses; he composed, and almost believed, its legends; he invented for its different features a nomenclature which has been faithfully preserved by two generations of children.

A slight ridge, intersected by deep ditches, towards the west of the Common, the very existence of which no one above eight years old would notice, was dignified with the title of the Alps; while the elevated island, covered with shrubs, that gives a name to the Mount pond, was regarded with infinite awe as being the nearest approach within the circuit of his observation to a conception of the majesty of Sinai.

Indeed, at this period his infant fancy was much exercised with the threats and terrors of the Law.

He had a little plot of ground at the back of the house, marked out as his own by a Tory of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish.

He went straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was entertaining some visitors, walked into the circle, and said very solemnly: "Cursed be Sally; for it is written, Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour's land-mark." While still the merest child he was sent as a day-scholar to Mr.
Greaves, a shrewd Yorkshireman with a turn for science, who had been originally brought to the neighbourhood in order to educate a number of African youths sent over to imbibe Western civilisation at the fountain-head.