were entirely devoted to intellectual improvement. He had a little room given him, which was called his study; and here his milk supper was taken up to him; for, to avoid any loss of time, he refused to sup with his family, though earnestly entreated so to do, as his mother already began to dread the effects of this severe and unremitting application. The law was his first pursuit, to which his papers show he had applied himself with such industry, as to make it wonderful that he could have found time, busied as his days were, for any thing else. Greek and Latin were the next objects: at the same time he made himself a tolerable Italian scholar, and acquired some knowledge both of the Spanish and Portugueze. His medical friends say that the knowledge he had obtained of chemistry was very respectable. Astronomy and electricity were among his studies. Some attention he paid to drawing, in which it is probable he would have excelled. He was passionately fond of music, and could play very pleasingly by ear on the piano-forte, composing the bass to the air he was playing; but this propensity he checked, lest it might interfere with more important objects. He had a turn for mechanics; and all the fittingsup of his study were the work of his own hands.

At a very early age, indeed soon after he was taken from school, Henry was ambitious of being admitted a member of a Literary Society then existing in Nottingham, but was objected to on account of his youth. After repeated attempts and repeated failures, he succeeded in his wish, through the exertions of some of his friends, and

was elected. There were six Professors in this Society; and, upon the first vacancy, he was appointed to the chair of Literature. It may well appear strange that a Society, in so large a town as Nottingham, instituted for the purpose of acquiring and diffusing knowledge, and respectable enough to be provided with a good philosophical apparatus, should have chosen a boy, in the fifteenth year of his age, to deliver lectures to them upon general literature. The first subject upon which he held forth was Genius. Having taken a day to consider the subject, he spoke upon it extempore, and harangued for two hours and three quarters: yet, instead of being wearied, his hearers passed an unanimous resolution, "That the most sincere thanks be given to the Professor for his most instructive and entertaining lecture; at the same time assuring him, that the Society never had the pleasure of hearing a better lecture delivered from that chair, which he so much honoured:" and they then elected him one of their committee. There are certain courts at Nottingham, in which it is necessary for an attorney to plead; and he wished to qualify himself for a speaker as well as a sound lawyer.

With the profession in which he was placed he was well pleased, and suffered no pursuit, numerous as his pursuits were, to interfere in the slightest degree with its duties. Yet he soon began to have higher aspirations, and to cast a wistful eye toward the Universities, with little hope of ever attaining their important advantages, yet probably not without some, however faint. There was at this time a magazine in publication, called

the Monthly Preceptor, which proposed prize-themes for boys and girls to write upon; and which was encouraged by many schoolmasters, some of whom, for their own credit, and that of the important institutions in which they were placed, ought to have known better than to encourage it. But in schools, and in all practical systems of education, emulation is made the main-spring, as if there were not enough of the leaven of disquietude in our natures, without inoculating it with this dilutement - this vaccine virus of envy. True it is, that we need encouragement in youth; that though our vices spring up and thrive in shade and darkness, like poisonous fungi, our better powers require light and air; and that praise is the sunshine, without which genius will wither, fade, and die; or rather in search of which, like a plant that is debarred from it, will push forth in contortions and deformity. But such practices as that of writing for public prizes, of publicly declaiming, and of enacting plays before the neighbouring gentry, teach boys to look for applause instead of being satisfied with approbation, and foster in them that vanity which needs no such cherishing. This is administering stimulants to the heart, instead of "feeding it with food convenient for it ;" and the effect of such stimulants is to dwarf the human mind, as lap-dogs are said to be stopt in their growth by being dosed with gin. Thus forced, it becomes like the sapling which shoots up when it should be striking its roots far and deep, and which therefore never attains to more than a sapling's size.

To Henry, however, the opportunity of distinguishing himself, even in the Juvenile Library, was useful; if he had acted with a man's foresight, he could not have done more wisely than by aiming at every distinction within his little sphere. At the age of fifteen, he gained a silver medal for a translation from Horace; and the following year a pair of twelve-inch globes, for an imaginary Tour from London to Edinburgh. He determined upon trying for this prize one evening when at tea with his family, and at supper he read to them his performance, to which seven pages were granted in the magazine, though they had limited the allowance of room to three. Shortly afterwards he won several books for exercises on different subjects. Such honours were of great importance to him; they were testimonies of his ability, which could not be suspected of partiality, and they prepared his father to regard with less reluctance that change in his views and wishes which afterwards took place. It appears by a letter written soon after he had completed his fifteenth year, that many of his pieces in prose and verse, under feigned signatures, had gained admission in the various magazines of the day, more particularly in the Monthly Magazine and the Monthly Visitor: "In prosaic composition," he says, "I never had one article refused; in poetic many."-"I am conscious," he observes, at this time, to his brother, "that if I chose, I could produce poems infinitely superior to any you have yet seen of mine; but I am so indolent, and at the same time so much engaged, that I cannot give the time and attention necessary for the formation of a correct and accurate pieces." Less time and attention are necessary for

correcting prose, and this, may be one reason why, contrary to the usual process, a greater prematurity is discernible in his prose than in his metrical compositions. "The reason," he says, "of the number of erasures and corrections in my letter is, that it contains a rough transcript of the state of my mind, without my having made any sketch on another paper. When I sit down to write, ideas crowd into my mind too fast for utterance upon paper. Some of them I think too precious to be lost, and for fear their impressions should be effaced, I write as rapidly as possible. This accounts for my bad writing."

He now became a correspondent in the Monthly Mirror, a magazine which first set the example of typographical neatness in periodical publications, which has given the world a good series of portraits, and which deserves praise also on other accounts, having among its contributors some persons of extensive erudition and acknowledged talents. Magazines are of great service to those who are learning to write; they are fishing-boats, which the Bucaniers of Literature do not condescend to sink, burn, and destroy: young poets may safely try their strength in them; and that they should try their strength before the public, without danger of any shame from failure, is highly desirable. Henry's rapid improvement was now as remarkable as his unwearied industry. The pieces which had been rewarded in the Juvenile Preceptor might have been rivalled by many boys; but what he produced a year afterwards, few men could equal. Those which appeared in the Monthly Mirror attracted