ABSTRACT
I dwell too long on the scenes of my boyish years. Now, when the winter of age has shed its snows on my head, the mind finds a strange delight in meditating on times long past, and in living over again the turbid visions of its youth. Willingly would I lose the memory of the fresher sorrows that have succeeded; and, if I yielded to the impulse of my own thoughts, I should rest for ever upon these remoter seasons, though the days I passed at Mandeville House must be acknowledged to be sad, and those I spent / at Winchester College to have been full of ungrateful accidents, and of sharp chagrin. But grief, when mellowed down by time, and seen obscurely through the atmosphere of added years, loses its more rigid and distressful features, and is not unaccompanied with a sedate and melancholy pleasure.
