For some time after the choice of my Curators had been determined, no particular occurrence took place in my life. I went to school as before, and heard the evening lectures of Mr. Rhomboid on astronomy as usual—of which, to say the least, they remain in my young remembrance as dissertations on mathematical instruments, interspersed with anecdotes of the planets. A little change was, however, made in the course of my studies; instead of geometry I was, on the advice of Mr. Macindoe, advised to learn book-keeping, as he could not see in what way geometry, or indeed any kind of mathematics, could ever serve a merchant, as I was destined to be, especially too as land-surveying was, in his opinion, but a poor trade, and my fortune justified me to look for something better. This was the first inroad on my favourite study of the stars and those hidden influences that move between the seasons of the earth and the orbs of time.

Dr. Leach did not quite agree with him that education should be directed exclusively, as he expressed it, to the departments of practical knowledge, and strenuously urged, till overborne by his colleague's resolute will, that I should persevere a little longer in my classical studies; but towards them my mind never lay. I got my lessons, it is very true, about as well as the other schoolboys, but I never understood them. Grammar was to me the most inexplicable mystery; like Jack Cade of old, I held a verb to be an abomination, and the parts of speech as trammels on the human understanding.