at Bristol, in which city his father was residing, engaged in trade. His ancestors, who were yeomen of Somersetshire, were settled about eighty years anterior to that period near Wellington in that county. As they bore arms, and the arms had a religious character, he was pleased to imagine they were of gentle blood; and that far back in crusading times, a Southey had couched a lance against the infidel in Palestine.
The sensibilities of the child were early awakened, and when he was three years old, the recital of the fine old ballad of "Chevy Chase" would bring tears into his eyes. Until his sixth year, he was placed at a school superintended by an antique dame of awful aspect, and the youthful dreamer there planned a scheme, to go with two of his school-fellows and live by themselves in freedom on some desert island. Some martial predilections that manifested themselves about this time, in jarring contrast with his more peaceful longings were speedily whipped out of him.
His holydays he occasionally spent with Miss Tyler, a maiden aunt, a half-sister of his mother, who had a house in one of the suburbs of Bath, and the life he led there must have clashed rudely with the gentle enthusiasm of his nature. This lady was a singular character, careless, or unable to understand the disposition of the bright-eyed boy she sheltered beneath her roof. She held the notion that a commanding mind was invariably associated with a violent temper, and indulged her own accordingly. Though scrupulously clean, she would go about in rags, lived in the worst kitchen, and was parsimonious of everything but money. A severe cleanliness was her exaggerated virtue, and her abhorrence of dust amounted to a disease. She would send out the tea-kettle to be emptied and refilled, if any one chanced to walk past the fire-place while it was sim-
