cious account of Bentham, in his early childhood, climbing to the height of a huge stool, and sitting there night after night reading Rapin's history by the light of two candles; a weird little figure, whose only counterpart in literature is the small John Ruskin propped up solemnly in his niche, "like an idol," and hemmed in from the family reach by the table on which his book reposed. It is quite evident that Bentham found the mental nutrition he wanted in Rapin's rather dreary pages, just as Pope and Cowley found it in Spenser, Ruskin in the Iliad, and Burns in the marvelous stories told by that "most ignorant and superstitious old woman," who made the poet afraid of his own shadow, and who, as he afterwards freely acknowledged, fanned within his soul the kindling flame of genius.
Look where we will, we find the author's future work reflected in the intellectual pastimes of his childhood. Madame de Genlis, when but six years old, perused with unflagging interest the ten solid volumes of Clélie,—a task which would appall the most stout-hearted novel-reader of to-day. Gibbon turned as instinctively to facts as Scott and
