position, and that there appeared in me very early tokens of superior genius. I was always an enemy to trifles; the playthings which my mother bestowed upon me I immediately broke, that I might discover the method of their structure and the causes of their motions; of all the toys with which children are delighted I valued only my coral, and as soon as I could speak, asked, like Peiresc, innumerable questions which the maids about me could not resolve. As I grew older I was more thoughtful and serious, and instead of amusing myself with puerile diversions, made collections of natural rarities, and never walked into the fields without bringing home stones of remarkable forms, or insects of some uncommon species. I never entered an old house, from which I did not take away the painted glass, and often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.
Being thus early possessed by a taste for solid knowledge, I passed my youth with very little disturbance from passions and appetites, and having no pleasure in the company of boys and girls, who talked of plays, politicks, fashions, or love, I carried on my enquiries with incessant diligence, and had amassed more stones, mosses, and shells, than are to be found in many celebrated collections, at an age in which the greatest part of young men are studying under tutors, or endeavouring to recommend themselves to notice by their dress, their air, and their levities.
When I was two and twenty years old, I became, by the death of my father, possessed of a small estate in land, with a very large sum of
