I would go to
sleep dwelling with restfulness upon these images; they passed before
me, besides, to an appropriate music; for I had already singled out
from that rude psalm the one lovely verse which dwells in the minds
of all, not growing old, not disgraced by its association with long
Sunday tasks, a scarce conscious joy in childhood, in age a companion
thought:-
'In pastures green Thou leadest me,
The quiet waters by.'
The remainder of my childish recollections are all of the matter of
what was read to me, and not of any manner in the words. If these
pleased me it was unconsciously; I listened for news of the great
vacant world upon whose edge I stood; I listened for delightful plots
that I might re-enact in play, and romantic scenes and circumstances
that I might call up before me, with closed eyes, when I was tired of
Scotland, and home, and that weary prison of the sick-chamber in
which I lay so long in durance. ROBINSON CRUSOE; some of the books
of that cheerful, ingenious, romantic soul, Mayne Reid; and a work
rather gruesome and bloody for a child, but very picturesque, called
PAUL BLAKE; these are the three strongest impressions I remember:
THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON came next, LONGO INTERVALLO.
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