Grampian Club > Leaves from my autography

LEAVES FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 35
tioii table. He read Frencli and Italian; and my
father desired that he should instruct me in the
former language ; after a year's trial, I was found to
understand only a few vocables, and was a stranger
to the i^ronunciation.
Though voting on the liberal side of politics, my
father was practically a conservative. His parish-
ioners frequently complained to him that their chil-
dren made no progress at school, and begged that he
would assist in devising a remedy. But he held that
it became him to suj^port the parish teacher, and,
though tacitly admitting his inefficiency, he would not
actively interfere. At length the parishioners built
a schoolroom, and, banding together, secured a com-
petent instructor.
I attended the parish school seven years, the first
epoch of my life being, so far as j^ublic instruction
was concerned, absolutely lost. More than lost, I
might say, for any little information I acquired in the
schoolroom was counterbalanced by the rude mannqrs
I contracted in the playground. I also derived, by
associating with the children of the peasantry, a
manner of speech and provincial dialect which long
clung to me.
Besides a school, I had a home education. My
father desired that, like himself, I should become an
accurate Latinist — indeed he held every accomplish-
ment subordinate to a knowledge of the classics. In
my seventh year he l^rought me as a task-book Ruddi-