I. THE SPRINGS OF WANDEL 25

in little ones, allowed me, without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn from the sherry trade as an unclean thing; not without some pardonable participation in my mother’s ultimate views for me. For, many and many a year afterwards, I remember, while he was speaking to one of our artist friends, who admired Raphael, and greatly regretted my endeavours to interfere with that popular taste,-while my father and he were condoling with each other on my having been impudent enough to think I could tell the public about Turner and Raphael,-instead of contenting myself, as I ought, with explaining the way of their souls’ salvation to them-and what an amiable clergyman was lost in me,-“Yes,” said my father, with tears in his eyes -(true and tender tears, as ever father shed,) “he would have been a Bishop.”

21. Luckily for me, my mother, under these distinct impressions of her own duty, and with such latent hopes of my future eminence, took me very early to church;- where, in spite of my quiet habits, and my mother’s golden vinaigrette, always indulged to me there, and there only, with its lid unclasped that I might see the wreathed open pattern above the sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely dull a place to keep quiet in, (my best story-books being also taken away from me in the morning,) that, as I have somewhere said before,¹ the horror of Sunday used even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in the week as Friday-and all the glory of Monday, with church seven days removed again, was no equivalent for it.

22. Notwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in my own mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell’s sermons;² and occasionally, in imitation of him, preached a sermon at home over the red sofa cushions;-this performance being always called for by my mother’s dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of my childhood. The sermon was, I

¹ [Fors Clavigera, Letter 24, § 7 (Vol. XXVII. p. 421).]

² [His church or chapel was, no doubt, near to Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, but this has not been ascertained.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]