Autobiographic Sketches

About the close of my sixth year, suddenly the first chapter of my life came to a violent termination; that chapter which, even within the gates of recovered paradise, might mer...

So, then, one chapter in my life had finished. Already, before the completion of my sixth year, this first chapter had run its circle, had rendered up its music to the final cho...

"_The child_," says Wordsworth, "_is father of the man;_" thus calling into conscious notice the fact, else faintly or not at all perceived, that whatsoever is seen in the matur...

At the time of my father's death, I was nearly seven years old. In the next four years, during which we continued to live at Greenhay, nothing memorable occurred, except, indeed...

Four years after my father's death, it began to be perceived that there was no purpose to be answered in any longer keeping up the costly establishment of Greenhay. A head garde...

Yes, at this stage of my life, viz., in my fifteenth year, and from this sequestered school, ankle deep I first stepped into the world. At Winkfield I had staid about a year, or...

It was a most heavenly day in May of the year (1800) when I first beheld and first entered this mighty wilderness, the city--no, not the city, but the nation--of London. Often s...

In Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Altamont; and here, in the breakfast room, we found the earl seated. Long and intimately as I had known Lord Westport, it so hap...

In our road to Mayo, we were often upon ground rendered memorable, not only by historical events, but more recently by the disastrous scenes of the rebellion, by its horrors or...

The decisive battle of Vinegar Hill took place at midsummer; and with that battle terminated the First Rebellion. Two months later, a French force, not making fully a thousand m...

It was late in October, or early in November, that I quitted Connaught with Lord Westport; and very slowly, making many leisurely deviations from the direct route, travelled bac...

The reader who may have accompanied me in these wandering memorials of my own life and casual experiences, will be aware, that in many cases the neglect of chronological order i...

My last two chapters, very slenderly connected with Birmingham, are yet made to rise out of it; the one out of Birmingham's own relation to the topic concerned, (viz., _Travelli...