She remained only a week with us, and I wept bitterly
when she went away. She was so pretty ! I dared not
speak to her, but I liked to walk round her, like a but-
terfly round a flowei: in the fields. She was called Nar-
cissa. She fell into the ocean of time, and disappeared
before I had attained my eighth year."

These truly are indications of great precocity, attested
moreover by the astonishing rapidity of his physical and
intellectual development. At an early age he had to
divide his time between school and the labours of the
farm. Mr Parker had solid reasons for putting his chil-
dren to work as soon as might be. This however did not
prevent Theodore from being an insatiable reader when
only eight years old. He had few volumes at his disposal,
but the small number was better than many libraries.
He had the Bible, the English poets, his mother's favour-
ites; some Latin and Greek classics. Homer, Plutarch,
Virgil, which he read first in translations, but soon in the
original, for a Unitarian minister of the neighbourhood,



CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH. 11

Mr "W. White, noticing his happy dispositions, gave him
lessons in Latin and Greek.*

Besides, his father possessed works on mathematics,
travels, and Natural History, which he devoured so as to
know them by heart. At 10 years of age he had, after
his manner, catalogued the Flora of the neighbourhood.
At 12 he, one fine night, discovered with his naked eye
the crescent appearance peculiar to the planet Venus.
