Rollin, the good old priest,
opened a new wonderful world to me, and instead of the tedious task I
had feared the reading would prove, it was as delightful as it had
formerly been to listen to my brother's endless histories of imaginary
heroes and their wars and adventures.
Still athirst for history, after finishing Rollin I began fingering
other works of that kind: there was Winston's Josephus, too ponderous
a book to be held in the hands when read out of doors; and there was
Gibbon in six stately volumes. I was not yet able to appreciate the
lofty artificial style, and soon fell on something better suited to my
boyish taste in letters - -a History of Christianity in, I think,
sixteen or eighteen volumes of a convenient size. The simple natural
diction attracted me, and I was soon convinced that I could not have
stumbled on more fascinating reading than the lives of the Fathers of
the Church included in some of the earlier volumes, especially that of
Augustine, the greatest of all: how beautiful and marvellous his life
was, and his mother Monica's! what wonderful books he wrote!-his
_Confessions and City of God_ from which long excerpts were given
in this volume.
These biographies sent me to another old book, _Leland on Revelation_,
which told me much I was curious to know about the mythologies and
systems of philosophy of the ancients - the innumerable false cults
which had flourished in a darkened world before the dawn of the true
religion.
Next came _Carlyle's French Revolution_ and at last Gibbon, and I was
still deep in the _Decline and Fall_ when disaster came to us: my
father was practically ruined, owing, as I have said in a former
chapter, to his childlike trust in his fellow-men, and we quitted the
home he had counted as a permanent one, which in due time would have
become his property had he but made his position secure by a proper
deed on first consenting to take over the place in its then ruinous
condition.
Thus ended, sadly enough, the enchanting years of my boyhood; and
here, too, the book should finish: but having gone so far, I will
venture a little further and give a brief account of what followed and
the life which, for several succeeding years, was to be mine - the
life, that is to say, of the mind and spirit.
CHAPTER XXIII
A DARKENED LIFE
A severe illness-Case pronounced hopeless-How it affected me-Religious
doubts and a mind distressed-Lawless thoughts - Conversation with an
old gaucho about religion - George Combe and the desire for
immortality.
