58 PRÆTERITA-I

of lignum vitæ had been constant companions: and I am graceless in forgetting by what extravagant friend (I greatly suspect my Croydon aunt), I was afterwards gifted with a two-arched bridge, admirable in fittings of voussoir and keystone, and adjustment of the level courses of masonry with bevelled edges, into which they dovetailed, in the style of Waterloo Bridge. Well-made centreings, and a course of inlaid steps down to the water, made this model largely, as accurately, instructive: and I was never weary of building, unbuilding,-(it was too strong to be thrown down, but had always to be taken down)-and rebuilding it. This inconceivable passive-or rather impassive-contentment in doing, or reading, the same thing over and over again, I perceive to have been a great condition in my future power of getting thoroughly to the bottom of matters.

65. Some people would say that in getting these toys lay the chance that guided me to an early love of architecture; but I never saw or heard of another child so fond of its toy bricks, except Miss Edgeworth’s “Frank.”¹ To be sure, in this present age,-age of universal brickfield though it be,-people don’t give their children toy bricks, but toy puff-puffs; and the little things are always taking tickets and arriving at stations, without ever fathoming- none of them will take pains enough to do that,-the principle of a puff-puff! And what good could they get of it if they did,-unless they could learn also, that no principle of Puff-puff would ever supersede the principle of Breath?

But I not only mastered, with Harry and Lucy, the entire motive principle of puff-puff; but also, by help of my well-cut bricks, very utterly the laws of practical stability in towers and arches, by the time I was seven or eight years old: and these studies of structure were farther animated by my invariable habit of watching, with the closest attention, the proceedings of any bricklayers, stone-sawyers, or paviours,-whose work my nurse would allow me

¹ [See p. 142 of Frank, Collected into one volume from the “Early Lessons,” 1856.]

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