He gets on wonderfully in all branches of his education, and the extent of his reading, and of the knowledge he has derived from it, are truly astonishing in a boy not yet eight years old.

He is at the same time as playful as a kitten.

To give you some idea of the activity of his mind I will mention a few circumstances that may interest you and Colin.

You will believe that to him we never appear to regard anything he does as anything more than a schoolboy's amusement.

He took it into his head to write a compendium of Universal History about a year ago, and he really contrived to give a tolerably connected view of the leading events from the Creation to the present time, filling about a quire of paper.