1

on the youthful mind is seldom effaced by time or distance. My Eton recollections carry me back to the day of my initiation at my Dame's, when having dried up my tears on leaving my kind patron, and after having been presented to the head-master of the lower school, Dr. Langford, I was entered as an Etonian. A new comer was soon found out, and as soon was I encompassed by a crowd of boys, supposing that on my first entrance I had plenty of cash: which like a recruit's bounty-money, soon found plenty of customers. One thought I might as well use it for his benefit, with old Mrs. Carter and her cake basket at the corner of the school for Soc. Another thought that old mother Bo had some excellent tarts-Bo being an abbreviation for Bovingdon, who went by the very inelegant name of Gravy Eye, solely from having an eye which was over watery. At any rate her tarts were very good, and held in great esteem, and she was not very importunate in dunning for her bills after the holidays, a very saving quality in an Eton shopkeeper. In a short space of time, after having bled pretty freely, I recollect one of the upper boys at my Dame's asked me my name and surname. Having been previously instructed by some kind friend, I said, "Pudding and tame, ask my Dume, and she will tell you the same," which was immediately answered by him with a tremendous box on the ear. I was then highly honoured by the mandate, "Well, sir, you shall be my fag. What are you staring at, you stupid ass? You will have to get my rolls and butter from mother Coker's (a well-known name to all old Etonians). You begin to-morrow morning, mind sir; and see that my clothes and shoes are properly cleaned." I was well aware beforehand that to kick would be of no benefit, and therefore I submitted witha good grace, and from being a tolerably active, and not sulky disposition, I soon met with kindness, and even indulgence from my boymaster, he fagging others to save me. Consider me now on the morning of the next day, with my new books all fresh from the bookseller's, (destined not long to remain so) with all my thoughts of home still lingering on my mind, making my entrée in the lower school, where in awful grandeur its superior ruler had just taken his seat. To me the vision of a cauliflower wig was almost, if not quite, a perfect novelty. In addition to the awful dignity of the wig and its wearer, the often-tried block near to the master's right hand met my sight, greeting one with whom within a very few days an acquaintanceship was to take place. In short, so very sudden was our intimacy to have begun, that had it not been for the usual indulgence granted to those who incur the displeasure of the master, that very day would have seen me kneeling as a culprit. The case was this, and a hard case it was: As I was sitting at the end of a form, the boy next to me said, "That fellow at the other end has been laughing at your red collar, send this piece of orange-peel at his head.”

I, not thinking much about it, and irate at the idea of a boy ridiculing my smart jacket, dismissed the orange missile, but with so bad an aim, that it went close to the awe-inspiring wig of the

head-master. Upon being questioned who had done it, and after having been nudged by the prompter of the act to say, "I did it, sir," at the same time looking at me, as much as to say (as well as to inform the master) you aid it, I directly said, “ I did it, sir,” upon which I was ordered up for punishment. All necessary habiliments being removed, and kneeling on the block, while two boys stood behind it, holding my arms and clothes, and grinning all the time, I awaited the fatal stroke, when one of them said to me, "Say it is your first fault," which I immediately did. The birch instantly fell from its upraised posture, and I was quickly returned to my place on the form. As soon as school was over I challenged the boy to fight me for the trick he played upon me, and repairing to the playing fields, with my heart all but leaping out of my mouth, I set-to with my antagonist, and, although the challenger, in the very first round, from a most untoward blow on my mouth, I ran off, saying that I had gotten a very bad toothach. So much for the first day of entering school-so much for my first fault through another's means, and so much for losing my first battle.

I was entered in the lower Greek, as I before said, which was considered very high for my years, only eight, and consequently was under the particular superintendence of the head-master. With all the solemn dignity attached to the cauliflower, it would frequently be the exciter of a titter among those who viewed its variations. Sometimes in the heat of explaining or castigation, or some other cause, this identical wig would get displaced, and instead of the frontal part being directly on a parallel with that part of the human form commonly called the nose, it would perhaps be paying its devoirs to one of the eyes, and then the effect was truly ludicrous.

I was now become a regular Etonian, up to anything. I recollect the first liberty I got was from the present head-master of the lower school. As I made my entrée with a blue jacket and a red collar, from some little whim of my grandfather, owing to its being the same as the Windsor uniform, I was christened Black B—, with a blue coat and a red cape.

As to hunting small birds in the hedges with leaded sticks, leaping the common ditch, giving a duck a slight poke on the head with a stone, making old Pocock the farmer at the corner of Cutthroatlane sometimes minus a few eggs, amassing almost a little fortune by boss and marbles in the school-yard, upper and lower fives, ringing or knocking at the dames' houses on our return from five o'clock school to our own dames, taking advantage of a dark night of course for our rather hazardous freak, in all these, cum multis aliis, I had become au fait-a regular professor.

On one particular evening, how well do I recollect being caught as completely as if I had put my foot into a man-trap. Being at my old sport, one very dark night, I placed my hand as usual to have a knock and a run at old Mrs. Hexter's, when lo! to my utter dismay, just as my hand was about to claim old acquaintanceship

with the cold iron, I found myself pulled into the hall with no slight force, and from thence very quietly escorted to the parlour, for an optical scrutiny of my dreadfully alarmed features by the aid of a candle, where I soon found, to my annoyance, that my captor, or captress, was the dame herself, a large powerful woman, and followed by her bodyguard, the cook and chambermaid, to witness my capture as well as discomfiture. In this durance vile I cannot compare myself in any better simile than to that of a shrimp in the claws of a lobster. After a severe lecture, admonitory of the future, a promise on my part never to do so again (though with the full determination to take my revenge on the first opportunity), and having propitiated the good old lady by going down on my marrows, I was released from my temporary imprisonment. With all my spirit of revenge during the time of my incarceration, I never could screw up courage to knock at the door again-therefore I was as good as my word-I kept my promise.

It

The mention of dames recals to my mind a little affair which was very annoying at the time to one of them, a Mrs. ***, who lived not very far from the Christopher. She was what is termed a regular pincher, an Elwesian lady, and such not being relishd by the boys who were under her care, they determined to brozier her, -an Eton phrase for eating up every morsel of the dinner, and according to the language at Cambridge, preached a clearum.* was soon accomplished, and the old lady, finding that all her scanty store had vanished, was compelled to send for a supply of chops to make up the deficiency. But that would not do. More was called for, and though often told, " Sir, you have not picked your bones clean," it would not do. The consequence of this broziering act was, that her patience was exhausted, and she laid a complaint before Dr. Heath, our respected head-master of the upper school, who, I presume from a previous knowledge of her parsimonious character, only lectured the gourmandising culprits, and omitted the punishment due to them from having fallen under the old lady's displeasure. This was the only instance in which I can recollect castigation not following on the heels of complaint.

They certainly were rare eaters, as a boy once construed in school tempus edax rerum-time is a rare eater. At any rate it is a very unjust thing to stint the boys in regard to plenty of wholesome food, as the dames are well paid for their sustenance, and in a few years are enabled, by prudence without parsimony, to amass a sufficiency to retire in comfort. In short, from the general respectability of the ladies who superintend the boarding-houses at Eton, such a thing seldom occurs. I think I may state that Mrs. *** was almost a solitary instance in that particular. At my own dame's, the excellent Mrs. Hunter's, we fared remarkably well. On the Sunday our usual dinner was a boiled round of beef, roasted chickens, and plum puddings, and I do not recollect that it was ever varied in any respect.

* A Latin sermon previous to taking a Doctor's degree.

A STRANGE PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES

WELFORD, ESQ.

CHAP. VI.

En quittant ce qu'on tient, on est souvent déçu.

THEATRE ITALIEN.

THE world will scarce believe it, but certain private friends of ours, trespassing rather too far upon the privileges of their intimacy, have ventured to call in question the credibility of this our veracious history. Most persons who have lived any time in the world, must have had a sufficient share of that particular variety of the genus friend, which is qualified by the epithet of "d-d good natured," to form some notions of what the race are capable; and those, more particularly, who have dabbled in printing-ink, must know that they are the very hotbeds of felonious criticism. No author, therefore, of the slightest experience will expose his MSS. to ame qui vive, before publication, well knowing the intolerable nature of the flood of friendly hints, kindly suggestions, and well-meant advices, with which such imprudent exposures are uniformly attended. All our experience, however, had not prepared us for the outre cuidance of the self-sufficient friends, who in their ignorance have ventured thus to touch us in our tenderest point. The main fact of our narrative, forsooth, is impossible; no man could live under a double identity: there is no room for two on the pineal gland, and our hypothesis therefore is at war with every principle of metaphysical truth; "ay marry, and profane too"-the sciolists! the coxcombs !

From such insinuations we appeal to our own readers-to the readers of the New Monthly. They will acknowledge that nothing is more common to humanity than a double identity. Does not every man that breathes, live under the influence of two principles. In the words of Pope,

Two principles in human nature reign,

Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain.*

Or, as Swift more familiarly expresses it, the flesh and the spirit are engaged through life in a ceaseless game of leapfrog, now one uppermost, and now the other ;-with this only difference, that the flesh when it is uppermost is exceedingly prone to be tyrannical, and "rides with a huge pair of Ripon spurs" (which, by the by, may have had some

*Dobson's elegant translation of this passage happening to be under our eye, we cannot resist giving it to the reader:

Vis gemina humano regnat sub pectore, Calcar,
Cuique sui dat amor, Ratioque adjungit habenas.
Munus habet: ciet una, attemperat altera mollis:
Utque suas pejus meliusve obit utraque partes,
Hinc bona proveniunt, fons ducitur inde malorum.

See SPENCE'S ANECDOTES, Appendix.

thing to do with the recent appointment of a bishop, especially charged to take care of that town and its vicinity).

Again, we have an apt instance of duality, in the distinction so frequently drawn between the public and the private man. It is a received axiom, that the public half of a minister or member of parliament may be insulted with every offensive and degrading imputation, without giving the slightest tarnish to the honour of the private half :which would be utterly absurd, if the two were not under the governance of separate independent living principles, each respectively irresponsible for the actions of the other.

In the lawyer also we have a manifest duality; his professional honour and honesty being very different things from the honour and honesty which are merely personal. Nay, when he puts on his wig and his gown, he shifts altogether his identity, and becomes mixed up with his client, as perfectly and entirely as Welford was with the unlucky Marquis.

Lastly, and not to wear the matter to rags, we have the familiar case of the androgynous union of souls coupled in matrimony. If a bachelor be justly characterized as a single man, the victim of wedlock must be a double man, though language has not yet so qualified him. The wicked wits, it is true, aver that when the soul of the wife prevails, the spirit of the man is exorcised and expelled; and that all husbands might avail themselves of the excuse of Adain, saying after him, fæmina quam dedisti mihi dedit, et comedi.* But what will not a wit advance to carry his jest? A wife's back may be sometimes turned; and the veriest Jerry Sneak that ever lived, when he gets to the alehouse, knows that he has a soul which he can call his own; and is ready to cry with the ghost-ridden Macbeth,

Why so, being gone, I am a man again.

As to any imputed contradictions to metaphysical principles, we care not for our critical friends; and we confidently ask them when they ever heard of such a thing as a metaphysical principle, that possessed as much claim on their conviction, as would warrant its being set up as an authority against the least plausible of assertions. "I like him the better for being a dancing-master," says Justice Woodcock of his son-in-law; and so we say, if our action be hostile to any metaphysical axiom, we think all the better of it for its hostility.

But it is very good of us to stand thus arguing the matter, in a case independent of all argument; for after all, non meus hic sermo, the adventure is none of our invention, “we tell the tale, as 'twas told to us," and are not bound to find all the world in a saving faith. The fact of the case is, that Welford is our authority, and we cannot conceive how any critic can presume to know more of the matter than the man himself: we can, moreover, pledge ourselves for that gentleman's habitual truthfulness, although he has studied at the Temple; and we might indeed go bail for every word he told us, if the matter required any pecuniary warranty. "Croyez le si voulez; si ne voulez, allez y voir," messieurs mes amis: and so let us proceed with our tale.

The Marquis of

was decidedly wrong in giving way, as he did,

* See Burnet's Archæologia.