its high-priest should have as little trouble with me as possible. I was a man of my word, for, at the end of the year, I was still sticking at hic, hæc, hoc; a leisurely progress which was adopted from motives of pure delicacy, knowing, as I did, that it would puzzle my master exceedingly to go much farther. In other respects I got on pretty tolerably. I broke in the colts, and was much celebrated as a whipper-in. I was moreover, a dead hand at setting a snare, and had fought several meritorious battles. My tutor was deservedly proud of me.

of his calling, which may be understood from his surname of Jep, the Tinker. In the course of his travels for the benefit of science, he had gathered together a fund of knowledge, which made him much looked up to. He was the first person who discovered the correct method of stealing a goose, which he did by driving it about, by degrees, till it was out of breath, and past giving the alarm. If report spoke true, he was likewise the discoverer of the readiest means of disposing of a sheep, by choking it with its own wool. In his periodical visits to our neighbourhood he was generally accompanied by a badger and two or three of the best terriers in the county, which, with his wondrous eye for a hare-sitting, first gave me a yearning towards him. He was besides, a man of stalwart frame and begrimed visage, which made him awful to be looked upon, and a very proper companion for the marauding expeditions upon which I employed him.

There was, I fear I may say, at the age of sixteen, but one single feeling of my heart which indicated that I was born for better courses. My preceptor had been married twice, and there was a little forlorn niece of his first wife who had no home but the one he afforded her. She was about a year younger than myself, and the delicate bloom of her beauty, and the downcast melancholy of her soft dark eye, made me One sunshiny forenoon in the autumn, my friend frequently lament that my time had not been other called upon me with the usual intelligence of a harewise employed. She had no companion, for her sitting. Now, Jep, like other geniuses, had a sad uncle's present wife was little better than a maid-contempt for his toilet, and made his appearance in servant, and his children mere infants, and I wished his old red waistcoat and variegated leathers, loose at in vain that I could have supplied the want. What the knee, and fastened up with packthread. His was there in such an uncultivated ruffian as I was to stockings were different colours, and his shoes were give pleasure to a being of gentle feelings and well- not fellows; and his hat had lost the rim, and looked stored mind, for such it was, in spite of all her disad- for all the world like one of his worn-out saucepans. vantages? I knew she must despise me, and I seldom | Nevertheless, my admiration was for Jep's intrinsic spoke to her for fear of committing myself. Sometimes I resolved to amend my life, and educate myself; but my habits of idleness and vagrancy had gone too far, and I despaired of ever emerging from them.

I contented myself, therefore, with making my nets and snares in silence, whilst I watched this interesting creature's employments. Not a moment of the day was wasted. Her chief care was to teach her savage young cousins, and the intervals were devoted to acquirements of whatever was useful and elegant. I was incapable of judging her success in things that were not absolutely self-evident, but I felt, from the intelligence of her eyes, that she could fail in nothing: her drawing was magic, and she sang like a little nightingale. Sometimes, when her melancholy strain was ended, she would turn round, and catch me staring, with my mouth wide open, and my senses in a trance, and then she would turn timidly away, and blush, as if she fancied she had been doing wrong. I never even had courage to express my delight, and my cheek burned at my own insignificance. I loved to be with her, but I felt relieved when I was elsewhere; and this feeling increased to such a degree, that at last I did my utmost to avoid her society. I might have been compared (for an elegant comparison was more than I deserved) to a mad dog, which was dying of thirst, but dared not approach the water.

qualities; and, as we had some distance to go, I took my horse, and desired him to jump up behind me. As ill luck would have it, we were delayed considerably on the road; first by a long conversation with a friend in the house or cage-and afterwards by the drowth of my companion, whose constitution always required gin at the sight of the Dog and Duck. My friend was a man of nice taste, and his mixture was at one time too sweet, and at another time too hot. He was, moreover, a man of anecdote, and had long stories to tell the landlord of his last campaign to the quarter-sessions. The little boys collected round us, with their hands in their pockets, and sniffed in the wonders that fell from him with fearful satisfaction; and each new comer seemed to inspire him with new matter of discourse, till I began to be well-nigh tired of my envied situation, and threatened to gallop off with him, gin and all.

"Now, it must be understood, that the road made an abrupt angle round Mr. Jasper's hotel, and I never halted there with him without considerable fear of being detected by some sudden apparition of my relations, who occasionally came to visit my aunt, and give disagreeable advice respecting the mode of my education. The most terrible of these visiters was my aunt's brother, a man of grand equipage and austere character. He was thought by the family to have It was not likely that matters could go on in this made a great figure in the world, associated with none way without producing some speedy crisis-and the but lords and ladies, and brought up my cousins, male serenity of my enjoyments was doomed to undergo a and female, in a fashionable hauteur, which made me shock of considerable violence. In the luminous regard them with a perfect panic. If there was a circle of my acquaintance there was no one more carriage-load of mortality which would have given valued than a gifted personage whose name was Jas-me more serious perturbation than all the rest, it was, per. I forget his other name. He was by profession undoubtedly, this awful brood of my kith and kin, an engineer, and directed his studies to that branch and, as my passenger gulped down the remainder of

his glass, whiz! round came the four horses, the open barouche, and the whole tribe; six inside, two in the dickey behind, and two on the coach-box. At first, I thought to hide my head, but the foe was too sharpsighted, and I was assailed, from all quarters, with my christian name, and how d'ye do, and how is my aunt, and a great many other kind inquiries, which had almost been the death of me.

"Why, sir," I stuttered, "I read Latin before breakfast, and Greek before luncheon, and history before dinner, and mathematics before supper."

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"And Hebrew before bed-time," rejoined my uncle. Very well, indeed; I am glad to find you so industrious. Pray, what Latin authors are you reading now?"

I felt a little puzzled; at last, I ventured upon Homer and Xenophon, and Blackstone's Commentaries.

"I beg pardon," said my tutor, whose thrumming faculties were completely congealed, "he means Cæsar's Commentaries."

"Yes, sir, I mean Cæsar's Commentaries."

In the mean time, my fellow-traveller had slipped gradually over the horse's tail, and stood bowing and scraping with his hat in his hand, but, unluckily, the evolution was not performed with sufficient despatch and the bowing seemed a tacit admission of our goodfellowship. My uncle, all the time, had been making his observations, and did not speak till he invited me, with a look of complaisant indignation, to take a seat in the carriage, adding, that he trusted my friend would be kind enough to excuse me, and take his airing by himself. By way of a happy climax, as I was thrusting myself headlong into the admiring circle, blinded as I already was with astonishment, the land-be thought at a loss, I bounced out at once with “Olilord stepped up to remind the “ young squire" that the gin and water was eighteen-pence, which he would add to the old score.

During our drive to my aunt's, scarcely a word was said. My uncle maintained a dignified silence, and my cousins did not know what to make of it. I tried to assume an air of nonchalance, and inquired gaily after their lapdogs and Canary birds; but every speech was a blunder, and the monosyllabic answers brought down my courage like so many pop-guns. At last, when all my resources had failed, we came to our journey's end, and I was left to stammer civil things to the party about my great delight, and so forth, while my uncle led my aunt, with much solemnity, to a conference in an adjoining room. I guessed very well what was going forward. In every pause of my civility, I could hear my uncle's voice proceeding in a sort of dead march, and, in one of the higher notes, I could plainly distinguish the word tinker," and presently afterwards, " eighteen-pence," and "a score at the alehouse." The colour deepened in my cheeks, and my cousins began to titter, which they ascribed, with perfect good-breeding, to the pleasantry of my jokes, till I heard my tutor announced, and was summoned to appear before the conclave. My gentle aunt was sitting with her handkerchief to her eyes, my uncle with a sheet of foolscap paper in his hand, (which I afterwards found to be the muster-roll of my delinquencies,) and my tutor thrumming upon the crown of his hat, as though he were beating time to my approach.

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Pray, sir," said my uncle, who opened the proceedings," will you oblige me with an account of the manner in which you usually spend your time."

My tutor cast an appealing look to me through the corner of his eye, as much as to say that I had more reputations than my own to take care of. I saw my cue, and was determined, if a lie would serve him, to give him the full benefit of it; it was not, however, given in that slap-dash manner in which it ought to have been given, but bore a strong family likeness to lies in general.

Oh, of course,” replied my uncle, "and Horace and Virgil, and Cicero, and the rest of the Greek phi losophers. And now, as a specimen of your history, can you tell me who was the first Roman Emperor?" I saw my tutor's lips move, and could distinguish that the name was in two words, so, for fear I should

ver Cromwell." My uncle smiled a ghastly smile, and my aunt sobbed aloud, and my tutor wiped his forehead, as much as to say, “It is all over!"

Thus ended my examination in history and the classics, with which my uncle was so well satisfied that he declined troubling me with mathematics, and straightway proceeded to my acquirements in other matters, for which he resumed the sheet of foolscap.

You have no doubt," said he, “made some pleasant acquaintance in the neighbourhood?" I did not know exactly what to answer, and so I said, "Yes, sir, very."

"I am very happy to hear it. Will you be oblig. ing enough to tell me who they are ?”

This was a question neither classical nor historical, but I found it equally puzzling, and replied, that I did not exactly know who they were.

"Very likely," said my uncle; "I will endeavour to assist you."

With that, came a list of worthies, with their cha racters, and additions, so circumstantially detailed, that there was no possibility of disowning them, and I was reluctantly compelled to plead guilty to Billy the Skulker, Jemmy the Smasher, Dickey the Swiller, and a whole host of gentry, to whom whipping and the stocks were mere every-day amusements, and for whom the gibbet had no terrors.

My aunt sobbed louder and louder, and my tutor waxed warmer and warmer, and my uncle broke up the conference by wishing them joy of their protégé and pupil, who certainly did ample credit to the foresight of the one and the learning of the other. Having, as he thought, sufficiently opened his sister's eyes, he strode with a stately step into the room where I had heard the rest of the party laughing at my expense, and in a few minutes, I had the happiness of seeing the barouche bear them off, at the rate of twelve miles an hour. I looked after them till they were fairly out of sight, burning with indignation at the disgrace I had undergone, and determined to be revenged on my uncle, by becoming a greater vagabond

than ever.

When I had come a little to myself, the first sound I heard was the suave voice of my tutor, breathing the words of comfort into the ear of my aunt. "My dear madam," said he, "he was taken perfectly unawares. The most erudite man is unable to answer such abstruse questions upon the spur of the moment, and I am firmly of opinion that he is a much better scholar than his uncle.-Come here," he continued, addressing me," and tell me who was the first Emperor of Rome."

"Alexander the Great."

"There, madam, I told you he knew all about itand as for his passion for field sports, you may be as sured that they have always been the preparatory theatre for the display of great and daring minds. William Rufus was an excellent sportsman, and so was Nimrod, and so is the Duke of York, and so were all the heroes that ever lived. Nobody ever taxed them with the characters of the assistants they employed, and your nephew is no more tainted by the failings of Jemmy the Smasher than by the faults of his dog. Take my word for it, that, if his fine disposition is curbed all hopes of a chivalric career must be at an end." My aunt could not, of course, help being convinced by these conclusive arguments. She dried her eyes, called me a sweet fellow, and declared her firm determination that my uncle should never persuade her to make a spoiled child of me.

flung down a sackful of netting, the very sound of which made him jump as it fell: the Smasher jeered him with a horrible curse, and he flung himself down in a dark corner to scowl, with a pair of runaway eyes, at what was going forward.

Jack the rat-catcher followed, and was succeeded by Joe the dog-dealer; and at last arose through the trap-door, like a spirit of darkness, the gaunt longitude of Jep the Tinker, attended by his two sable terriers, one of which was called Imp, and the other Fiend. He brought additional supplies of netting, and apologised for his late appearance by assuring us that he had been watching Lord's keepers to their beat for the night, and had been setting wires all round Darkle Dell and Dead-Man's Corner, which he supposed would be the scene of our exploits. Jep, I have said, was much reverenced, and we immediately began to debate upon his suggestion.

I do not think that any one who had an eye for the picturesque could have forgotten this tatterdemalion Congress. The only light was from a lantern slung up to a beam which passed over us, and the only seats were irregular piles and trusses of hay, on which some sat and some reclined, round the two flagons, which formed the pivots upon which turned all their wit and all their invention. I, myself, stood manfully in the midst, with an honourable pride that my green plush shooting Jacket and black head must give me very much the appearance of the bandits who, from time immemorial, had been held up to me as the objects most worthy of imitation.

With such fond encouragement, and the discoveries which had hardened me against any farther detection, I was not disposed to lose any time in my projected work of vengeance. That very evening I There was much discussion relative to the eligîbîdespatched the coachman and stable-boy with invitality of Dead-Man's Corner over the other choice spots, tions to an "at home" in the hay-loft, in order to ar- and the dissentients, amongst the foremost of whom range a descent upon Lord —————'s preserves, addressed was the Smasher, seemed, I thought, to argue the to Jep the Tinker and Billy the Skulker, cum suis. point with rather an unaccountable earnestness. It was alleged by the Tinker that the keepers were gone in another direction, that there was more game there than anywhere else, and that it was farther from any habitation of man. All this was allowed, but still the Smasher hung back, and the Swiller swore "May I be swamped if he is not afraid of Mark Simmons, who was found murdered there!"

The company did not arrive till it was quite dark, for the sight of their faces made honest men button up their pockets and open their eyes, which it was thought might be very hostile to our evening's amusement. The first to mount the ladder was the Smasher, who made his appearance with a cudgel like the club of Hercules, which, he politely assured me, was at my service, either in my neighbour's woods or on the King's highway.

The Smasher was a stout, resolute fellow, who had gained much celebrity in the prize-ring, of which several honourable scars and distortions of visage bore ample testimony. His lip had been split into a supernatural grin, and one of his eyes, which had been torn open, had been sewed up smaller than the other; but, perhaps, the most praiseworthy part of him was his hand, of which several of the knuckles had been knocked up into his wrist, and still exhibited the impression of his adversary's splintered teeth.

The next who came was the Swiller, a protuberant gentleman of loose costume, straight white hair, and salmon-coloured visage, which shone in the light like shot silk. He was hostler to the Dog and Duck, and made his entree with two enormous flagons of ale, which were added to the old score.

After him came the Skulker, who trod the loft as if he were afraid of putting his foot into a trap, and

The Smasher retorted that he feared no man, dead or alive, and, as a proof, he would lay any moderate wager that he wrung the Swiller's neck in less time than that gentleman would occupy in drinking a pot of beer. The wager, however, was not accepted, and, at the request of some of the party who had not heard the particulars, the Swiller enlivened our council with the episode of poor Mark's murder.

“Mark,” said he, “was gamekeeper to my Lord, hard by, and a right stout fellow he was, only he had not much of a head at drink, which was a pity you know. It is now, I think, five or six years, come next racing time-"

Five!" exclaimed the Skulker, "I remember it well."

"Ay, ay, Billy, so yon must-I remember you were ducked that day for picking pockets, and came to our house for something warm to stop the chattering of your teeth.-Well, five years ago, come racing time, there was a little fair held on the green here, and

"Ay, tell us all about it," said Billy the Skulker, herself. It was a sorrowful sight, wasn't it? Well, "for I was not there."