receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of nature, but must catch at it as an object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing 5 comes to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe that Great Book, as it has been called - is to him indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. — Vacations themselves are none to him, he is 10 only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the 15 country, to a friend's house, or his favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy.

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Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; 20 but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side, than on the other. Even a child, that "plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, playing their own fancies as I now hearken to them by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — by distance made more sweet - inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so for in the voice of that tender age there is a 30 kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's conversation. I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime.

I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very superior capacity to my own-not, if I know myself at

all, from any considerations of jealousy, or self-comparison, for the occasional communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of my life—but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of original thinking from others, 5 restrain what lesser portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce 10 me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive thoughts. from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame.

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upwards, 15 as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility.

He is so

One of

Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a 20 schoolmaster?— because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. He cannot meet you on the square. He wants a 25 point given him, like an indifferent whist-player. used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching you. these professors, upon my complaining that these little sketches of mine were anything but methodical, and that I was unable to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the 30 method by which young gentlemen in his seminary were taught to compose English themes. — The jests of a schoolmaster are He is under coarse, or thin. They do not tell out of school. the restraint of a formal and didactive hypocrisy in company, as

a clergyman is under a moral one. He can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the other can his inclinations. He is forlorn among his co-evals; his juniors cannot be his friends.

5 "I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who had quitted his school abruptly, "that your nephew was not more attached to me. But persons in my situation are more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. We are surrounded by 10 young, and, consequently, ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to share an atom of their affections. The relation of master and scholar forbids this. How pleasing this must be to you, how I envy your feelings, my friends will sometimes say to me, when they see young men, whom I have 15 educated, return after some years' absence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, while they shake hands with their old master, bringing a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and thanking me in the warmest terms for my care of their education. A holiday is begged for the boys; the house 20 is a scene of happiness; I, only, am sad at heart. — This fine

spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he repays his master with gratitude for the care of his boyish years - this young man in the eight long years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, never could repay me with one look of 25 genuine feeling. He was proud, when I praised; he was submissive, when I reproved him; but he did never love me — and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but the pleasant sensation, which all persons feel at re-visiting the scene of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on equal 30 terms the man they were accustomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, too," this interesting correspondent goes on to say, my once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. When I married her knowing that the wife of a schoolmaster ught to be a busy notable creature, and fearing that my gentle

Anna would ill supply the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to death I expressed my fears, that I was bringing her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What wonders will not a woman's love perform?

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My house is managed with a propriety and decorum, unknown in other 10 schools; my boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every proper accommodation; and all this performed with careful economy, that never descends to meanness. But I have lost my gentle, helpless Anna! - When we sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I am compelled to 15 listen to what have been her useful (and they are really useful) employments through the day, and what she proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her heart and her features are changed by the duties of her situation. To the boys, she never appears other than the master's wife, and she looks up to me as the 20 boys' master; to whom all show of love and affection would be highly improper, and unbecoming the dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, and can I reproach her for it? [These kind of complaints are not often 25 drawn from me. I am aware that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous man." My feelings prevent me from transcribing any further.] For the communication of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget.

XXV. MY FIRST PLAY

AT the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was 5 the identical pit entrance to Old Drury Garrick's Drury - all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks 10 and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

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We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone-building, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and 20 bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at Bath

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the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. From either of these connexions it may be inferred that my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-lane theatre at pleasure—and, indeed, a pretty 30 liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph,

I have heard him say was the sole remuneration which he had