This off-hand rattle, though it overpowered, did not convince me that there was not something selfish and even fraudulent, to use Fothergill's stern word, in regard to Miss Meadows, in playing with another's feelings, or even her weakness, for one's own sport, though death to the other party. Seeing I looked serious upon it, my vivacious friend went on-"Come," said he, "I see, my grave and reverend signor, that my code of morality does not square with yours, and is disapproved by the sage philosophers of Cumberland and Queen's. Yet I would wager that you cannot convict me of unfair dealing; for am I doing more than standing in self-defence?"

"Self-defence ?"

"Yes! as I will prove to any person of candour, though not perhaps to a fellow of Queen's, or emphatically to that sour tutor of yours, Bothergill, or Fothergill, or whatever his name is, who seems, whenever we see him, to be, ficulnus et inutile lignam, stuck up to frighten us fluttering birds."

I was more and more astonished, nay horrified at this licentious attack on my tutor, by my once sober and sentimental friend. However, conscious as I then felt myself of my own inferior breeding, I supposed it one of the privileges of a superioris Ordinis Commenselis, and I told him so.

"No! indeed," said he, "for every one, in this college at least, thinks Fothergill a mere sour krout; and as to the females, who seen to have won you for their knight, what would you yourself do if you saw one of these dashing girls, acting with the permission, perhaps encouragement, of both her honoured parents, full of a deep design upon your sweet person? Don't start, for I only mean in a lawful way: indeed no other would suit her purpose, or that of her reverend papa and mamma. Well, upon the strength of her own pretty person, and a sort of fashion about her from putting her clothes on well, she has become the toast of the university, from Christ Church down to-I beg pardon, I must not say Queen's, but, for illustration's sake, will specify Alban Hall.” Somewhat hurt, I bowed my thanks for sparing my college pride; yet I was amused, aud though at the same time startled, I continued to listen.

"Well," added he, "this acknowledged College Princess, not unnaturally, thinks the whole university, all the doctors,

both the proctors, and, what is far better, all the grand compounders, gentlemen commoners, and even all the noblemen, at her feet. She is the Grand Turk in petticoats, and thinks she may throw her handkerchief to whom she pleases. She throws it to me, and if I catch it and play with it, nay keep it for a time, without meaning to pocket it,am I to be blamed for enjoying the amusement she so freely offers? After all, these ladies are mere belles de garnison, and Oxford is in this respect no more than a garrison. A flirtation, therefore, is only a passetems on both sides. It is true it ends sometimes in a mariage de garnison,which is proverbial for a mesalliance; but of this I, at least, will not be an example. For be assured, I am not in the least disposed to fall really in love with second-hand people!"

"I at least admire your superior taste, as well as your prudence," said I, "and your comparison of yourself with bloody Richard, as well as Oxford with country quarters, is singularly illustrative."

"I thought I should convince you," proceeded he, affecting to take me literally, "and, to recur again to our old master, you will own, it is the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard.'

Shall I confess that what with this reckless gaiety, which also sat so easy upon him that he seemed assured of being in the right, and what with (by no means the smallest cause) his vast superiority of condition, now opening upon me more and more, from the licence it seemed to give him, I had nothing to reply; and though I did not descend to the meanness of flattering him by allowing he was right, I was confused enough, or coward enough, not to be able to tell him how he was wrong. I fell into a reverie upon the changes, great and glaring, which the difference of our educations, as well as lots in the world, had occasioned in so short a time, and sat dumb, and I fear stupid, before this specimen of what I thought the spoiled children of the world.

Hastings seemed fully conscious of his superiority; and my feeling that he was so, gave me no pleasure; so that it was a relief to me when bis servant came in with "Mi Lor Albany's compliment, and Monsieur Douce vas wait for to give de lecon of de box."

"Ha!" said he, "I am summoned, and am afraid must

leave you, which I know you will excuse, as you were always a good boy, and regular at lecture."

So saying, he shook hands cordially enough, and reaching a pair of mufflers which hung over his chimney-piece, we proceeded down stairs together, be to his noble friend and fellow pupil, to what he called lecture, I to ponder all these novelties, which, in truth, caused me much thought, in a slow and moody retreat to my college.

CHAPTER IX.

MORTIFICATIONS AND AFFRONTS FROM INEQUALITY
OF RANK.

The proud man's contumely.

SHAKSPEARE.-Hamlet.

"THIS, then, is Oxford," said I to myself, as I proceeded up a by-way which led to to Queen's; "this my earliest, my only, my dearest friend, the man with whom I was to go through the world; the brother of Bertha. Ah! if she were to see or hear him now, would she approve or love him as she did when.”

The thought did not please, and I strove to banish the recollection of that morning, the most critical and, as I thought, auspicious of my life, when I first viewed her bounding, as I have described her, like a fawn, willingly into his arms, as her beloved brother, esteemed as much as beloved. "No!" said I, "she would not approve; she could not but blame this mockery of all that is serious; she was liveliness itself, but never light."

I hurried on my pace, seeking, perhaps, to get rid of my subject; then, suddenly stopping, " And yet," I continued, may not all this be assumed? May not there be a fashionable as well as a vulger slang? He was not wont to be thus, and he at least had no example for it at home.”

The grave deportment of his father then rose before me;

the serious civility of the domestics, and indeed the regularity and order of the whole house. There were jokes, indeed, too, but they were in Bertha's laughing eyes, and certainly not such jokes as these.

These reflections brought me, in no very attentive humour, to my lecture with Mr. Fothergill, very different from that with Mr. Douce. He perceived it, and balf-reproachingly, half-kindly, observed, that breakfasting with fine gentlemen was a bad preparation for a lecture. Seeing, however, that I was not only absent, but really not happy, he good-humouredly adjourned my attendance, and said he would resume with me after he had finished with his other pupils.

Retired to my room, I threw my Plutarch on my table, and myself on my couch.

Sterne says of old Shandy, throwing himself side-long on his bed to meditate Tristam's misfortune, that a horizontal posture alleviates grief. I know not his authority, but as his own is a very good one in all these little matters of feeling, I suppose he is right for I felt, as I lay on my right side, with my right arm under my head, and jogging my left leg over the other against the frame of the sopha, that my musing, by degrees, got less unpleasant and disturbed. "This can only be a freak of Hastings," said 1, "either to amuse himself or banter me. He cannot mean to give himself these airs; he has too much real honour, as well as sense to be the thing he affects."

I was consoling myself with this thought, when my tutor came in. "You have not gained much by your visit," said he, observing my pensive position, which however I immediately quitted, out of respect to him. "I see discontent, if not disappointment, in your eye. What! you have found that Oxford practice accords not with Sedbergh professions. You and your friend are no longer,

Like to a double-cherry, seeming parted,
And yet a union in partition.'

"Nay, it is not that," said I, "for he was really glad to

see me.

"Yes! I suppose he begged you to sit down, and did the honours of his breakfast-table most condescendingly. But

did he really not make you feel the difference between you?" "That I cannot say," answered I.

"I thought so," said Mr. Fothergill.

"The difference, however," I continued, "was not what you suspect." I then described to my friendly relation the immense change which I thought I had observed in the manner, mind, and language of my schoolfellow which distressed me, though I supposed it might indicate superior knowledge of the world.

Of which knowledge you are jealous," observed Fothergill.

"No, no, indeed; but I own I did not like that things which I thought serious, should be laughed at, and myself and college quizzed, while I felt restrained from answering by I know not what fear of his higher condition, and the tone of superiority which this seemed to give him."

"This is silly, though not unnatural," said Mr. Fothergill, "and must be whipped out of you, or you will be miserable. As for his rattling tone in regard to what you so properly, think serious, I could pass that by, as the mere ebullition of a spoiled youth, who thinks he writes man the better for seeming careless of what a man should be. He is afraid of being thought in leading-strings, and affects freedom accordingly. But what most alarms me for you is, this friendship of yours, which, being what is called an unequal alliance—a thing I never saw come to good, but generally to harm-I would, by all means, advise you to set yourself against."

"That seems cruel and unnatural," answered I, "not to say unreasonable and ungrateful, especially as, though I see a contemptuous manner as to things and persons in general, he gave me no reason to think I was among them. Ought I not at least to wait till I do ?”

"It is better to prevent than cure," replied Fothergill. "It will be bitter for you perhaps to take leave of this quality youngster; it will be more so to be left by him. And now for Plutarch."

We then proceeded to lecture, and in the unbridled and profligate eccentricities of Alcibiades, leading to every sort of crime, he made me read a proof that high gifts, when unrestrained by principle, so far from conferring happiness, produce nothing but mortification, humiliation, disappointment,