slung with miniature hammocks, full of silk ties, clean collars, letters from home, and various nick-nacks, wonderful to behold; and that the curtains were long enough to go round the washing-stands, thus make a most pleasant privacy for each of us.

Alas! I had not been long there before all the little dimity curtains were taken down, the posts cut short, and our pretty curtained nests turned into hateful truckle beds. A man learned in medicine, and believing in all the humbugs of the day, came to Harby to see his son, and was taken through the bedrooms; happening to fall foul of a bed and knock his arm against a bed-post, he began to demonstrate to the housekeeper how the curtains caused currents of one sort of gas, and the posts prevented currents of another description of gas, and that the whole was very unhealthy, and that they must all come down. Had we had time to remonstrate, or any opportunity of rebelling, before every post was cut down, we would certainly have done so; but in one afternoon every shadow of comfort had vanished away.

When I had answered to my name several times more, and explained my fortunes, finances, and parentage, to every boy in the room, individually; and had been engaged in a fierce argument with each as to the superiority of commerce agriculture, and Whig over Tory, I was at last

over

allowed to close my eyes. I was very soon fast asleep, tired with my journey, and fatigued by the excitement of my first entry into a public

school.

CHAPTER VIII.

MY FIRST HALF-YEAR AT HARBY.

"I remember, I remember,

How my childhood fleeted by,

In the mirth of its December,

And the warmth of its July."

HALL SONGS.

THE title of this chapter is not a perfectly correct one, as I went to Harby in the middle of a halfyear at Easter, 1840. Were it in my experiences, I would divulge a fearful tale-of how it happened that there was a vacancy at such an unusual season; but as the catastrophe took place before my time, and the reports I heard are withal nearly faded from my memory, I will merely mention that evil had grown glaring, that punishment had followed, that the house had been weeded, and that there was room for me.

It was no small advantage to me arriving as I did in the midst of all the regular work, and in a

house which was perfectly settled and organized; and I should always endeavour to send any boy to a public school in the middle of the half-year. In the first place, much consideration was shown to me as a new boy (rather a rarity at that time of the year), and it was nearly a fortnight before it was discovered that I had never been allotted to one of the monitors as a fag. I was quite surprised to find how much I had been left to myself, and what perfect freedom and independence the life seemed to be, after that of Elm-house. Of course I soon began to presume upon it, and received my first good licking for refusing to say what my name was, in the first place, and for inquiring the name of my persecutors, in the second. After that, I got a character for great impudence and "cockiness,” and was generally kicked and cuffed about half-a-dozen times daily; sometimes for real offences, but oftener on account of the reputation I had made for myself. In school I was also somewhat persecuted; though I put a stop to a good deal of teasing by volunteering to fight one of my enemies: by showing an immense amount of courage, which I did not feel, I induced my ad

versary to decline the challenge; which news, when I heard of it, gave me, I am sure, much more satisfaction than it did him. The lessons were just enough to make the playground a happy holiday; and, though I can't plead guilty to learning much Latin and Greek during the first quarter of my stay at Harby, the progress I made in my appreciation of and love for idleness was prodigious. The attacks on my study in the yard, alluded to in the last chapter, though they did not occur every night, nevertheless indisposed me to remain in my study; so I gradually abandoned it, and began to lead a vagrant and unprofitable, if not an unhappy life: rambling from study to study, interrupting others in their work, or lying on a bench before the hall fire, wishing prayers and bed-time would hurry themselves a little.

The præpostors took a great deal of trouble at this time to put down all bullying and persecution, especially among the younger and new boys; and if they were not perfectly successful, at all events they made some most valuable rules and set on foot some admirable schemes, many of