we said and all we felt?-how we promised to write to friends, and forgot their addresses a minute afterwards-how we tore up books and destroyed many things that we missed next halfyear-how we nearly omitted to say good-by to Mrs. Oswell when she handed us the money which was to take us home-how the old housekeeper was never thanked for her trouble, and was nearly driven mad by the simultaneous inquiries of fifty boys as to the bags which were yet unpacked, or the portmanteaus which were yet uncorded-how the trains went too slow; for even the electric telegraph would hardly have been a conveyance swift enough for our impatience and how the words of the hall song "Home, sweet home, dear words of pleasure,"

seemed to float around us, sung by angel-voices.

What I miss most now, and what I envy schoolboys most, is the "Breaking-up Day," with all its feelings of excitement, and its happy close at home.

CHAPTER IX.

WHAT WE LEARNED AT HARBY.

"And pray, Mr. Sampson, are these three hours entirely spent in construing and translating?"

"Doubtless, no-we have also colloquial intercourse to sweeten study-neque semper arcum tendit Apollo."

GUY MANNERING.

I AM rather alarmed at the heavy title placed at the head of this chapter; but, after all, as we did go to school to learn, however indifferently we may have succeeded, and as boys still continue to go to school for that purpose, some slight notice of Harby lessons may not be considered out of place.

I do not intend, however, to place upon record all the works which I studied at Harby, or to relate how many hundreds of Latin and Greek verses I wrote there-much less what they were

about; for I am very often posed by my sisters and others when, reading a novel aloud, I fall upon a neat verse of inexplicable Horace, or a few lines of undecipherable Sophocles. Nearly all the Greek and Latin which occurs on mature reflection to my memory, will be found inscribed as mottoes to the various chapters of this work ; and I hope I may not in future be expected to construe fluently all the couplets which Oxford and Cambridge men place, not only at the commencement, but often in the middle of the chapters of their novel-writing friends.

Having thus cleared myself from all pretensions to classical knowledge, I will endeavour to give a fair picture of Harbean acquirements and learning. My own experience-which was somewhat exceptional perhaps, as I began almost at the bottom of the school-was that I took a remove, that is to say, got into a new and higher class, every half-year but one, during the five years I was at school. This is as rapid a progress as can be made; but had I started a little higher I should probably not have gone on so fast. This is no paradox; for, of course, commencing

at the very bottom, I was thoroughly grounded in the rudiments of all that was taught at Harby, and thus never had to retrace a step, or found myself wanting in something which the rest of the class had learned. But though to take a remove every half-year is creditable, no doubt, still it is not by itself a proof of hard work; as the first fifteen or twenty of each class move up every time, and it only requires a very average amount of study during the four months, and a good examination at the end, to be one of the first fifteen.

But to be one of the first three is a very complete test: you must not only have worked extremely hard during the whole half year, but a very first-rate examination must have been passed as well. Numbers work up in grand style to pass a good examination, who have never studied before; and you must not only beat all of these, but also the five or six who are always to be found at the head of each class at a public school, and whose sole idea is to be the head of it at the end of the half.

I remember" getting out second" of one of

the very lowest forms in the school: it was a question of considerable importance, being a piece of rivalry between two houses. My rival had beaten me by one place in the two lowest classes, and now we were again together in the "lower fourth remove," I think it was. How we each did work, to be sure! Every lesson by heart was known and repeated without a mistake, and we used to take one another up till even the master caught up the fever of emulation, and he never heard one of us construe without making the other do so afterwards. How delighted was my rival and how disgusted was I, when he was read out seventy-six marks above me in the "marks of the half!" We then both turned with right down good will to the examination: he determined to keep, and I equally resolved to take his place. We shook hands before the final moment, and were to be friends in any case; and the victor and vanquished (I was the latter) were equally cheered by our houses for having fought a good fight. We have often talked it over since, and in schoolboy parlance voted Cowper's severe lines