"I says," said he, "it sha'n't be. Vhen I inspects around me on this circle-nawigable globe, and beholds the childer of the nobs a bearin' of sutton names and coggle-nommle-nations, and, vhen I beholds the childer of the poor-poor classes a bearin' of other names and coggle-nommle-nations, wot's not the same and is therefore different; and vhen, on the third hand, I looks on myself, an' sees the genteelness and ho tone of my own doughmasticate eke-onomy, I feels a fire a flamin' in my buzzum, as if as how I was ekal to the nobs of my country; I also is a-rusty-grate; I also has a rite to make my child genteel by name,-not Tom,-not Dick,-still more lessenly Jerusalem or Zachary,-I says to myself-and I con-tests the pinthe shall BE FITZROY!"

Arrived at this climax, my father, to add force to his words, dashed his fist from on high,-it fell upon a tea-cup,-smashed it into a thousand pieces, and the scalding beverage poured off the table upon the back of Aunt Tabitha's pet puppy, who was dozing beneath.

"Yow! yow! yow!" cried the unfortunate beast, and flew at my father's leg, tearing, at the first bite, a large mouthful from his check trousers. My father retreated, the dog pursued; another bite drew blood, and Bob Pike, Esq., mad with rage, kicked his assailant into the air-three summersets, and it descended upon the tea-tray amongst the crockery, breaking two tea cups, a saucer, milk-pot, and best sugar basin.

"Cruel Mr. Pike!" cried Aunt Tabitha.

"Ugh, you brute!" cried Aunt Dorothy, making a grimace at my father.

"Poor dear little Fido!" said Tabitha, in tears; "its cut hisself." The little cur was lapping up the milk spilled by its descent, whilst drops of blood, "few and far between," like angel's visits, issued from

his tail.

“Let her finish it," said Tabitha. Her!-of what gender was this animal, since Tabitha called it both he, she, and it?

"Its all the milk there is in the house," said my mother.

"Never mind," said Tabitha; "the poor thing's flurried and wants something rewiving.'

"A drop of gin," said my father, with a wink.

Aunt Tabitha had a very red nose, and considered this a personal insult.

"I don't

"No insinivations, I beg, Mr. Pike," said she, coldly; then, snatching up her dog, she caressed it and examined its wounds. bring dogs here to be kicked and scalded!"

No," replied my father, "and I doesn't put on check trousers, eighteen shillings and sixpence a pair, makin' included, for puppies to tear their legs to pieces!"

Very well, Mr. Pike; very well, sir," said Aunt Tabitha, "I'll take good care my dog shall never come here again to be insulted." "Nor mine neither, you wretch," said Aunt Dorothy-" Flo! Flo! Flo!-Dear little Flo!

"Bow! wow! wow! wow,-ow,-ow,-ow!"

"Sweet Fido," said Tabitha, "has cut his tail; have you any sticking plaster in the house, Mrs. Pike?"

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared my father, forgetting that loud laughter was ungenteel, "that's fashionable with a wengeance,-court plaster to the tail of a puppy dog!"

"Puppy dog, Mr. Pike?" said Tabitha, rising in state," and if it is a puppy dog,-which it isn't,-I say, if it is a puppy dog, and not my dear pet Fido, a sweet duck!-what's that to you, sir? If you, Mr. Pike, had cut your tail, wouldn't you think it cruel if we was to deny you stickin' plaster?-but you're a grinning still,-come, mother, let's go!"

My mother in vain strove to make peace, and the offended cherishers of canine specimens, the Misses Dorothy and Tabitha Jones, together with their wondering parent, having "put on their things," majestically swept from the apartment.

"Hooroar!" cried Bob Pike, Esq., "Fitzroy it'll be! Them old maids won't interfere any more with their Babby-long and Sack-o'rice-Fitzroy for ever!"

Had it not been for the above-mentioned interruption to the debate, the women, in spite of my father's speech, would have gained their point; and so, by the scalding of a puppy dog, was I saved from utter ruin, thus illustrating the fact that great events arise sometimes from insignificant circumstances.

This point, the most important to my future career, having been detailed at length, it remains to hurry rapidly through the rest of my earlier history.

In the family mansion of the Pikes, an only son and heir, I was nurtured and spoiled. I broke as many wooden soldiers as 1 pleased, amputated the legs of my ligneal steeds, and scratched my nurse with impunity.

As I grew in years I was sent to a preparatory school, kept, in connection with a green-grocer's stall, ("Preparatory Tuition-ring the area bell,") by two maiden ladies, whose starched collars I rumpled, and whose starched manners I mimicked, until, with a thundering reprimand, I was sent home in disgrace.

My father then would have sent me to a boarding-school; but having heard that private tuition was customary for noblemen's sons, the son of Bob Pike, Esq. was also privately instructed, and imbibed. a vast knowledge of his own importance, together with the sciences of peg-top and "mivies," in which his tutor was a proficient.

Tutors can bear a great deal, no doubt; yet, as mine remarked when complaining of me to my father-"Tutors are men" (N. B.-he himself was but a boy); and, as I had already kicked his shins to the last stage of mortification, he deemed it prudent for his health to decline further continuance in the duty of inspecting my intellectual progress.

A spoiled child is the most detestable little wretch on the face of the earth; humiliating as the declaration may be, I confess now, that, unhappy in myself, I could not fail to perceive, with all my conceit, that friends I had none; and that, save my blinded parents, all that saw me considered me a bore; and many thought worse of me than

that.

But never mind; -a period of correction was at hand,-to boarding

school I must go, where, of all beings, pet children fare the hardest, and "pride must have its fall;" there, at length, I found my own level, and learned to correct those faults that appear so ridiculous in intercourse with our fellows, the nasty, sneaking ways that parents generate who are foolish enough to "spoil" their child.

I well remember the day on which I was conveyed to the regions of knowledge in a hackney coach, or, as Bob Pike, Esq. preferred calling it, a borrowed carriage, lent and driven by the owner (in consideration of eighteen-pence) to a house in the neighbourhood of Peckham. "MINERVA HOUSE ACADEMY," on a large board, was visible at a distance; "DR. PITCHITIN," on a brass plate, glared upon the gate as we drove through, upon a very grassy carriage drive, to the door of a spacious mansion; "Dr. Pitchitin," on the door of the mansion, engraved upon a duplicate plate, froze the blood in my heart, and the ample legs of my corduroys vibrated slightly, in unison with the shivering of the little legs within. The door was knocked at and opened;-my father, who accompanied me, entered, and I followed: we were ushered into a waiting-room, and requested to be seated,-left alone ;-mathematical instruments, and instruments of unknown use were scattered around, to strike awe into visiters, and impress upon them an idea of the vast knowledge of Dr. Pitchitin ;-on the table, circulars and copy-books, open letters, replete with encomiums on Dr. Pitchitin, all lost on my father, who had spelt as far as "My dear Sir," in one of them, (making it out, " My dead Sir,") when the Doctor entered. He was a long man,-long legs, long body, long head, long face, long nose, long hair hanging sleek around his head: but, knowing the value of contrast, he wore a short coat, with very short sleeves; short trousers, with very short legs, (not knee breeches, but exceedingly like them;) on the other hand, again, he was very long winded. But my father loved speeches as well as he.

"Robert Pike, Esq."-commenced the Doctor.

"Bob,"-corrected my father, but the Doctor did not stop,"This is your offspring; indeed, a promising lad. Most happy am I to have the honour,-let me see,-honour, of your patronage and acquaintance. That's it. Sir, I pray and entreat that you will be seated. It will, sir, be the proudest,-let me see, the proudest,yes, the proudest day of my life, when I think that I should have been, so to say, selected by Robert'

"Bob"

-"Pike, Esq., as the educator of his progeny and hopeful,-let me see, that's it, hopeful offspring,-progeny and hopeful offspring. Will you, sir, allow me to ascertain the state of his acquaintance with Literature and Science by asking of him a few practical questions?"

It was now my father's turn to speak; he had long sat impatient, and eagerly arose :—

"I rises, Dr. Pitchitin, to respond to your werry able and eloquent speech. I rises, in coarse, to a great disarwantage, risin' as I does after the werry able manner in witch,-Fitzroy, my dear, you're a suckin' your thumb!"-Sir, this boy, as is a settin' on that there mortal cheer, is, I is proud to hone, my hopfull sun. Sir, I is not on the pint of employin' suck-'em-lick-you-shun-airy phases for the por

poise of egg-salting you eyed-ears consarnin' of 'un;-but, sir, with the feelins of a father thick upon me,—with all the tender thoughts of infection that my besom is open to, witch,-I leaves my darlin' sun to your fosternal conserwation,-gnawing you as one wot dillites in the fruition of yooth,-and here, sir, here,-aschews my feelins,—[ 'livers over my Fitzroy-Fitzroy, sir, is his assignation-O, let him go, I cannot say farewell,-his sight will throw me into emulsions,— I leaves him in the Temple of Minover,-this 'ere Cacadamy,-takaw!-tak him!"

At this pathetic climax my father sank back, exhausted.

"Most noble man!" cried Dr. Pitchitin,-" seldom is it my blissful,-let me see, blissful,-lot to meet with paternally parental relatives who thus feelingly express their sentiments.-That's it.-It will be my arduous task, my dear delight, to watch the intellectual progress of this darling boy. Go, Fitzroy, go; consider yourself now initiated into the delightful,-let me see, that's it,-delightful mysteries of this Temple of Minerva. Thou art an accepted votary at the shrine of which I am high-priest. Go, youth,-Betsey is in the next room, and will wash your face for dinner;-'the noon-tide meal'-that's it,— meal, as the poet majestically expresses it, is at hand soon will the 'iron chime' of the dinner bell burst upon the listening vicinity, and the students in these groves of learning feast upon hot beef and potatoes, that's it,-potatoes. Take leave of thy high-souled parent, and depart."

And so, with an unwilling heart, I did.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

A Wash and a Dinner, with the awful Consequences of a Vegetable Diet.-Schoolfellows; Paternal Eloquence; and Choice of a Profession.

Outside the door of Dr. Pitchitin's receiving room, I found Betsey in waiting to receive me into her hands, therefore, with manifest tokens of disapprobation, I surrendered my lovely person. By her I was carried into an outhouse, in which the ceremony of purification was performed, for purification it certainly was, although greatly to my disadvantage, the thing purified being Betsey's hand, which relinquished one half of its dirt in favour of my previously clean face ;—thus early making me acquainted with the republican principles of Nature, who omits no opportunity of levelling distinctions.

How it was that the protracted arguments of my father and Dr. Pitchitin ever came to a termination is beyond the utmost stretch of my fancy to conceive; that they were ended, however, it was evident, when, on entering the " salle à manger," I found the oratorical pedagogue seated at the head of the table, "ruling the roast" over about fifty boys, who gazed expectantly upon the hot beef and potatoes. Potatoes! rightly indeed does that latter word fall last and most fully upon the ear; truly we eat potatoes as the ancients drank their wine :

"Nævia sex cyathis, septem Justina bibatur;—

or, rather, as many in number as the years we hoped to live; and,

assuredly, if that idea prompted our feeders, they must have had a very great desire to make us all immortal.

I was seated next to the usher, a very peculiar man, appearance I may as well describe :—

whose general

Mr. Snibs, unlike ushers in general, was elderly, and, which is still more unusual, he was fat. Now a fat usher is a monster sui generis, far rarer than a mermaid indeed, I will not be so hardy as to maintain that he might not have been an unique specimen. Often and often have I wondered, as I gazed in astonishment on his ample folds of flesh-often have I wondered how they were acquired! But we must not speculate: sufficient let it be to record that Mr. Snibs was fat-very fat. He had short black hair, combed smoothly over his eyes-for forehead, to the best of my memory, he had none: a little round nose was buried between two red mountains of cheeks, and his mouth, when patulous, presented to view a little round hole, into which the wedding ring of some delicate lady might have been found to fit minutely. He wore a suit of rusty black, that, stout as he was, would have suited a giant of twice his size. He was always excessively hot; and, therefore, in order to afford scope for exhalation, was accustomed to leave a great part of his waistcoat unbuttoned, and to sit, most commonly, with his feet out of his shoes.

"New boy," said he, looking into my plate, "you've had no potatoes" (they were under the table). "Stubbs, give new boy some potatoes !"

And three more roots, not one less in size than a child's head, (allowance being made for figure of speech,) were put upon my plate, to join their fellows on the floor upon the next convenient opportunity.

Before our dinner was over, Dr. Pitchitin departed to his own mutton chops, leaving Mr. Snibs to conclude the course, which he did, in due time, by gurgling a grace :

"Sanctify we beseech thee,-Hollo! Who's done this?—I say, who has done this?"

Mr. Snibs pushed back his chair, and looked under the table; surprised at the interruption, every boy did the same,—so did I,—and, horror of horrors !—there, in the usher's shoes,-in each one of them,— had lodged one of my unfortunate potatoes! During grace, according to custom, Mr. Snibs was insinuating his feet into those appendages, when he met with the obstructions of which I had been the unlucky

cause.

"Very well, gentlemen," said the enraged usher, "Dr. Pitchitin shall sift this matter,-very well!"—and he took up the shoes and their contents as silent evidence, bearing them, himself unshod, to the school-room.

"Never mind," whispered a boy to me, as I followed in the throng; "you did it I know,-'twill be the making of you if you're impudent. Get yourself a character in the school."

I understood the hint, and determined to act up to it.

We were all assembled in the school-room :-Dr. Pitchitin, cane in hand, was at his desk,-Mr. Snibs, shoes in hand, was at his desk,

N. S.-VOL. VI.

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