My classical tuition proceeded under the Westminster regimen, and the private care of my father, until he chose to remove me to St. Paul's school. During the contemplation of this intend, ed step, I learned from a companion, a Pauline, Michael Smith (the son of a clergyman in Westminster, and who now, I believe, holds a minor canonry in Rochester cathedral), that my exami nation under Dr. Roberts, the head master, would determine in how high a class I should be placed. Here then, for the first moment in my boyhood, scholastic pride and emulation kindled their embers in my breast-one proof, among several, of the ascendancy in a public over private tuition. Having surmounted the hard shell and husk, I found the pleasing flavour of the nut. I fagged my plodding genius in retirement; and though still an amateur of plays, I found they were no substitute for the lessons I had now to learn. Many of my playmates and brother actors were dispersed, or made the final exit; for even in youth death begins his warnings, and the expand, ing bud of May is often blasted by untimely frost. My walks to St. Paul's school from Westminster, and my return, together with my evening tasks, now wholly engrossed my time; and Shakspear yielded to Homer, in this instance at least. I now learned also, from old and young, that the profession of the stage was at variance with the advice of most people-that I should never be esteemed a gentleman, if I went on the stage. I yielded to this severe and bitter denunciation, and discarded every shadow of such intentions from my thoughts. College and the church were the reigning topics in the circle I had entered, and I had seldom time or inclination to indulge in any other. It is true, that at our yearly speeches in the school, I shared the delight of all his auditory, when Elliston (who was the hero of this academic rostrum, and displayed very promising seeds of rhetorical talent) ascended to claim the greetings of enthusiastic applause; and particularly do I remember his early abilities, in a theme on the mutability of fortune, having this motto "Trust not prosperity's alluring wiles: He was a youth, at the upper class shooting into manhood, of most agreeable manners; and is since become too well known as an actor, and I hope too well respected as a man, to need any further panegyric of mine. Fortune has very much favoured his pursuits, which is more than I can say of most others from our upper classesour cotemporaries at St. Paul's, A very few have risen in church or college preferment, or in their other respective vocations, as I could have wished, as I should have expected, and as most of them, I am sure, deserved. However, when I reflect upon the gifts of fortune, I find, that her precarious boon is not worth anxiety: but a little longer and we quit our mortal habitation, of which daily and sudden dissolutions give repeated notice. Education and ingenuous merit, birth and friends, how often do they fail to promote our elevation in life, as we think we have a right to expect! If my humble but sincere consolation be of any value to those old school-fellows, whom the grim tyrant, death', has yet spared, it will be a reference to the many wise expositions of human vanities and human hopes, which they have read in the venerable writers of antiquity both sacred and profane. With modest deference I would wish to advise, that should any of them struggle hard, with large families and scanty incomes, to maintain the gentleman's rank, that they still pursue the glorious path, and honourably continue to make a rational hope their polar star through this world, counting with cheerfulness of the next. The orphan and the widow will be heaven's care. All heads must come "To the cold tomb: Only the actions of the just "Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." About this period the grave, amongst its other victims, robbed me of a friend and companion in my mother. My eldest brother had been first in the college at Westminster, and now was elected to Cambridge; my younger brother was in the country at nurse; and the greater portion of my time having been under my father's private instructions, I was the domestic boy, and the chief companion of my mother at home and in her walks. Judge then, generous reader, what a lad of thirteen years of age must have felt in such a deprivation as this; and yet, how little a boy of that age could know the full amount of his loss, and its results! There had been other children by my mother, but heaven had kindly removed them, never to know a mother's value and her absence. No tear will restore her, and it is my duty to submit to the chastisements of providence: but who can record the commencement of life's misfortunes without unutterable anguish? You, who, perhaps from youth, may have rolled in luxurious splendour through routines of fashion and gaiety you who could never know a tithe of my loss-may deem my grief effeminate; and the cold moralist may tell me, that the school of affliction is the entrance to self-knowledge; yet "Nature her custom holds, "Let shame say what it will." I had the melancholy satisfaction of attending my mother's funeral in the cloisters of that abbey, where repose huge heaps of royal and other noble dust, and where monumental eulogy (one would think) was exhausted. "Here the proud prince, and favourite yet prouder, "The great negociators of the earth, “ And celebrated masters of the balance, Deep read in stratagems and wiles of courts. "How vain their treaty-skill!” For reasons known best to my father, I was removed to the Temple; and soon afterwards articled to Mr. T. White 66 Deep on his front engraven, deliberation sat” of the King's Bench Office, and Deputy Custos Rotulorum of that venerable court. Dr. Roberts (who has lately retired from the fatigues of his D |