Mr. Gentian having concluded his ballad to the universal admiration of the Meeting, Vyvyan, after a few preludes, burst forth into the following

SONG.

The late Mr. Gentian

No more must we mention,
'Tis all an invention-
He's here as our guest;
His great incarnation
Is come for his ration,
He'll take a potation

As well as the best.

See, his corpus advances,
His abdomen dances
His smirks and his glances

Are pregnant with fun;
Hail! hail to the queer one,
Of Momus the dear one,
We never can fear one
Who's got such a tụn.

His verses are thrilling,
His bon-mots are killing,
No critical chilling

Shall put out his fire-
Then rule here thou wizard;

From Alpha to Izzard,

Here's work for thy gizzard,

Here's work for thy lyre.

It was half past six, and the Knight and the Knave had not arrived. Mr. Garraway looked imploringly, and Mr. Gentian looked despondingly, and Sir Thomas looked angrily, and Merton looked critically, and Gerard looked anti-poetically. To fill up the tedious moments, Mr. Heaviside proposed to read an elaborate critique on

GILBERT EARLE.

"THE literature of the present day is teeming with vices, among which the habit of beginning the notice of a particular book with a multitude of general reflections is not the least. I abuse and imitate; and this we do of necessity. The writers of every age

have always had much in common, especially their faults. I am weary of the philosophizing spirit of the times I am tired of cause hunting, (I speak not of attornies,) there is no end to it;the moment a book is published the world is busy, not in enjoying, but in discussing the general principle on which it is written. Every author is supposed to have some metaphysical formula by the aid of which he constructs works of imagination, almost as mechanically as Mr. Babbage's machine turns out logarithmic tables. I am sure my natural disposition is against all this. I never feel the least inclination to dive into the kitchen to see how my dinner is cooked: I would not give sixpence to know the process by which a heap of dung becomes a bed of violets; and nothing affronts me more than to see Sir Edward Smith tearing a beautiful flower to pieces, leaf by leaf, to explain to a crowd of staring boobies the difference between the calix and the corolla, who straightway go home to ponder on the ignorance of people who know not how to do any thing with a rose but admire its beauty and enjoy its fragrance.

"But I must obey the fashion, and proceed secundum artem. I shall not, however, go so far as the great Fadladeen, that model of a reviewer, who, as I recollect, considered it necessary to commence his critique with an account of all the poems that ever were written. I mean to confine myself to a short analysis of the excellence and defects of the principal English novels of the last and present century, occasionally taking a hasty glance at similar productions in France and Germany; and then intend to conclude with a detailed examination of the work under review; shewing how far the practice of the author accords or differs with the best standards of taste, interspersing the whole article with—”

Here Mr. Heaviside was obliged to desist-the under current of gossip had set in rather strong; from the first he had struggled against it nobly, lifting up his voice until our editorial hammer fell as noiseless on the table as a lady's glove; but the dire threats of "analysis" and "examination," supported as they were by the mass of paper which he wielded in his hand, was too much for human patience to bear. He yielded to numbers, and gave up the contest, with no very pleasant look at his enemies." Pocket, my dear Heaviside," said Joyeuse, " pocket your papers and your vexation. Your Analysis, no doubt, is excellent, but this is a night of Synthesis-ecce signumour host of the garter has just compounded a bowl of most exquisite lime punch." "Of which I demand the first glass, as the only remaining member of the King of Clubs," said Sir Thomas Nesbit ;-" and now I have it, do, Heaviside, tell me something about this book of Knight'sGilbert Earle who wrote it? Is it good for any thing?" Heavi

P 2

side rolled up his papers, muttering that people had better read for themselves. Mr. Heaviside was piqued.

"He can distinguish and divide

A hair 'twixt south and south-east side."

And he loves to his heart's core to exercise his talent, maugre his wily abuse of his favourite occupation.

"Right," exclaimed Gerard. "It is a work of real genius""and of brevity," said Vyvyan, with an especial eye to his watch. "Good,my friends," quoth we; "and now if Gerard will read us a passage or two we shall know a great deal more about the matter than if we had read all the Reviews in Christendom." "This is neither time nor place for the characteristic parts of the book," said Gerard, picking Heaviside's pocket of the volume, “but there is a capital description of his old school, which I will give you scraps of the whole is admirable, but Heaviside is such an awful warning against lengthiness, that I dare not give it entire.

Before we went to a public school, we were at a small one, about ten miles from Wilverham. It was kept by a clergyman; and consisted of about thirty boys, chiefly, like ourselves, the sons of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. I was not long in the country before I determined to ride over and see my old school and my old master; who, I was told was still alive, though he had some years before given up the school to his son.

How familiar was every step of the road! My brother and I were always sent for on Saturday, and returned on the Monday morning ;—and how well I recollect our different feelings, and our different pace, according to the direction in which our ponies' heads were turned. I could still see myself flying along on my little forester [grey, with a long tail], on our Saturday's journey, and trailing back at a foot's-pace on the morning of black Monday. Justly, indeed, may it be called so ;-for I question if (setting periods of violent grief aside) there be any thing in after life more truly gloomy and wretched than the feelings of a boy as he goes back to school. I have always thought it mere affectation, or, at all events, quite a fallacy, to talk of our school-days as the happiest of our lives. In happiness, what we believe to be is. If we fancy ourselves happy or unhappy, we are so. And where was ever the schoolboy who thought himself happy at school? In the first place, he has always an insatiable craving for manhood, quite incompatible with strong present enjoyment;—and moreover, a school-life, in nearly every other respect, is any thing rather than a state of happiness. The contrast between the luxuries, the kindnesses, and the heart of home, and the discipline, the privations, the scoffing, the utter want of all softness and delicacy of feeling, which are inevitable to a school-this contrast neither is nor ought to be, undergone without strong sensations of depression and pain. I say it ought not, for it is eminently calculated to check and deaden those feelings which should be cherished the most-and which are at the same time the most obnoxious to the subsequent influences of the world, and the most susceptible of their pernicious action. Almost in proportion as a feeling is tender and amiable, it is converted into a torment by the jeers and sarcasm to which it is subjected. For example, every one who has been at an English school, must remember the ridicule which invariable awaited any manifestation of his affection for his mother, or his sisters in particular. For my own part, I would

any

of

rather, like Ford, have trusted a thief to walk my favourite horse, than my schoolfellows with one of my mother's letters, or even with my sister's Christian name. I have said that the transition from home to school never is experienced without pain ;-for how can any boy of the slightest sensibility of heart not feel bitterly the contrast between the manner in which he is loved and considered in the one, and the contemptuous recklessness, or at best, the coarse hard friendship, he meets with in the other? I recollect (so strong was this feeling in me), that whenever we were sent to school in the carriage, as was the case in bad weather, I used always, for the first half of our journey, to long for it to break down, that we might be obliged to return home again; and to lament when our near approach to school rendered even the wish of an upset unavailing. One day, I remember to have met the footman of an old lady who lived in our neighbourhood, and wishing to be him, because he was not going to school.

I had written the Doctor word of my coming, so he expected me when I arrived at the house. When I had left this school, more than thirty years before, he was a hearty and portly man, of about five-and-forty-with a person a little inclined to be round, and a nose a good deal inclining to be red, and a periodical touch of the gout every autumn. He had always, without being a drunkard, been fond of his bottle;—and had a lingering taste for the chase, as was evinced by his giving us a holiday whenever the hounds met near the village, and his mounting his grey horse (which was fast becoming white) and going to see them throw off, and as much farther as he and his steed could compass. He was, as a schoolmaster usually is, exceedingly fond of his joke, and used sometimes to accompany the flagellations, which were by no means infrequent, by jests which did not in the least increase the very sinall desire to laugh which the sufferer might at the moment be supposed to cntertain. In short, the Doctor was one of those good-humoured and somewhat self-indulgent persons, who, without exciting any strong sentiment of respect or esteem, seldom fail to leave one of kindliness-the livelier, perhaps, for the very absence of the other feelings I have named.

I now begged to see the school;-the old man apologized for not being able to accompany me,-but he rang the bell and desired the servant to request Mr. (his son,) to come to him. Accordingly, a spruce, prim, stiff, personage made his appearance, dressed in a scrupulous suit of black, rather worn at the elbows, but exceedingly well brushed and orthodox. I remembered him a tall gawky lad, a sort of half-assistant to his father, and especially hated by the boys, from his being in turn associate and petty tyrant,-playfellow and, as it was suspected, spy.

After we had been somewhat ceremoniously presented to each other, and a few words of recognition had passed,-he preceded me to the school, which is a detached building, at the other side of the yard. As we approached, I heard that indescribable hum which always proceeds from a full school-but when. we entered, it ceased suddenly as every head was raised from the book, to look at the strange gentleman, The school was almost unchanged; the very forms had a physiognomy so similar to those on which I had sat-blotted with ink, and scrawled and carved with initials and non-descript figures of all kinds that my imagination might well be allowed to believe them the same. The lockers (as our phrase was,) were indisputably the same; there was a multitude of indescribable marks and tokens on them which flashed upon my recollection in an instant. The chief difference was in the costume of the boys. The fashions of dress are fundamentally altered since I was at school. The shoebuckle, the knee-breeches, the long hair, which formed the dandyism of that day are quite vanished-and though the present mode is far more natural and

graceful, yet at that moment it seemed to me in disagreeable contrast with the old locality.

While I was contemplating these things, I had forgotten the u sual_boon which it is always expected that a visitor should beg-a half-holiday. I was reminded of it, by observing a pretty general whispering among the boys, together with side-long glances at me, which seemed to intimate an anxiety lest I should not be sufficiently aware of the honoured custom. I immediately turned to Mr. and made my request aloud. Every eye in the room flashed with delight,-and one or two of the most eager boys half sprang from their seats in anticipation. The master paused and looked important, and began to demur;-but I insisted that, for auld lang syne, he should not deny me, and at last he yielded, with that bad grace with which schoolmasters generally seem to think it necessary to qualify the granting of a favour. The moment the word was given, there was a general rush by the boys,—and a most vociferous shouting of "Thank-ye, Sir!-Thank-ye, Sir!" Each sprang to his locker to put by his book—(a piece of regularity to which the presence of the master seemed to me to have a great deal to say,) and in two minutes the school was cleared.

At this instant Mr. Garraway entered with the turtle the delinquents were arrived.

Our worthy publisher, and his excellent man of all work entered the dining-room, with most indescribable countenances. That of the Bibliopole was quite appalling.

"Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night."

We took the chair-but neither did our courtesy, nor our wit (and each were abundantly exercised,) relax a muscle of the unhappy wight's physiognomy. This threw a gloom upon the hilarity, and even the Champagne lagged. Vyvyan could endure it no longer;-he at once demanded an explanation and No. V. The explanation was in the publisher's pocket, but No. V. was in Pall Mall East. With a most appalling slowness the afflicted man drew forth a bundle of papers, which Heaviside snatched at as a brief. It was a Chancery injunction. A few words sufficed to explain. Byron's Correspondence, and our Review of that most pithy of letter-writers, were temporarily suppressed. We cannot describe the consternation; but there is a compensation in all things-the venison was excellent, and the "Mrs. Garraway Pudding" superb. Before the claret came even the Knight of the rueful countenance laughed audibly.

The cloth was cleared and we had drunk the King with enthusiasm, when Mr. Aymer rose." It was most oppressive to his feelings to interrupt the conviviality of such a party, assembled on such an occasion; but it was absolutely due to our most excellent publisher to relieve him a little from the embarrassment of his situation. Three sheets of the best Review that was ever