my part, I believe in no such doctrine-once wet through it may rain on as long as it pleases; deprive me of a bottle of wine and a clean shirt a-day, and fortune cannot render my misery one jot the greater, even if she reduce me to a sweeper of crossings, or a shoe-black. And this second mishap, instead of adding to my uneasiness, entirely removed it. It acted upon me in some such way as a violent debauch would upon a man labouring under a severe bilious at tack, which makes him sick, and carries away, at "one fell swoop," both the bile and the ill effects of the debauch.

The paroxysm over, I laughed as heartily as the best of them, and or-, dered Ferret to show up the candidates for my patronage, or, as they more wisely ask, "for my custom." There is a wide difference between the two. As our old pedagogue used to say, in descanting upon the peculiar force of some Greek verb, "There is an idea of continuance and continuality" conveyed in the word custom, which is not always observed. At least my worthy grocer did not appear to understand it, for I asked him to explain what he meant by custom, and he replied, “buying your groshery at my shop, sir." In hiring a gyp, washerwoman, sempstress, &c. and in promising my custom to tradesmen, I observed one very curious circumstance. Among some fifty candidates, there were only three names -they were all Ferrets, Jones's, or Thomsons; and it was not till I had resided at Cambridge some time, that I made the discovery, that among all the tradesmen and college-servants, which may be about five hundred in number, there are not, perhaps, more than twenty different names. This is easily to be accounted for. In the infancy of the university, these offices might very easily have been engross ed by five or six persons, and from that time they have become hereditary. From the names of these five or six persons, some patronymics have been formed, and the generations have gone on from age to age with ATHENEUM, VOL. 3. 2d series.

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all the regularity and uniformity of the epic poems of Greece or Rome. Like them, too, they have had, as one may say, their episodes. Their daughters have married-taken the names of their husbands, as most married women do-and these husbands have divided the spoil with their fathers or brothers-in-law-they have been admitted as accomplices, in the acts of fleecing gownsmen-or as they would call it, "of serving them."-Thus, then, by the original names, the patronymics, and the intermarriages, or episodes, the whole number, which, by a very liberal calculation, I have stated at twenty, may be very easily accounted for, and made up.

Having at length completed my establishment, which I selected according to the greater or lesser marks of roguery upon the countenances of the candidates, I took my dinner in my own rooms, and then began to unpack my books, and to make some show of literature in the Cambridge way. And now that I look back upon that day, I must confess that I continued perfectly consistent, and that it was always my practice to shelf my books. The first that I laid my hands upon, were abridgments of the works of Lavater, and of Doctors Gall and Spurzheim. I lamented much that I had not consulted these in my preceding occupations, for I confess that I was then a very great Bumpiologist, and I still think that Nature does sometimes write a very legible hand upon the phizmahogony of some people. As to the bumps, I know very little about them-though, at the same time, I would stake my existence, that I would pick out Hazlitt's and Leigh Hunt's skull from those of the whole universe.

But, to return to my confession-I made lots of good resolutions-I was never to go to wine parties-I was to read for Honors, I was to read six hours a day-cut all gay acquaintances-never drink punch, and therefore to refuse all invitations to suppers-I was-what?--I really can

Stamford made his appearance with a note from his master.-Stamford had found my card in his door, and had just returned. The style of this letter was then quite new to me, and I preserved it as a curiosity-Silly young man. Did you ever receive one in a different style while you were at Cambridge? Never-you might as well have taken bad English to a Yankee-a pig-tail to a Chinese -folly and dishonesty to a radical, or a mummy to an Egyptian, and then called them curiosities. I confess it -The epistle of my friend, however, ran thus:

DEAR MOBRAY.

See by your card you're come up -devilish glad of it-must sup with me to-night-no come off-must see you-excuse haste-just returned from Newmarket-tell you all about the runs when I see you-had a cold ride homewards, damned woolly— but Sir Oliver was up, so we struck the flax into the T'its, and they came along in grand style with

Your's truly, HARRY STAMFORD,

P. S.-Feed at nine.

What was to be done? Violate all my good resolutions as soon as they were made? Impossible.-but then this was a broken day-I was tired, and could read nothing that night and if I could, to refuse to sup with an old friend whom I had not seen for some months, where I was sure also to meet with many others from whom I had been separated for a much longer time, appeared to me too bad even for a leading man, which is saying a great deal. Thus did I cogitate, while the gyp stood scratching his head, and I at length replied that "Mr Stamford might expect me at nine."-" The practice of my resolutions may be deferred till the morrow," said I, "and in the mean time I will endeavour to improve them in theory."

This was a fatal step. First im pressions are always lasting, as everybody has observed before me, and as I now observe, because it answers

It appears to me, like most commonplace sayings, to be utterly false and unphilosophical. As it is with proverbs and classical quotations, (of which old pedants of seventy, and their disciples of seventeen, are so fond,) so is it with this-by them, you may prove anything: there is nothing so absurd or so vicious, and at the same time nothing so wise or so virtuous, but may be equally supported and maintained by a proverb or a classical quotation. I have heard a robustious perriwig-pated lecturer, from his chair of state, thunder out—“ To be sure, gentlemen, as Ovid says,

Rara est concordantia fratrum ;' of a trade can never agree,' and I and as the vulgar proverb runs, two have seen the luckless wights scribble the Professor's words with all the eagerness imaginable in their notebooks.

So I have seen them also within half-an-hour take down such

words as these, hot from the mouth of the same great authority-Unquestionably, the author is right-Phodrus, you know, has said, Simile simili gaudet; and we have also a correspondent sentiment in our proverb, Birds of a feather flock together.'"-Most people will differ from me in this sentiment, I dare say, but I shall not think it the worse on that account-I had it from my experience. The worst of those men who are sentenced to be hanged at the Old Bailey, are sure to have come of the most honest parents; and then you see there's John Cam, a radical

his father never taught him thishe had no such example in his younger davs.

Well, then, for my own convenience, I will allow, that "first impressions are always lasting" though, upon a second writing, the sentiment seems rather contradictory in itself.

The fascination of that night's amusement triumphed over the dull and disgusting routine of Cambridge reading, and I became what they call rather a gay man, instead of a hard reader. I will not say that, had the laiter been somewhat more tempting,

I should have embraced it; no, I believe that I was naturally inclined to pleasure, and that the bad taste which is so conspicuous in Cambridge studies, merely contributed to increase that tendency, or, at all events, to remove the qualms of conscience which affected me when I first abandoned my design of reading. It might, however, have happened without this, and I shall not lay my follies upon a bad system, which has already too much to answer for. The pictures of Alma Mater, which are to be seen in the Cambridge Calenders, may, for aught I know, be very good ones; and the milk which is there to be perceived flowing from her breasts, may be very good also; but he must be a sturdy logician indeed, who will convince me that it is at all comparable to the milk-punch which we get from the College butler.

However, as Stamford's supper hour is not yet arrived, I have time to shew that I was not an utter profligate-a naturally ill-disposed renegade, but that I had really some just cause for disliking and abandoning the mode of life which I at first made choice of. Nor can I possibly take any surer means to effect this purpose, than by giving the reader a faithful sketch of the life and pursuits of a reading man at Cambridge.

He comes up to the University, for the most part, in a pepper-and-salt suit, with blue worsted stockings, high shoes, and a York-tan-glove complexion, with few brains, but with industry and a strong constitution. But what does he read ?—The literature of his own country? He scarcely knows his own language. The poets and orators of Greece and Rome, culling their beauties in sentiment and style?-No. Does he peruse the histories of Greece and Rome,

and perceive the destructive mania of the people for what they miscalled Liberty? Does he observe that

was

the liberty of the subject was the sole cause of the ruin and destruction of these classical states, and that though they were republics when they fell, it was by the fostering hands of virtuous kings that they were led from barbarism and ignorance, and that it was by the same persons that religion, morality, and the most salutary laws, were established both in Greece and Rome, but especially in the latter? Does it not occur to him, that though there was a Tarquin at Rome, there a Codrus* at Athens; and that the patriots of Athens and of Rome, if for one moment compared to the Codrus of the one, and the Numa Pompilius of the other, sink into insignificance and contempt? Does he, I say, "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest" these volumes, speaking facts, and then thank God that he lives under a monarchical government? Certainly not.-He reads Greek and Latin that he may be able to translate it-to bring forward grammatical rules for every turn in the sentence, and to cite parallel passages. This is the only end he has in view. He derives not a single additional idea from the authors he may happen to peruse, nor does he wish to do so. To understand the force of the Greek particles

and T, &c. so well as to write down how many times, and in what passages of each classic author, they are to be found, is to him one of the splendid acquirements, because it would ensure a high place at the College or University examinations. As to classic history, his sole object is to get up pedigrees, and the dates of battles, births, marriages, accidents, and offences. That history is " phi