"Dames!

Are they anything like Dame Coubold, who keeps the village school? Or Dame Spicer, Lord Monthel's housekeeper? Or do they dress in a high cap, with a cotton gown, white apron, and mittens? I suppose they take great care of the boys, see that they have good breakfasts, and other meals; look after the washing, keep at home, mind their business, and knit stockings? Well, if that's the case, I don't know but what it is as well that there should be such kind of people to take care of six hundred young ones."

But how shall I depict the ineffable surprise of Mrs. Dorothy Nonaught when I informed her that all her surmises were wrong, that one dame kept an open carriage, with a Danish dog; another, a close carriage, with occasional post horses; a third did this, a fourth that, a fifth did one thing, a sixth another, and so on, but that all dressed in silks and satins, laces and furbelows, kept livery servants and housekeepers, and did nothing but fancy work, and read novels, pay visits, receive invitations, give parties, and hold up their heads with the highest. "Indeed, Madam," said I, in concluding a speech far exceeding my usual wont, "the Eton dames are by no means the persons you think them, they are a very genteel class of people, I assure you; maid or widow, they are daughters, or have been wives of persons of high respectability." I felt compelled to make this apology for an otherwise unaccountable behaviour. But Mrs. Nonaught could not comprehend how such people could keep boarding houses, or how people could consort with them, for in spite of her homeliness, she had some little family pride, and only visited persons of-of character, (like me-a-hem!) and so that matter dropped.

But she had not done with me yet. No! As bit by bit

she had pumped out some account of the school, she accompanied each fresh piece of information with only an increased number of queries. It would, however, weary my reader's patience as well as mine were I to detail every occasion for the mass of heterogenous questions of which I have a confused recollection; leaving, then, the reader to supply them himself, I will subjoin a few as a specimen.

"Tutors! Bless me! who are they? You don't want tutors, and masters, and ushers too, do you? What, the tutors are masters, and private tutors too, say you? Well, I can't understand that. He must have more pair of hands than one to do all. Do you ever go out of the play ground? Don't some usher always walk in the play ground? Do they attend to your morals? Do the dames wash your feet and heads every week? How often does the man come and cut your hair? What books do you do? My Tim's reading Cordery, do you do him? Are you allowed to play at cricket, for Tim's got a nice new bat and ball? Does your tutor, or dame, or tutor's wife see that your sheets and shirts are well aired? Do you ever have a half-holiday, for Tim has one every Wednesday, and Saturday? Do you go to church twice on a Sunday? Do you have prayers every night? When do you go to bed? I don't let Tim sit up later than half-past nine. Do you ever go out of bounds? Bad boys! What, row boats on the river? Does Dr. Key allow it? No! How dare you do it? Is some one by to see you are not drowned? Well, I wonder you are not all dead by this time! Are you fagged there? What! must Tim be put in a class where he's to be determined I wont send him.

fagged?

Well, then, I'm Thank ye, Mr. Umquhill,

I'm sorry I've given you so much trouble, since it was all

of no use."

And so, thank Heaven, ended my tribulation. Fagging and boating was enough to stop Mrs. Nonaught, and well it was so, or how long she would have cross-questioned me I couldn't tell. But I'm determined to have retribution; so, reader, I have hastily scribbled down these few pages, in order that, perceiving the great misfortunes and tortures which he underwent, you may console with

LAUNCELOT UMQUHILL.

To the Editors and readers of the Kaleidoscope.

A PLEASANT JOURNEY.

No one can conceive the pleasure with which I received an invitation to go and spend a week with my old friend Sir Thomas, at his snuggery in shire. I seized on a sheet of paper, and wrote a warm reply of three pages, by return of post. Any one who knows me will instantly appreciate my delight, since it compelled me to do that, which I am notorious for neglecting-answering my letters. Indeed, I have often wished the inventor of letters had been any where but in the world. Conceive the misery of a heap of unanswered epistles lying before you on the table, scattered partly on your desk and partly under it a clean sheet of gilt-edged, ready prepared, with a new pen beside it-the rain falling in torrentsfor no one would be such a fool as to write letters on a fine day-fire that will not burn, ink that will not flow, and-but I am writing myself miserable, which is a sensation far, very far removed from the one I would express.

.

The happy day, or rather, the day preceding what was

to be the happy day, arrived, and I seated myself inside the coach with a predetermination to be pleased with every thing. At first, I found the dust a little troublesome, but I consoled myself with thinking it better than rain, and when a summer squall came over I congratulated myself on having the dust laid. It was certainly a splendid morning when I started; a fine opening summer's day. The sun had arisen about an hour, and was just beginning to cast a legthened shadow on the earth; the birds chirped chorus to my ease of heart.

"All nature seem'd to wear one universal grin."

But I shall tire if I expatiate on the morning, and shall therefore advise those who would penetrate more into such mysteries to ask some fourth-form for an old copy on "Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubili."

It is the common practice of writers to abuse travelling, to dwell with all the eloquence of dissatisfaction on the miseries which they conceive accidental to a stage coach; but I am confident that the surliness of the coachman, the impudence of the guard, the slowness of the stages, the frequency of the stoppages, the shortness of the dinner hour, the scantiness of the meal itself, the horrid brandy, the wretched ale, the scorching rum, the soaking rain, and all the other innumerable etceteras, owe their existence, or at any rate their chief power of annoyance, to the ill humour of the traveller himself: and that if a man goes with the determination to be pleased, he will discover that the surliness of the coachman is merely a desire to hasten to the end of his drive, the impudence of the guard merely arises from his careful watchfulness over the property of the passengers, and, in fine, that whatever bad qualities he may discover, they will be always satisfactorily explained away by some salutary

end which they produce. In fact, one always finds the force of Milton's observation

"The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."

Now, luckily for me, I was one of the heaven-makers the day that I journeyed, or else I should have been but rather badly off. I might have complained for the whole day at a mistake my porter made about my trunk, when he pitched it on my toes instead of the ground; but I considered that the poor man's eyes were completely obscured by my cloak, which hung over his back and face, and that I had no business to be were I was. I might have complained that a jolt of the coach sent my head through the window, and cost me five shillings, but I thought it was lucky I did not cut myself. I might have complained that the coach didn't come within a mile of my friend's house, but I recollected that walking would be very pleasant, after sitting a whole day cooped up in the inside of a coach. In short, I don't know but what I might have been very miserable altogether, but somehow or other I thought I ought to be happy.

People talk about there being no amusement in a stage coach. We cannot walk about, to be sure; but what of that? Surely nature gave two feet to man, and four to the ass, that the former being, like the Chinese ladies, less able to perambulate, might be more able to contemplate. Exercise may be salutary, nay, necessary to existence, but heaven forbid that I should be always exercising my feet and not my mind. I have a stock of something in my head that somehow or other contrives to render a long journey short. When I cannot talk, I look about, and when I cannot do that, I think, and when I can do neither, which is very seldom, I-go to sleep.