She was Cicely, the White Rose of Raby, and became the wife of Richard, Duke of York, and the mother of two kings - Edward IV. and Richard III. When the latter prince, before he was king, lived in Bishopsgate Street (at Crosby place), he probably often invited his mother to dine; and we may fancy the Duchess of York riding along Cheapside, or the Duke of Gloucester- with his arms crossed, like Edmund Kean in that character-strolling up Aldersgate Street, to invite his mother to come and see his new company of players act in Crosby Hall. Or we may fancy them standing amicably together, watching the progress of the chapel which good Richard was adding to Allhallow's Church. Or we may follow them riding side by side along Holborn, on their way to have a day's hawking on Richard's pretty manner at Notting Hill. The sixth and last Nevill Earl of Westmoreland had to escape from Aldersgate, and leave all his possessions there and in the North to the despoilers. He forfeited all by his attainder in 1570, in which year he hurried to the Low Countries, where he lived meanly and miserably, till old age carried him off. At that period there was a family of Fanes, or Vanes, in Kent, the head of which had a long purse and some pride. He looked at the palace in Aldersgate Street, and at the estates in the county of Durham, and the latter he preferred and purchased. In about half a century the old title was restored in the person of Francis Fane, whose mother was a Nevill. Since then a dozen earls of the later line have enjoyed the title, and sent down whatever of the John-o'-Gaunt blood they may have had in them. These earls have, however, suffered in dignity, like their predecessors the Nevills. The latter lost the land title by attainder; the fortune of the Fanes has been absorbed by the turf.

Let us go eastward. As we reach Austinfriars we begin to speculate on the changes it has undergone since religious brotherhoods and noble peers lived on that spot. If the first Paulet who was Marquis of Winchester could revisit the pale glimpses of the moon in Austinfriars, he would not know the place again. A good deal of it was lost in his grandson's time- that third marquis who, besides the son and three daughters he had by his wife, the daughter of Lord Howard of Effingham, left four natural sons by a Mistress Lambert, all of whom became knights. They were Sirs William, John, Hector, and Hercules. The Marquis had them at his house in Austinfriars, and he sent them thence joyous enough, with leases of lands for a hundred years, worth nearly £4000 per annum. They long retained, and perhaps in the locality are stil! known by, the name of Bastard lands. In the olden days the term was not an offensive one. Legitimate and illegitimate children recognized kinsmanship.

If Austinfriars has changed, how much more so has Clerkenwell! At the bottom of some of its courts may still be seen a house, which was evidently built for contemplation of the magnificent view which was once to be enjoyed there. The old Earls of Ailesbury were far more magnificently housed in Clerkenwell than their descendants, the marquises, have been in Grosvenor Square.

Earls are

now no more to be looked for in Clerkenwell than bishops in Shoe Lane. Above two hundred years have elapsed since Dolben was the last of the Bishops of Bangor who dwelt in that London thoroughfare. The episcopal palace stood on the site on which the Messrs. Bentley subsequently had their printing-office. So, Earls of Suffolk and Barons Willoughby of Eresby had their mansions and gardens in Barbican, where now humble tradesmen expose their wares, and chiefly tempt buyers who are in lack of garments. But the noblest human creature that ever had home in Barbican was a man above titles-John Milton. The poet was engaged in setting in order his new house in Barbican, while his wife remained with a friend, waiting that the home should be ready for her reception. How many places in and out of the city has not Milton made illustrious! He was in Bartholomew Close, hiding till the Act of Oblivion came out; and all that was mortal of him lies, with his father's dust, in old Cripplegate Church-yard. That ancient Grub Street which is now called by the poet's

name, to commemorate his adjacent Bunhill residence, still exists that is to say, it exists as a man may be said to exist who has been deprived of every limb which he could lose, and yet live. The corner houses of Milton Street belong to ancient London. They are old enough, and evidently were once grand enough, to have had bevies of ladies and joyous company of lords banqueting and lovemaking beneath the roof, long before the houses of less dignity in the street were possessed by the hired rhymers and minstrels. Any one who is curious to see a genuine bit of our old metropolis should hasten to look at houses in either of which Fox the martyrologist may have lived. He certainly lived in Grub Street, and may have resided in one of the corner houses still intact. "Hasten" is the word, for old London is rapidly disappearing. It was only as yesterday that there still stood on Tower Hill the house to which the Lords Balmerino and Kilmarnock were conveyed from the Tower, and where they were prepared for the scaffold, which was erected adjacent to the house. Not many months ago, you might still ascend the breakneck steps into Green Arbor Court, which poor Goldsmith had so often ascended or descended when he wished to avoid the opposite gate-way between the court and the Old Bailey. The London, Chatham and Dover Railway has swept away three-fourths of the court, and necks are no more in jeopardy from the classical steps. So, again, what is Queen Victoria Street not guilty of in this respect? Fancy Archbishop à Becket looking for the sign which distinguished his father's house in Cheapside, the "Becquet," or "Woodpecker," and failing to find it, attempting to make his way by the old paths to the river-bank, and coming to helpless confusion and bewildering reliance "X. L. 64" in Queen Victoria Street!

on

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As we pass and repass the streets, look into alleys which exist, and search unsuccessfully for many which have passed away, there seem to arise around us and to accompany us the spirits of those who once sojourned within the city walls, and whose magnificent style of living has no comparison in even the palaces where sovereigns keep their state in these simpler times. Among those, there was scarcely a noble who made the citizens stare more astonishedly at his approved profusion than the Earl of Warwick.

Warwick Lane is one of the old-fashionable London localities which has nearly altogether disappeared. It formed the site of the house and gardens of the haughty Earls of Warwick. The gardens became those of the College of Physicians; prisoners on the east side of Old Newgate could easily look through their windows and converse with the gardeners. The grand days of the locality were those when the Warwick Earls housed there. The mansion was as large as a barrack. Six hundred men in scarlet liveries, with the rugged staff embroidered on front and back, were their lord's retinue. No wonder that six oxen were eaten there at one breakfast! Nor was that all; household servants of the lowest degree, and people coming on business, took their meals in adjacent taverns, in every one of which was the Earl of Warwick's meat. "He that had any acquaintance in that house," says Stowe, "might have there so much of sodden and roast meat as he could prick and carry upon a long dagger."

Compare this with the little quiet house in St. James's with the brass plate on the door bearing the name of the Earl, as if he were a professional man -how great is the difference! But the calmer way of life is perhaps the happier, as many a noble, keeping house in London, has found, when the discovery was useless to him. In some cases the city streets owe less to lords than to humbler persons of a really nobler quality.

Perhaps Bread Street, Cheapside, is as illustrious a street as any in London. Even now, a visitor may look into it, and confess that the Earls of Wiltshire and the Dukes of Buckinghain were not the most famous of its inhabitants. The last of the earls died childless. The three ducal Staffords came to violent ends; Humfrey was slain at Northampton, Henry was beheaded, and Edward, his son, suffered the same hard fate. About half a century after his death, the last male representative of the great duke

was born. He was refused the inheritance of his family honors on the ground of his poverty. He sank into obscurity, bearing the name of Fludd; and hanging about the Bread Street where his ancestors had lived in princely magnificence, he died a beggar. We may fancy the spirits of Chaucer and of Occlive looking into the old street, where once was held the joyous club of Henry the Fourth's time, called "La Cour de Bonne Compagnie," of which both men are said to have been members. This was the proto-club of England, and it could have had no more illustrious member than Chaucer, one of the noblest of Londoners. But Bread Street is still more ennobled. There are several places within or close adjacent to the city, where we seem to meet bodily, as it were, with Milton; but nowhere do we come upon him with more sympathy than in Bread Street, where he was born in December, 1608. The "Spread Eagle

the Milton crest-distinguished the house of his father, the scrivener. Dwelling-places were not then numbered; but men had ceased to be called, as à Becket was, from the sign of the house in which he was born. The Bread Street of to-day (there is not much of that) resembles no more the Bread Street of the days of Milton's father, than it does that of the time when the Staffords and others dwelt in palaces there surrounded by gardens, before merchants, and then innkeepers, occupied the ground.

As Spread Eagle Court, Bread Street, served down to our own times as a memorial of Milton and the family armorial bearings, so Duck's Foot Lane, near Upper Thames Street, is believed to have been a similar memorial of the time when the De la Poles, Dukes of Suffolk, held rich possessions in the neighborhood. The lane, it is suggested, was first called Duke's Foot Lane, a name given to the private path by which he could pass to his own mansion in Suffolk Lane. The De la Poles, who lived sumptuously in Suffolk Lane, rose from merchants to be near the throne: and they fell into mere respectability, but comparative safety, after Suffolk Lane and all other possessions had been forfeited. A lucky loan of one thousand pounds made by William_de la Pole, merchant and mayor of Kingston-on-Hull, to Edward III.— who was, so to speak, in pawn at Antwerp lifted William to honors and fortune, which his successors can hardly be said to have enjoyed. They were not forever -it may be said that they were seldom-leading the revels in Suffolk Lane. Of the earls, the first died in exile, the second in camp, and the third fell at Agincourt. The brother of this third De la Pole, was William, the first of the Dukes of Suffolk. It was to his keeping that Charles, Duke of Orleans, poet and prince, taken prisoner at Agincourt, was consigned. Thirteen shillings and fourpence a day, allotted for the prisoner's keep, would not go far towards maintaining a duke in the present day; but the shillings which the duke spent in the city would be represented now by nearly as many pounds, and doubtless all Thames Street rejoiced at the liberal way in which the money was spent. The inhabitants rejoiced, too, when this Duke of Suffolk married Alice, the granddaughter of Chaucer, and for the second time a widow- -now of a late Earl of Salisbury. This was the Suffolk, too, with whom the glory of Suffolk Lane passed away. He was beheaded at sea. His son, Duke John, died of grief at the ruin of his family; and yet he may have thought that the city had never seen such glory as he was likely to bring to it, after his marriage with Elizabeth Plantagenet, sister of Edward IV. and Richard III. eldest son of this marriage (John de la Pole) was thought of by Richard for his successor as King of England; but the battle of Stoke, at which Richard's nephew was slain, fighting against Henry VII., prevented England from chronicling the reign of a John the Second. John's brother Edmund, known as Earl of Suffolk, was the fugitive whom Spain, with almost as little honor and honesty then as she has now, basely surrendered to Henry VII., who murdered him on the scaffold to get rid of a possible pretender to the crown. Edmund had three brothers surviving him: Richard, who fought under France against England; and Humphrey and Edward, who were quiet scholars at Cambridge, and published no pretensions even to be lords of Suffolk Lane. Edward attained no higher dignity than Archdeacon of Rich

The

mond, in Yorkshire. Humphrey died without a history. The name of a lane in the city, if the lane still exists as we write, is all the memorial left of the brilliant fortunes and the gloomy fate of the once powerful family of De la Pole! That family ennobled Suffolk Lane. It sufficed for a lady alone to glorify Puddle Dock. In that place once stood a mansion inhabited by no less distinguished a personage than the Lady Arabella Stuart, the first cousin of James I., and so near to the crown besides, as a descendant of Henry VII., that James, unable to get rid of her by the scaffold, killed her by slow degrees and long confinement in the Tower. When Arabella lived in Puddle Dock, it was, of course, a fashionable locality. Hilliard, the first of that noble line of English miniature-portrait painters which died out with Sir William Ross, - photography having barred all further succession,- might be seen going proudly to Puddle Dock to paint the portrait of that semi-royal lady. Sometimes he had to return disappointed, the vivacious Arabella having gone off to her distant country-house at Chelsea, without letting Hilliard know of her absence. It was near Puddle Dock that Shakspeare's London house stood, which he left to the best-loved of his children, Susannah Hall. The fashion of the place waned; but as late as the reign of Charles II. it had its admirers. When Clodpate, in Shadwell's comedy "Epsom Wells,” refers to London as "that stinking town!" Lucia exclaims: "That stinking town! I had rather be Countess of Puddle Dock than Queen of Sussex!"

From Puddle Dock to the Tower was, in the olden time, the chosen abiding-place of noble personages. There were buildings there so magnificent in their solidity and age, that the common people, who had no doubt about Julius Cæsar having been in London, ascribed them all to tha: illustrious stranger. When the native princes of Wales came up to the metropolis, they were superbly housed in this locality. The fact was long kept in memory by the popular name given to the place- Petty Wales. In like manner, Scotland Yard, now headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, has its name from the circumstance of its having once been the spot where Scottish princes dwelt, on their repairing to London, on business or pleasure. Keeping closer, as we wish to confine ourselves to the city, we must not omit to mention Little Britain. The earls or dukes of Brittany, when they were intimately connected with this greater Britain, resided in that vicinity to Alders gate. When those great personages ceased to live there occasionally, and to gather fashionable crowds around them, the place fell into the hands of the sellers of old books. The shops were morning and afternoon clubs, where schoars and wits, and the booksellers themselves as witty and scholarly as their visitors, made the day pass gloriously, while business went on none the less briskly. Earls and bishops, and other members of the higher classes, long con tinued to resort to Little Britain, though they may not have had dwelling-houses there. It was in or near Little Britain that Izaak Walton met Bishop Sanderson in sad-colored clothes. The prelate had been looking for books, and was glad to have a gossip with Izaak. They stood talking in the street, till wind and rain drove them for shelter beneath a pent-house. They were driven thence by increase of the storm, and they found genial shelter in a "cleanly house," where they had bread and cheese and ale, as they sat and continued their conversation by a good fire! We all know how Walton could talk, and we may judge of Sanderson's gifts by the double testimony of Izaak and King Charles. When Sanderson, as chaplain to that unlucky king, used to preach before him, Charles once said: "I carry my ears to hear other preachers, but I carry my conscience to hear Mr. Sanderson, and to act accordingly." Before that time, Sanderson was only rector of Boothby Pagnell. Walton described him and his charge in these words: "His parish, his patron, and he lived together in a religious love and a continued quietness." Quaint must have been the gossip of the bishop and the Fleet Street hosier and angler. But what would be now said if the world were told that the present Bishop of London, and even such an accomplished fisherman as Mr. John Bright, had been, any night or day

in the year, drinking their ale, eating their crust of bread and cheese, and gossiping over the fire at any tavern within the most refined part of the metropolitan district?

But more fruitful of good results was the accidental visit of the Earl of Dorset to the once aristocratic Little Britain. He went thither, like Bishop Sanderson, in search of books to his taste; and it was while they were being looked out for him that the earl, by the merest chance, took up a volume which happened to lie before him. Dorset opened the book and his eye fell upon passages which arrested his attention, and excited in him the utmost delight. He bought the work. He had never heard of it, but there was something in this "Paradise Lost," by one John Milton, which induced him to think he had discovered a treasure. "If your lordship," said the bookseller, "can say any thing in favor of the book, after reading it, I shall be glad, for the copies lie on hand, like waste paper." My lord did read, did like, and did talk of this marvellous poem which is now much more talked of than read. He sent it to Dryden, and Dryden returned it with the remark, "This man cuts us all out, and the ancients too!"

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Old fashion and present fact present themselves to our mind as we pass through Throgmorton Street. It acquired its name from Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, the poisoning of whom is as naturally laid to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, as the desecration of churches is charged on Oliver Cromwell. In an earlier period of the locality, Sir Thomas Cromwell, desiring to live like a noble,- which even the earldom of Essex could not make him,-built himself a stately mansion here, with a garden running northward. The garden was not spacious enough for either his mind or body. It abutted on the garden-grounds in which stood humbler houses than his own, and these Sir Thomas coveted, to do as he pleased with. Sir Thomas was quite as high-handed a man as his master, as the sequel showed. A host of diggers and delvers and builders suddenly took possession of the place. They lifted Sir Thomas's pales, and struck them in two and twenty feet farther north, taking so much of other men's land without caring to ask their consent and without any fear of their displeasure. A house stood in their way it was that of the father of Stowe the chronicler, and it stood in a pretty garden, close to Cromwell's pales. While the owner was absent, Cromwell's men lifted this house out of the ground, placed rollers under it, and moved it above a score of feet northward. When old Stowe returned home, his house and garden seemed to have been turned round. So did the old man's head; but when that recovered from the confusion into which it was temporarily thrown, he went to the surveyors of the work, and begged to know by what right they had moved his house and cut off a full half of his garden. While the navvies of that day drew their line, cut their trench, laid a foundation, and built thereon a high brick wall, the surveyors told Stowe that they had done what they had done because their master, Sir Thomas, had commanded them so to do. "No man durst go to argue the matter," says the son of the despoiled; but each man lost his land, and my father paid his whole rent, which was 6s. 6d. a year, for that half which was left." Stowe speaks of his own knowledge, and assigns as one of his reasons for so speaking (having both the rise and fall of Cromwell in his mind), to remind good folk that the sudden rising of some men causeth them in some matters to forget themselves."

It would require a volume, and a large one, to point out all the spots in the city which were once the seats of fashion and of fashionable people. We have suggested a few only, our space not permitting more. The course of

fashion has set in westward. There was a time when the proper thing to do was to "ride in a coach" round and round Covent Garden. For a time after that now melancholy-looking thoroughfare, Tavistock Street, was built, fashion took such possession of it that the block of carriages in the afternoon was worse than any thing to be witnessed in that way, at the highest of the season, in Hyde Park. Bond Street succeeded, till Regent Street ousted Bond Street from the proud pre-eminence. The nobleman who now lives most to the eastward is the Duke of Northumber

land. A duke in the Strand seems infra dig.; but when the strand was really the open strand of the then silvery Thames, dukes and earls were by no means uncommon there. It is not very many years since we had a king and queen living nearer to Temple Bar than the Duke of Northumberland. It must be confessed that the royal pair were of a fishy quality. They were the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands, and they lived in the hotel at the corner of Adam Street, Adelphi. On their first visit to the theatre, Covent Garden, bills printed on satin lay in their box. The royal pair took them for silk pocket-handkerchiefs, provided for them as a delicate sort of attention, and they put them to present use accordingly.

A REMINISCENCE OF ETON LIFE.

I.

I THINK it best to premise that this tale is not destined to commemorate adventures of my own, but those of a fellow-fag called Jickling-Jickling, who had already been at the school a year when I arrived there, and was by common consent accounted the most idle, unkempt, incapable, and, in a general way, the least promising among the six hundred and fifty of us. It is a painful thing to say, but nobody esteemed Jickling. His house-fellows were ashamed of him and regarded him as a black sheep in their small, eminently tidy fold; our tutor viewed him with a cool and careful eye. If it had been put to anybody in the school whom it would have been the least desirable fellow to mess with, or indeed be intimately associated with in any way, the answer would have been, "Jickling; " and this impression was more than doubled by the cynicism, not to say effrontery, with which Jickling bore off his short-comings. For of shame at his own unworthiness Jickling possessed none. Thus I had not been five minutes in his company on the night of my arrival, before he informed me not a little to my consternation, when I understood what he that he expected to be "swished" on the very next morning for having, in the train down from Paddington, blown a mouthful of peas into the face of an enginedriver, and been "nailed" in the act by a master who had got into the carriage next his at Ealing; and this communication was quite of a piece with Jickling's habitual confidences respecting himself. He was continually playing a part in those short but painful interviews with the head master that are conducted in the presence of the sixthform præpostor and two "holders down;" and nobody would have ventured to assert that he came out from these interviews otherwise than hardened in spirit, however it might be in person, and steadfastly minded to be peccant again as soon as he had the opportunity. He was one of those unfortunate boys who seem pre-doomed to go wrong. Though provided with good clothes enough, his dress was always shabby and ill-matched, the trowsers of one suit doing duty with the waistcoat of another; and though he was supplied with money sufficient, and more than sufficient, for all his needs, yet he never had a sixpence, and was always in debt.

meant

In school, Jickling was as unsatisfactory as out of it. When called up to construe, he never knew where to go on; often he had brought the wrong book; and, somehow, he gener ally contrived to get himself weighted with a sentence to write out and translate the lesson before he had fairly started. And when he had started, who shall describe the torrent of solecisms, false quantities, and hideous errors of translation that flowed imperturbably from his mouth? Needless to add that, although Jickling was in lower fourth, that is, in the last division of the upper school, he had only arrived there after failing to pass his first examination out of the lower school. It was even rumored that he would have been rejected the second time had it not been for the Machiavellic determination of the lower master to get rid of him at any price, as a boy whose incurable idleness was contagious, and likely to corrupt the whole form. So there was Jickling, at the very bottom of his division - a boy of

about twelve, with lank hair of a muddy flaxen color; fingers permanently ink-stained; Balmoral boots that were never laced; and a curious white face, that looked inquiringly at you, out of a pair of eyes so wild, shifty, and defiant in their expression, that it was a wonder Nature had not taken them to put into the head of a polecat.

Now, that Jickling should have flourished in our midst was a circumstance astonishing enough, seeing that of all the staid and proper youngsters I had ever met with, we Etonians were certainly the most exemplary; but that he should have been the fag of such a fellow as Asheton was a downright puzzle; for Asheton being captain of the house, and entitled to four fags, might have chosen any one he pleased, and was under no compulsion whatever to select Jickling, who blacked his toast for him, spilled the gravy of sausages over his trowsers, and when sent to carry a note, invariably took it to the wrong place. There could have been no community of thought or sympathy between Asheton and Jickling; for the two were simply as opposite to each other as white is to black, or coal to sugar. What Jickling did wrong, Asheton did well; and what Asheton did well, Jickling was morally certain to do wrong.

About eighteen years old, lightly built, and rather above middle height, he had a handsome aristocratic face of essentially English mould, though, perhaps, a little too serious for his age, and a figure that was fitly set off by the absolutely faultless style in which he dressed. His white cravat, tied as only Etonians used to tie them; his speckless linen, glossy hat, and trimly folded silk umbrella, were things to see, admire, and copy.

This said by way of introducing my dramatis persona, let me, with your leave, take up the thread of my narrative at the point where, having just arrived at Eton in the month of September of the year 185-, I learned that untidy Jickling and I were to be fag-mates.

It was not Jickling himself who brought me this piece of news, but Stumpes minor, brother to the Stumpes in the Eleven, who entered my room on the next morning but one after my arrival, holding a copper kettle in one hand and a plate of muffins in the other, and said, "Rivers, you're to come down with me to Asheton's room."

I cannot say this summons caused me any thing like a great pleasure, for at the private school whence I came the word fag had been held up in terrorem over me by everybody who had ever pronounced it. Certain of my schoolfellows, amicably jealous, no doubt, of my going to Eton, had given me clearly to understand that, as a preliminary to all further relations with me, my fag-master would begin by having me tossed in a blanket, then set me to blacken his boots for him, and that, on my failing to polish these to such a degree of perfection as would admit of his shaving himself by their help instead of in a looking-glass, he would order me to stand on my head in the middle of the room and take shots at me with a toasting-fork. Jickling, who had apparently divined the existence of these fears in the course of our first conversation, had, on the second occasion of our discoursing, taken benevolent pains to develop them; and he was in the act of gloomily relating to me how this very Asheton had once fagged him to go to the top of the "Long Walk," a distance of four miles and a half, walking all the way on his hands, legs uppermost, when he was severely interrupted by one Greegleby, four foot high, but irascible, and protector of the weak, who joined us on the pavement outside our tutor's house, where the interview was taking place, and cried out indignantly," Shut up, Jickling: it's a chouse greening new fellows."

"You're always doing something caddish," followed up young Blazepole, whose head was like an orange-colored mop, and who, leaning against a door-post, was gravely counting what remained of three pounds he had brought back with him after an equitable settlement of all his debts. "None but a snob would tell such confounded cracks as that to a fellow who's not been here a week," pursued Greegleby, still very wroth, for it was evident that it went sore against his notions of morality that anybody should be deceived until he had been at school long enough to be prepared for it.

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"If I waited a week he wouldn't be greenable," answered Jickling, coolly; and saying this, he turned one of the pockets of his trowsers inside out, and proceeded to remove a piece of Everton toffee that was sticking in a corner thereof. "New fellows," added he, sucking the toffee, are like puppies - they begin to see clear towards the ninth day." "Don't mind what he says, Rivers," exclaimed young Greegleby, loftily. 'Nobody pays any attention to him." No, nobody," assented Blazepole, who had just ascertained that his resources amounted to one pound sixteen shillings and a penny, and was restoring this wealth to his pocket-book.

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So I was informed both by Greegleby and Blazepole, the one corroborating the other, that I had nothing to fear of Asheton, that he was a good fellow, and that he never bullied, because bullying was a blackguardly thing, only practised at "low shops" (and here Greegleby mentioned the public schools which he regarded as "low shops"), but never at Eton. Yet somehow these assurances must have left me not altogether convinced, for it was with something very like a feeling of being about to suffer tribulation that on the following morning I obeyed the summons of Stumpes minor, and followed him, the copper kettle and the muffins, down to the room where Asheton lodged.

I remember this room as if I were still standing in it now, on that bright September morning, with my heart going thump, thump, against my brown waistcoat, and my cheeks flushed with anticipatory emotion. It was a largish room, perhaps twenty feet by fifteen, and had two windows, both of which were curtained with some warm purple stuff, which I took for silk, but which was probably not that, and filled with flower-boxes, where glowed some scarlet geraniums, whose showy coats stood out bravely against the dull bricks of the boarding-house opposite.

In the way of furniture, provided by our tutor, and destined to pass along with the room itself to successive owners, were a shut-up bedstead, which had done unmistakable service already, if one might judge by its venerable oaken complexion; a bureau, on the leaf of which Asheton had (presumably in the lower-boy phase of his existence) carved his initials and crest; four Windsor chairs, also carved and chipped; a shut-up wash-hand-stand, with a piece of oilcloth in front of it; and a square deal table, covered with a red flowered table-cloth, and like the chairs, carved to any lengths, if you were only prying enough to lift up a corner of the table-cloth and see. But all these items played only a subsidiary part in the adornment of the chamber, for it is not to his tutor that an Eton boy looks to make his room cosy. From the day when he is installed in the small apartment, which is his to do with as he pleases (blessed privilege!), the boy's one thought is how to give it that habitable look which smells of home; and in Asheton's case this preoccupation, extended over six years, had taken shape in pictures, stuffed-bird cases, and useful knicknacks, in such numbers as to make the room seem almost alive with comfort, color, and cheerfulness. By gazing with a little attention, too, one could detect at what different dates the things had been bought, and so follow the boy through the various gradations of taste and culture engendered by his public-school training. Those flashy-looking sporting cracks, now relegated to an obscure corner, had clearly been purchased when a love of paint predominated over other considerations, and when the chief thing to be aimed at was the making of much effect with little money. By and by taste had improved; the fourth form was abandoned and the remove was reached. The young invester had said: "Instead of these staring things that are too cheap to be good, I'll lay out a couple of pounds at one sweep." Yet not daring to trust his own taste so far as to select something quite original, he had resolved to buy what he had most often heard praised: hence, "Dignity and Impudence and " Laying down the Law," by Landseer; "My Dog," My horse," "The Rent Day," and a few more prints as well known and popular; intermingling with which were a case of stuffed frogs playing cricket, and a case of stuffed squirrels fighting a duel, the blood of the worsted squirrel

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being realistically represented by a blotch of meandering sealing-wax.

I took in all this at a glance, though I have been five minutes describing it; and I had leisure to examine the whole room in detail, while Stumpes minor, to whom, presently, was added Blazepole, began laying his master's breakfast-things. For Asheton had not turned round on our entry; he was seated at his bureau, reading up his seventy lines of Horace for eleven-o'clock school, by the aid of Mr. Smart's translation; and as Stumpes did not see fit to call his attention to my presence, neither, of course, did I. Stumpes directed me to take my stand against a wall, which I did meekly,- and to watch how he "did the things, so as to be able to manage like me, you know, in a fortnight's time:" which I also complied with, for to see a cloth laid by so extremely small and dignified a person as Stumpes was somewhat of a novelty to me. First, Stumpes removed the scarlet table-cloth, and threw it to Blazepole, who folded it; then the pair between them laid the white cloth, which Stumpes had extracted from a cupboard, smoothed it, and set upon it a cup, saucer, sugarbasin, milk-jug, slop-basin, and two plates of a white pattern with blue rims. Then Stumpes possessed himself of a Britannia-metal teapot, and put therein three powerful spoonfuls of tea, holding out the pot at the same time for Blazepole to pour in boiling water quantum suff.; this done, out from the cupboard came a metal spoon, a knife and a three-pronged fork with white handles, three new rolls and a pat of butter,-edibles that were promptly followed by a ham, drawn out of an open hamper, and laid by Stumpes upon a dish which Blazepole was sent to fetch; a Yorkshire pie and a pot of marmalade, the bladder covering of which Stumpes deftly removed with a knife, as if used to such work. The muffins came last, but were advantageously planted beside the teapot, along with a hot-water contrivance that had been employed to keep them from cooling. Then Stumpes, having cast a searching glance to assure himself that there was nothing wanting, he and Blazepole were seized with a violent fit of coughing, which would have effectually precluded all further work on Asheton's part, had he not understood the hint, and risen. It was then his eye lit upon me.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he said civilly; "I didn't know you were in the room. Why didn't you tell me, Stumpes?" With which words he seated himself at the table, and pointed silently to the ham, as a hint to Blazepole that the carving knife and fork had been forgotten. Both fags rushed togther towards the cupboard, exchanging mutual reproaches sotto voce. "Your name's Rivers, I believe?" added Asheton, buttering a roll. Northamptonshire or Somersetshire Rivers?" And he made a second gesture towards the ham, thus intimating to Stumpes to begin carving, which that model fag proceeded to do on the spot with the expertness of a professional.

"Somersetshire," I answered, feeling very much like adding, "Sir."

"And in what form are you placed?" continued Asheton, receiving on his plate a slice of ham half a foot in diameter, and thin as a wafer.

"Blazepole, you've forgotten the mustard," whispered Stumpes, sepulchrally.

"It was you that forgot it," retorted Blazepole, in the tone of a conspirator; but he made a dive at the cupboard for the empty mustard-pot, and vanished out of the room with it, scrambling down the staircase four steps at a time, en route for the kitchen.

"In lower fourth," I replied to Asheton's question, feeling more and more like saying "Sir," and unable to take my eyes off him, as he ate a muffin, waiting till the mustard had arrived.

"Well, you are excused fagging till next Thursday week," he rejoined, cutting up his ham; "and after that you'll fag for me, along with Stumpes there, Blazepole, and Jickling. But, by the way, where is Jickling? Has he shirked fagging?" And Asheton looked up from his plate and round the room inquiringly.

Stumpes did not immediately answer. He had no re

spect for Jickling, but he had a great deal for those timehonored principles that prohibit tale-tel ing; so, with more solicitude for the interest of these principles than for those of abstract truth, he proceeded to invent an excuse for his absent fag-mate, not knowing more than the man in the moon to what that absence was due.

"I think my tutor sent for him after prayers," he said. "What about?"

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Probably for not being at prayers," responded Stumpes, bravely.

"But he was at prayers," remarked Asheton.

"Then it must have been for something else," said Stumpes, perplexed; but he was spared the trouble of drawing further on his imagination, for at that moment there was a precipitate shuffling of feet in the passage, and a double entry, Blazepole with the mustard, and Jickling himself with nothing.

It was the first time Asheton had seen Jickling that half, so he held out his hand.

"How do you do, Jickling?" he said.

""Do, Asheton?" mumbled Jickling, extending a dusky

Yes," returned Jickling, withdrawing the paw, and thrusting it deep into a trowser-pocket, where, finding some coppers, it began to rattle them."

"And what's this I hear," asked Asheton, helping himself to mustard, and speaking without a smile, "that you've already been flogged, by way of beginning the half well? "Yes," said Jickling, gloomily; "I had seven cuts." For shooting peas ?

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They were small peas," remonstrated Jickling. "Besides, I don't see what right a master has to nail me when I'm in a colored tie. I was in the train hadn't yet reached Eton, nor put my black tie on. The train stops at Hanwell. I fish out a pea-shooter, and let fly at the enginedriver of a neighboring train. A master pokes his head out of the next carriage-window, and says, • What's your name? Where do you board? I shall complain of you.' I call that snobbish."

"What do you call shooting the peas?" asked Asheton, quietly.

Jickling stared; but, after turning the matter over, declined to take any notice of this question. He recommenced to rattle his coppers.

"Ah! that reminds me," broke in Asheton; "before you've spent all your money, please to pay me your football subscription."

Jickling pulled an excessively wry face; not so Stumpes and Blazepole, who, with the alacrity of habit, and without being asked, drew out their purses, and laid on Asheton's table the sum of three shillings and sixpence apiece.

"It's for the footballs, the goal-sticks, the cad who takes care of the balls, and the beer we drink after playing," explained Stumpes to me in a whisper. "Fork out yours too." And under Stumpes's direction, I forked out 3s. 6d. Jickling, meanwhile, had rummaged in his pocket, and produced a sovereign, which he gazed at with an eye of affection, as apparently his last. Then, after a good deal more fumbling, he managed to scrape together the requisite smaller sum, parting, however, with all his copper money to effect this total, which formed a brown heap on the table. Asheton had been silently disposing of his ham. He now looked up fixedly at Jickling, and said, "Have you paid all your debts, Jickling?"

"What debts?" asked Jickling, sulky and embarrassed. "Your ticks to Spankie, Jobie, and the other men at the wall. You owe them all something."

"Yes," grumbled Jickling, more and more sulky.

"Then, you owe no one any thing now?"

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Nothing," answered Jickling, in a tone and with a morose look that bore an economy of truth on the face of them.

"Well, then," returned Asheton, either believing or pretending to believe," you are free to make a fresh start now, and to turn over a new leaf for the future; and you must try and do it for your own sake. I don't want to say any